violingirl

INTERESTED IN AMATEUR ORCHESTRAS

2010-12-20T13:12:00.000+00:00

I went on the internet to look for amateur orchestras. From what I can see, there isn't many and not many near where I live. I didn't realise how dire it was until I wanted to join one. The orchestras I did look at sounded quite good but for one thing, most of these orchestras want you to have a Grade 5+ to even join. How awful is that?? I have to wait until I've done my Grade 5+ before I could even think about joining an orchestra. There are things I want to know and learn from an orchestra now, but I have to wait until Grade 5+ before I can learn and know. Why isn't there any orchestras or playing groups for beginners like me? Beginners who can learn about orchestras at the beginner's stage. I did send emails to a couple of orchestras that sounded interesting, so now I wait for a reply. They didn't specify a Grade, so there could be hope for me.

I got a reply from the orchestras that I emailed. They were nice, polite and encouraging. They said that Grade 5+ was preferred, but not essential. One of the orchestras said that with my Grade 1, I could join second strings. That's not bad. There are people out there who are willing to help you. If I wanted to take up their offers at my level, then I could. This is quite exciting really. When I have more experience and confidence, I'll go and have a look. At least I don't have to wait until I've reached Grade 5+.

I have given long thought to joining an orchestra. I've decided to give myself 6 months to practice and become more confident and proficient in playing the violin. I want to be a bit more accurate in my finger positioning before I join up. I want to be able to read music properly when I play with an orchestra even if they are amateur. That will take me up until June. The weather should be much warmer and the evenings lighter for longer.

So now, I have a new goal. I have given myself 6 months to improve my violin playing and join an orchestra. I will try my hardest to achieve this goal. I may go as far as practising twice a day. I hope it won't be a hardship for me, I love playing the violin.

I've been thinking. If I practice twice a day, I may be able to join the orchestra earlier than June. Waiting six months sounds like an excuse to me. I suppose I'm afraid that I won't be good enough. I'll never know unless I join. So, I'm hoping to start twice a day practice this week. I'm going to try to get up early to practice. By the time my usual practice time comes around, I should be rested enough to be able to practice again. I don't know how this will turn out, but I'll give it a go.

VIOLINGIRL - VIOLIN PRACTICE

2010-12-10T13:05:00.000+00:00

Violin practice is going well. I don't sound as good as I would like, but it's going well.

As I've written before, I've started to practice my Grade 1. At my last lesson, Alla has started me on my sight reading. While working on the sight reading, I've come to realise that to sight read, your eyes have to stay on the pages you are reading. At the moment, I have to see where I place my fingers when I play, to make sure I place my fingers in the right position. Now, I have to place my fingers without looking, so that I can concentrate on sight reading. Not looking at my fingers is harder then I thought. But, I'm practising and I know that with practice, I can do it. One day, I might even try it with my eyes closed.

It's funny how a person can look for excuses not to practice when people can't be bothered to practice. I tried to justify today about not practising. I've been good, I've practised every day for the last three weeks and I wanted to give myself a day off. One day couldn't hurt, but I started to feel bad. I've done so well, and so many things I'm practising is coming together. I can't stop now. So, I practised. To be the violinist I want to be, I practised. I didn't do my violin exercises, I'll do them tomorrow. I practised my Grade pieces and some tunes from my Abracadabra book. I practised for an hour. It's better than nothing at all. I'm glad I practised. Quite frankly, I look forward to practising.

I have been reading some blogs and articles about playing the violin. It was good to read that I'm not the only one who has difficulty playing the violin. Some people even had the same problems I have. It was also encouraging. I felt that if they could overcome their difficulties, then so can I. It made me feel good about my playing. I realised that taking a day off from practice wasn't a bad thing. I don't have to feel guilty. I look forward to practice with vigor.

I had a good lesson with Alla today. She is really impressed and happy with my progress. She said she could see things coming together, it's getting smoother. The right decision was made when I decided to learn to position my fingers without looking at what I was doing so that I could conentrate on reading the music. I'm so happy. I do seek her approval. I'm thinking of practising twice a day, one and a half hours at a time, which makes it 3hrs a day of practice. I don't know if I'll do that every day as I have other things to do. But it's only a thought.

When I practised one and half hours a day, it was solely to improve. I enjoyed playing, but the need to improve was greater. The more I practised, the playing improved. The more the playing improved, the more I wanted to practice.

RAMBLINGS OF A MAD VIOLINIST

2010-12-04T01:33:00.000+00:00

After writing down my thoughts about my violin playing the other day, I did my practice as usual. I had to concentrate a bit harder, but I can see what my problem was with my bowing. It's all in the wrist action. The way you move your wrist will then enable you to keep your bow on the strings. Keeping strings on the bow should give you less squeaks. The movement of the wrists is difficult at the moment, but with practice it will get better. After trying it today, I was a lot happier. My wrists started to ache a bit and it made me realise that it was working, may be I am doing it right. I am now looking forward to my next practice session, so I can practice that movement some more. With practice, I can get it the way it should be.

Another day, another practice and it wasn't good. One thing after another goes wrong. Firstly, my violin is out of tune. I've tried tuning it, but I'm not good at tuning. I may have to wait for my next lesson and have Alla tune it for me. I've been practising my wrist movement and I feel like I've gone back to the beginning when I first started learning to play. I am so depressed, I'll never get this right. I didn't finish my practice, my violin doesn't sound right and my wrist movement needs work. I have to keep working on it because I want to play properly with all my bad habits ironed out.

The more I learn about the violin and how to play,the more respect I have for people who play the violin. It really isn't easy.

Is it natural to have doubts on your ability to play the violin? Am I practising too much and should I take a break?

I had a violin lesson and my teacher, Alla, made me feel better. The problem with me, is that I am harder on myself then my teacher is with me. With practice, I'm improving and I have now started sight reading. I'm happy with that because sight reading is a little difficult for me. Hopefully, the sight reading exercises will help me improve. Alla said I need to have confidence in the way I play. I need to be less afraid of my violin and more in control.

This week, Alla has started to teach me how to tune my violin. She is going to get me to tune my violin at the beginning of every lesson. She use to do it before and my violin only got tuned once a week. I'm happy about that as I need to know how to tune a violin. When my violin went out of tune, Alla wasn't around and I didn't know what to do. Now, I do.

Every week, I start to understand more and more about the violin. The more difficult it gets, the more understanding I need. With Alla's help, I understand.

WHAT IS MY PROBLEM???

2010-11-22T23:17:00.000+00:00

I am so frustrated with my violin practice at the moment. It seems like nothing is going right with it. I like the violin and I enjoy practising, but I'm still not quite happy. I'm having problems with my bowing. I can play a piece of music first time and it sounds okay. I play it a couple more times and the strings start to squeak. I don't understand. Is it because I'm not holding down my strings properly? I also have the problem of not having the whole bow on my strings. Is that a problem also? I just don't know. The fingering on my left hand has improved, but I still think it's a problem. Sometimes my fingers don't move quick enough. I have finger exercises, but I think I'm going to need some more.

I have so much to practice at the moment. That's not a problem really. My practice time has increased for half an hour extra because of the exercises I do, to help with my playing.

May be, I want to improve too much, too quickly. Is that my problem? At the moment, I am practising for my Grade 1, but I won't be taking it any time soon. I don't feel happy or comfortable yet to be able to take it. I am also learning new songs from my Abracadabra Book 1, which isn't easy. The further I go in the book, the harder the music and the longer it takes me to learn the tunes. I only have a week to show some sort of improvement before my next lesson and I worry that haven't improved at all in a week. I don't like letting me down, but I hate letting Alla down even more. Alla is my teacher and I think she's great and she has brought me so far, but I'm afraid I won't be able to fulfil my goal of playing the violin properly. I have a goal of playing the 'Four Seasons' in it's entirety. There is also another piece of music that I totally love and want to play, but I can't remember what it's called at the moment. I know I've achieved my goal when I can play those two pieces of music.

I have to perservere with this. May be there is a barrier I need to push past to get through to the other side. I don't know where this point is, but I'll get there. I will push past the pain barrier and get there.

I don't have a musical background. I am the only person in my family who has ever tried to play a musical instrument to this level. Because I don't have a musical background, I have had to learn to read music which I don't find easy. Sometimes, it takes me a while to remember what a note is and that can be a hinderance too. Am I moving too fast? Am I holding myself back from fear? I know that Alla wouldn't move me on if she didn't think I was ready, but do I think I'm ready? I want this so much, but it's just not working the way I want it too.

I will keep going. It's the only thing in my life that means anything and I don't ever want to give up. Please God, give me strength.

THE ASPIRATIONS OF A CLASSICAL VIOLINIST

2010-11-21T16:11:00.000+00:00

A few years ago, I thought I would learn to play the piano as it was, at the time, my favourite musical instrument. The fascination for the piano lasted for a few months before I got bored. I don't know if it was because my teacher, Paul, was used to teaching kids and not adults and lessons with him were too slow progress for me. Or whether the piano wasn't as interesting as I thought. Needless to say, I gave up the piano pretty quickly.

I don't know what possessed me, but in January 2010, I started having violin lessons. Why oh why, did I think it would be easy? Why or why, did I think it would be a doddle?

How hard could a four stringed instrument be? You have your basic GDAE notes, easy peasy. But as the weeks went by, it got harder and harder. The finger movement got more difficult. There were times I wanted to give up. Not because it was getting difficult, but because it didn't sound like it was getting better. I perservered because I love the violin and I can hear the improvement now. I don't think I could ever be a concert violinist, but I would like to see how far I can get.

After 10 months of intense practice, I am now learning and practising to take my Grade 1 in violin. When I started learining, I never thought I would get to this stage that quickly. I have worked hard though and I try to practice every day. The length of time I practice has gone from 15 minutes to an hour and a half, just because I enjoy it so much.

My violin teacher, Alla, is very good. She teaches a lot of children, but she knows how to teach adults as well. I personally believe she's a gift from God. She has a music school in West Wickham called West Wickham Music School. The school teaches violin, piano, guitar (just added recently) and singing. Alla encourages me, she teaches me and makes me believe that I can learn.

Learning to play the violin has been one of the best things I have done so far. I feel confident in the fact that I can do this. I recommend anyone to take a chance and do something they have always wanted to do. I don't regret it, hopefully, you won't either. Take the chance.

FIRST TIME BLOGGER

2010-11-16T01:00:00.000+00:00

Hello,

I am writing my first ever blog.

After watching an episode of 'Ugly Betty', I decided I wanted to write a blog. I don't really know why, except for the fact I wanted to be a writer in the past.

I hear blogs are quite popular and I searched on the web for information. They are a lot more popular then I thought. Not sure it that's a good thing or a bad thing as there are so many sites dedicated to blogs.

Now I have set up my blog page, my mind's a blank. I have absolutely no idea what to write in the future. Do I just write a daily diary or do I want to write something more profound? Does anyone really want to know what I do or think about in my day? Well, I'll find out when I look on my blog page and see if anyone has read my ramblings of a mad woman. I suppose I could write about learning to play the violin, which I totally love. But that's another story for another day.

This is it for now and I say adios as it's past my bedtime and I'm getting tired. I have enjoyed writing and I hope you enjoy my future ramblings.

I would like people to read my blog. It may show that I have something decent to Say. I'm not bothered if people do not read my ramblings as long as I'm happy with them. Although, I will make the effort to make them entertaining.

Bye for now and I hope to see you again soon.