All posts by hannahviolin

I am a violinist. I also enjoy running, working out, reading, and hanging with my friends and cat.
Random thoughts

More intonation

Thought I’d start by giving you a picture of my best pot so far.  On Monday night my instructor helped me with a step of the process I had been doing wrong, so hopefully in the future my “work” will be even better.  However, I absolutely love the color on this pot.

Intonation:  the title of this post.  Monday I had another lesson and realized I needed to work even harder on being perfectly in tune, or having “gorgeous intonation.”  I’ve been practicing with a drone from my little metronome.  I thought I would hate drone practice, having avoided it all my life, but much like metronome practice, I actually love it because it requires less worry from me, and more absolution.  So that’s a relief!  There’s a saying (I’m sure you all know it) that you can never be too rich or too thin…well let’s add that you can never play too well in tune.  And I’m also continuing to work on the “thin”.

I went to a gathering the other night to celebrate a friend’s birthday (two friends actually).  It was fun of course, but I was struck by a few people commenting that  I was “disappearing” and this was of course considered a compliment to them.  It’s interesting that women are expected to “disappear” to be considered healthy and attractive, whereas men are expected to “bulk up” and take up space.  Just a thought.  At least I’m tall–

I also went to see Cirque de Soleil over the weekend.  They were in town doing the show “Allegria.”  It was my first time seeing the group live, and it was just breathtaking!  They will be back in January.

End note:  this luckily doesn’t affect my violin-ing at all, but I managed to injure my hand by being a bit too determined and perhaps reckless/incorrect on my centering technique.  Let’s be glad I can still play the violin as out of tune after the injury as before!  Here is a gross picture of it.

That’s from today, the incident happened on Monday.  It actually looks grosser today but feels much better.

Teaching

Nice job

I was so pleased with the children’s performances last night at St. Margaret’s! Things went really well, and my students played wonderfully. Of course it wasn’t perfect, but overall we did a great job showcasing the hard work all of my students did this year. And my piano playing wasn’t bad…It was also fun to watch the other performances. There was quite a bit of singing and speech making, and everybody did a wonderful job!

Two more student recitals to do-one at my house with all of my private students, and one at the ballet school. The ballet school one I am very concerned about as I will only have two students playing and I don’t have to organize it. The one at home should be a lot of fun, but I’ll have to make sure everything is in order (and hopefully the audience can fit comfortably enough.) On both performances I will also be playing a little piece, so that should be a nice treat for the audiences 🙂

I’m glad this week is over though–I was so stressed about it (and naturalmente my stress continues for a bit longer), but I did great on my Suzuki final and will be registered for books 5 through 10 (10!) shortly, AND as I mentioned, my class performance went well. My practicing continues, with another lesson on Monday. I’m ready to just relax into wedding season/summer…but we are not quite ready for that yet.

Performing, Teaching

Arts Night

Tonight my two violin classes (well, one is violin/cello) are performing at the school’s Arts Night. (St. Margaret of Scotland School, just fyi). I am playing piano to accompany them, which is always a bit terrifying for me. I took piano lessons growing up, but since then have not owned a piano nor do I have very good access to one for practicing, so it’s a bit scary! Luckily these accompaniment parts are pretty easy. I could probably get someone else to do it, but I don’t trust them to play with the group/lead the group the way I need it, and then what would I do? Conduct?

Hmm…there’s a more frightening thought!

Teaching

Finals week

My Suzuki class comes to a close on Tuesday. I’ve been working all day today on a take home final exam and also on finishing up my binder of work. It’s been a wonderful year learning about Suzuki Pedagogy with Vera McCoy-Sulentic at SIUE, and though I will be relieved to be done (and have a few hours each week back to myself), it has been a WONDERFUL experience. I have learned so much, and my students have certainly benefited in many ways.

Next on the learning docket-book 4 at Ottawa Institute in June. I need a break, but by then I’ll be ready to focus again, I hope!

Tomorrow is back to practicing and preparing my students for a variety of upcoming performances. I also have pottery class again, and should be able to pick up four pots that I glazed last week. I can’t wait!

Weddings

Wedding Season!

As I wait at home to head off to my third wedding of the weekend, I would say that wedding season is in full swing. So far I’ve played with a duo, a quartet, and now a trio. Since it is also baseball season, I can’t help but make the correlation to hitting for the cycle–a single, double, triple, and home run all in one game. Perhaps playing a wedding “cycle” would be solo, duo, trio, and quartet, all in one weekend? Has anyone done that? I think it would be worthy of a trophy, or at least some sort of ribbon or homemade certificate or banner (perhaps a la print shop from the mid-80’s).

Performing, Teaching

Intonation

2 Comments

I played for a friend today, who mainly suggested I work on my intonation. I suppose it all boils down to that…it’s funny, because unless you are really well trained, you don’t really notice intonation, but the more you focus on it, the more out of tune stuff sounds. So it’s a self fulfilling prophecy–the more you listen, the worse it sounds. But it seems that more drones are in my future, and more scales and arpeggios too, methinks. Always gotta try to be more in tune.

Let me say a few words about my pottery class. I started about a month ago, taking a class at Krueger’s Pottery in Webster Groves with a couple of friends. I am not good with my hands (odd, yet, not odd), but I’m getting better… Tonight was the first night I felt like I was making progress, and tonight was ALSO the first night I got to take something home! Doing a new skill makes me think about what my adult violin students are going through. It’s so easy to want to give up when something gets difficult, and it’s easy to disparage yourself when you don’t get something right away. It’s really hard to be patient and know that the skill you are learning just takes practice. As a kid, you didn’t expect to be able to do stuff right away, often it took years and that was okay, that was expected. As an adult, you can generally accomplish the tasks or skills you want, so a new skill is truly a new challenge. I think it’s great to challenge oneself in a new way, and pottery is turning into a nice creative outlet for me! I hope I can continue to challenge myself in new and creative ways in the future.