From 5ish to 18ish, I loved my weekly violin lessons. I am so happy that my parents let me learn how to play young so everything sounded in tune and pretty later on. So grateful that my private instructors spoiled me with special opportunities. Not everyone gets to play the violin. Instuctors do not just let everyone be penciled in every week for years on end, my aunt wouldn’t have picked me as her special student to do privates with in NYC. Luckily the Cirmo’s loved me enough to put me in their schedule all the time and all those special oppurtunities happened. My aunt’s private students in NYC baisicailly all did the same things as me, except I never wanted to do NYSMA solos or play in all state, I just kind of picked my favorite songs to work on from ballets or plays, or dabbled in composing. I never really wanted in on all my aunts’ things down in NYC, she would actually come to Rochester a lot with students which I thought was funny. Privately playing things and working specifically with certain groups was sort of the way I was in that prime. I was more with the homeschooled musicians and did private things with them, our instructors would want all of us to meet eachother and be friends with collabs. I think my favorite thing ever was with a pianist friend, harpist friend, ballet dancer friend and me alone with a stage playing around recording their video auditions. I only did invitations in an uncompetitive way or played things well with private things. I wouldn’t really be competitive in music, but some people who actually did orchestra with their school district would never know who I was, because I did everything privately. I imagine that I would have felt like I did about school and club lacrosse with orchestra, if I had played with a district and in a private selection. It’s nice to have a group to do things like that with, where you’re all friends and there doesn’t really need to be a business side to playing together. One time my sister needed to hire a violinist for her event, and I was not home, and she was so disappointed the person she found did not sound like me when I play, it was really funny. My sister heard me in my bedroom practicing for years and thought everyone sounded nice playing the violin, and it was so funny she did not like the violinist she hired for her event, she missed me in my black concert dress playing things in tune. 🙊 Always dress for the role, it does not even need to be expensive just like nice looking. My sister was so upset the person she had to hire wasn’t wearing my special outfit with classical style pieces to play, it still makes me laugh. I used to make brackets around little sections and memorize them, count them out, play the entire sections together and then continue to group more and more sections, really spend a lot of time learning to do it correctly, then have my teacher tell me everything to fix for next time.
Playing a piece of music is sort of like running a marathon, your brain goes into a special form of focus which is really cool. My favorite thing to do later in life is sit on the edge of my bed, and play small parts of all my old favorite solos. It’s sort of like how some of my friends can pick up a guitar or saxophone and play something they enjoy, to unwind. Red wine, fireplaces and violins are always nice things to have. 🎻🍷😽
I think reading different cleffs of music, and mathematics are like knowing second languages like French or Latin. Love languages, language of music, body language. Everyone smiles in the same language! 😁
My biggest solo was Souvenir D'un Lieu Cher, god knows I could not have played it if this was my only violin. Maybe those pegs gave me patience, but like I think every violinist deserves a higher quality instrument with modern pegs to play important songs when there are events that matter. 😉 It was funny trying to salvage and play this instrument and then watch peers smashing more expensive instruments in music videos as if they were worthless, so many personalities… One violinist I came across told me that my instrument was firewood, and it made me sad, but at the same time this was almost a punishment to actually play difficult pieces with, my other violin is so much nicer. In a way it was sort of not okay to ask me to play this instrument, because it's not for intermediate or expert things that take hours and hours. So I had to like tell my aunt who gave it to me that I was not willing to use this to play my solos or in concert, and I was not ashamed, because if anyone could have given this violin an expert life I totally did, but after a while I suffered enough and could just use a nice one. There are times in life you deserve to have nice things, you can’t force someone to play a difficult piece on an instrument that’s not correct. My aunt would tell me she played it in NYC for her biggest events, but I do not believe her, because I know she totally had a nicer instrument for those events or she wouldn’t have gotten the part; she’s so bad. I would use my nicer one, then my aunt would come in town and say that my violin did not sound played, and I cannot believe she ever thought I would play on this instrument like it’s 1925 and I’m in the middle of nowhere… My instructor laughed uncontrollably when I brought it to class one time, we were dying laughing. A lot of companies actually give you an instrument to use for certain parts or special strings if you get in with an audition, so I imagine she never did more than practice on this thing! Schools lease instruments for you, companies give you theirs, you would only buy your own for personal pleasure, she never used this to play ever; liar liar pants on fire. It's like not okay I was expected to use this. Nevertheless, never tell someone their instrument is firewood, even Paganini could play on one string. 🎻 🔥
