Viola

Tomorrow is when Raspberry Ridge Strings Camp starts! This is going to be my second year attending! I will try to blog everyday about how things are going! I want to do this because sometimes last year, the camp was very stressful music-wise & I really didn't have an outlet. I have really hard music this year! I am most worried about our quartet! I also hope that I am not put in the front of the orchestra!

Should I or Shouldn't I?

I am having a bit of a problem here.

I am both a violinist and a violist, but I am thinking about completely switching over to viola. I have been thinking about this for a long time. I have a few reasons to back up my maybe-soon-to-be decision.

1. Less people play viola. More opportunities! I remember a couple of weeks ago, I went to go visit our local violan shop, and a violin teacher was retrieving her violin. I remember her telling me this: "Violists sometimes have a reputation for being terrible violinists. However, if you embrace the viola, you will always have a home." Those words hit me. They inspired me!

2. I will excell further with viola. some people that I know that play multiple instruments are really not as good as, lets say, the cello than other people. That is because they can never focus their full time on that one instrument. It's one thing people really overlook.

3. I really have no reason to continue studying violin. I am a violist in all my orchestras, all of my recitals are just viola repertiore, and I only audition on viola. I wanted to audition for ERO on viola AND violin next year, but once I think about it, there is really no point in trying out on violin. When I came home after our ERO orchestra concert, I was all over the violin parts (both 1st and second). I just thought they were so cool because there were some pretty awesome chords in there & the violins always had the main melody. I promised that next year, I would audition on both violin and viola, because I wanted to get a really good seating. Now that I think about it, I really don't want to. There's no point in doing that. 

4. My Best Friend has Done that too! My best friend (not giving out any names!) before she rose into high school as a freshman/freshwoman (just like me!), she was an excellent violinist! She was the eigth grade concert master for her middle school! She came into high school and one of her orchestra mentors recommended that she should start studying viola. She did that. She bought herself an awesome viola (I mean it, it looks and sounds amazing!). She is in some awesome ensembles and she is just an inspiration to me! She dropped violin when viola become more of a thing she did in orchestras. She is an awesome violist! I basically have the same story, except I am not as musically inclined as her.

The only things that I have as con arguments for not continuing to study violin is I hang my violin on a wall. I just play viola and I never take it off. I feel as if I am neglecting it. A nice violin just hanging on a wall for eternity makes me sad.

My goal this summer is when I come back to school, and I play viola for the school orchestra again, I want people to NOTICE that I have made some progress. That I have improved. Will completely switching over from violin to viola help me or hurt me? Please tell me what you think in the comments below!

I think this awesome quote sums up how I feel with viola being my second love.

Viola

I would like to introduce the newest member to my family!

After some tough negotiation and some support from my grandma, I was finally able to get a viola that my skills deserved!

I will compare for you both my violin & my viola!

My violin:

1.) The greatest gift that I have ever asked for.

2.) It's from Italy! It's a copy of the guadagnini! It was made in the year 2011!

3.) I like to put ribbons on it!

4.) It lives on my wall!

5.) It has the awesomest case in the world! It's the case on top of the shaped blue case!

6.) I bought it from the Chapel Hill Violin Shop!

7.) I am never ever selling it! That violin is mine forever and if you somehow steal it from me, I will hunt you down because not only are you stealing a hunk of wood, you are also stealing my passion, my voice, my outlet, and my future!

My viola!

It's the bigger looking one on the left! 

1.) We are going to go places like never before!

2.) It's also from Italy! It is an Antonion Fliorini! It was made in 2011!

3.) I will put ribbons on it, when I find the right colors for it!

4.) It lives on my wall!

5.) I am picking up the case on Tuesday, since tomorrow is Labor Day!

6.) I also bought it from the Chapel Hill Violin shop!

7.) This thing is my life! I love it so much! If you steal it, I will act as if I am looking for my kidnapped family! I will hunt you down & I will not fail!

I love my Violans!

Violin

This was an article that for some reason, didn't get published, so here it is!

Yesterday and last Friday, I went to my first Suzuki workshop. There were so many people there! Ranging from all ages, and all Suzuki books 1-5 and advanced peices too like Sicillienne.
However, believe it or not, the little kids and everyone else are ahead of me! Why? Because I started with orchestra music in eighth grade! I didn't even know most of the suzuki peices by memory!
So after the concert, I became inspired to completely learn & memorize all Suzuki peices from books 1 and 2. By doing this I infered:

-I would become a better violinist because it would help build my memorization skills

-By next year, I would completely know most of the peices by heart.

My practicing ideas:

Starting from Suzuki volume 1, every week I would have a suzuki violin song every week that I will have to learn and memorize.  For example, the song of the week would be Lightly Row or May song. By the time the week has finished, I would completely know the song by heart.





Terry Durbin's website:

http://www.timothydurbin.com/Site/Welcome.html

Link to another practice blog!

So, I just got an email for registration that strings camp registration deadline is the 19th of this month. It's a great camp in NC, it lasts a whole week!

So I scrolled down (it was a long email), and I found a link to a practice blog! I don't know how to follow it, so I will just save the link here for myself and anyone else! Does anyone know how to do that?

http://www.privatelessonmatters.blogspot.com/

Everyone is Different!

I love listening to the Four Seasons! One of my favorite movements is movement 3 (presto) from the summer concerto! Why? Because it is so fast, and it requires a ton of effort to be able to play it! I love listening to my favorite virtuosos play this movement because they all play how they see a summer storm (that's another name for that movement!) in their perspective!

I have picked 5 of my favorite virtuosos! All of them are playing the same movement! I can't decided which one I like best! Enjoy!

You can tell that Janine Jansen told the orchestral accompaniment to play strong and make sure this movement would suck out the energy of every string player! Janine Jansen has added double stops to her solo! That is genius! Janine Jansen is an extremely hardcore virtuoso violinist!

There are 2 movements shown in the video, it's the first one that's the 3rd movement that we are focusing on! Anne-Sophie Mutter hates blending in! She wants everyone to know of her existence! Anne-Sophie Mutter has extended the notes! She uses more bow! She makes her violin sing in the extremely rapid parts of the movement! This is music!

This is the first video that I listened to of a virtuoso playing the 3rd movement. I love all of these virtuosos to death, but I love Sarah Chang the most of them all! I am most inspired by Sarah Chang! Unlike Anne-Sophie Mutter, Sarah usually blends in rather than standing out (another good example of this is her performance of the winter concerto!). I love that!

Like Janine Jansen, Joshua Bell has added double stops to his performance of the 3rd movement!  Like Anne-Sophie Mutter, he makes his violin sing in the first solo after the first tutti! Look at him go!

Itzak Perlman has slowed down the tempo a little bit! I love this because it allows the audience to absorb the pure beauty of the notes even more than if the 3rd movement is being played at it's normal quick tempo! Slowing down the tempo has allowed Perlman to add in a little more variation to his solo parts!

NEXT EXAMPLE: CARMEN'S FANTASY!

CARMEN'S FANTASY! I LOVE THIS! I want to learn to play this so badly!

Anyway, Sarah Chang! This is her version of Carmen's Fantasy! You may notice that Sarah Chang had to mash up this 12 minute violin concerto into a 5 minute music video! I love this music video! Obviously, she blended in!

Notice the contrast between the two virtuosos! Anne-Sophie Mutter is performing the full concerto! Notice how she has slowed down the tempo in order to add her own variation to the concerto!

EXAMPLE 3: THAIS MEDITATION!

Joshua Bell's performance.

Sarah Chang's performance. I cried when I first heard this. No joke!

Janine Jansen's performance. One of the best out there! 

Itzak Perlman's performance!

Anne Sophie Mutter's performance!

Staying Focused While Practicing

When you are practicing, have you ever just lost track of what part of a piece you are practicing? Do you ever just start practicing a section of the piece and just trail off and play the piece until you get to the end of it? This is very common, especially for me! I have always found these tips helpful whenever I practice! I'm not going to say that they are my own because I'm very sure that other people have come up with these ideas way before me! 

1. Set a goal: Let's say you usually practice for 30 or up to an hour (or maybe more!). Let's say you are practicing something as difficult as maybe Bach's Concerto in A minor. It is impossible to master that piece in a day! At least that is how it is for me! This goes for all pieces that are the same level of difficulty, or maybe even harder.

My friend told me that you just can't say to yourself, "today, I want to learn to play all of this!" 

You have to set a goal! 

I have to learn Bloch's Meditation for viola because I have to record it so I can be in this certain awesome ensemble group. Being that the person that wants the recording wants it ASAP, I thought to myself, "hmmm, well spring break goes from March 29th to April 8th. I bet I could learn the piece in at least 5 days if I focus! I could count how many measures there are in the piece and then I could divide that number by five! That's perfect! I will make a checklist of what to learn each day! Sounds like a plan to me!"

This plan is helpful for any work you are studying because it allows you to focus on certain part of the work and master it! 

Another thing I do is I make a this-week's-practice-priorities checklist for both violin and viola. This helps me know what I need to focus on throughout the week. 

Also, make sure these goals are attainable. I go to high school, I have homework too, so my parents only let me practice for half an hour after I come home from school, so I only get 15 minutes of practice on each instrument! That is so little! I tell myself, okay what can I do in 15 minutes? For violin, I will usually practice my scales for 5 minutes, then for 10 minutes, I will practice a small section of a piece I am working on. Same goes for viola.

2. Make a checklist out of your peice: This does not fall into the same category as tip #1 because it's making a checklist out of your piece! I do this to a lot of my pieces! Observe the picture:

Do you see on the side next to each clef, a little box, some with a little check inside of them? Those are where the check boxes are supposed to go! What I find so cool about this idea is depending on how much you want to learn each day (let's say you want to learn 3 lines a day), there are two ways of mastering this! You can go through the piece in an orderly fashion from top to bottom of the page. Another way you can use the checklist is you can do random lines without worrying about the order. I usually do this randomly because I usually want to master a piece in at least two week's time, and I want to master the hard parts of the piece first before I master the really easy parts. I sometimes go through a piece and go "WHOA! That line looks really hard! Must master it!" I usually get it.

Before checking off each line, I ask myself 3 questions:

"Did I get the fingerings down?"

"Is my bowing correct?"

"If Sarah Chang (AH! MY IDOL!) was listening to this, would she be impressed, would she find this boring, or would she not want to listen to it at all?"

Then I check it off!

3. The power of a piece of paper: A piece of paper can have a printed piece on it, you can do your homework on it, you can read it, you can make a checklist out of it! What else could you do? Use a piece of paper to cover other pieces of paper, of course!

Before I came up with this idea (I'm very sure someone has come up with it way before I did!), I would always be playing a certain part of a piece and instead of focusing on mastering those certain couple of measures, two things could happen to me. I would either be like, "WHATEVER! I'll ask my private teacher for help on this & everything will be fine! NEXT MEASURE!" or I would just play until I got to the end of the piece! This is wrong! 

One day, I decided that I wasn't getting anything done and that enough was enough! I thought to myself, "I have to stay focused on this certain part or I will never master it!" I looked around my room and noticed my gigantic stack of loose-leaf paper. I grabbed a piece. I covered the whole music piece with that piece of paper. What I do is I have one line of music shown and the rest of the piece is covered with the sheet of paper. This allows me to focus on one line of music and not trail off! When I think I have mastered the line, again I ask myself the three questions:

"Did I get the fingerings down?"
"Is my bowing correct?"

"If I had to audition and play this certain line, would the judges be impressed? Or would they just be like 'uuhhh....YOU CAN GO NOW!'?"

Practice tip #3 is usually a tip you could use if you really need to stay focused and practice tip #2 just doesn't work at all! 

I hope this helped! Happy practicing!