2nd Day Post

Okay, so yesterday really sucked. It was like a black hole, it sucked so much.
Don't believe me? Here's picture proof.










Now, my big question is, how can people cause this and live with themselves? I spent the entire day yesterday crying because of the thoughtless actions of others. How can people do this? Why? How did society become so heartless that they can crush me like this and not even care afterwards?
Needless to say, I'm switching classes. I can't take it anymore. My whole class treats me like the biggest wart on the foot of society and I've had enough. You can only take so much dirt before you begin to be buried and I'm not taking anymore of their mud-slinging.
Why am I whining? Well, I want to tell someone. I want to get my words out before I got nuts. I've been treated like this my WHOLE life. (Except for 2nd and 3rd grade, I can't remember much about Kindergarten or 1st grade) I've snapped, I want to get even. I know this is wrong, but I don't want to passively stand to the side and let them throw dirt at me.
I guess Taylor Swift's song Mean comes in to play now, that one line in the second verse, "I bet you got pushed around, somebody made you cold, but the cycle ends right now, you can't lead me down that road." (Taylor Swift on her album Speak Now)
I'm standing up for myself, I'm not turning the cold shoulder on them, if they need to talk to someone I'm there. I'm just grabbing my shield and blocking their dirt. No more mud in my mouth. They're not worth it.
That's all.
Think twice about what you say and what you do. You could cause someone to look like I did yesterday. You won't be proud of what you've done, I can promise you that.

I'm Sorry, the Cirlce of WHAT?

So, yesterday I learned about the circle of fifths, and it can just about blow your brain to bits if you have no idea what you're looking at. I didn't. I looked up a bunch of things online and couldn't find anything that didn't either blow my brain apart or make me laugh.

It looks confusing, but all you need to remember is that with a # (sharp) all you have to do is go to the last sharp and then go up one and that's the key it's in. With a b (flat) go to the final flat and go down one.
Amy, my violin teacher explain it like this, it's like a car tire, to make it go flat you need to let the air out, or you go down. But you can't make it go sharp like with a knife, or you'll get a flat.
Just remember it like this, # go up b go down. Like tuning.
Hope I am making some kind of sense here.  :)
At least I know what the key of G looks like :)
Oh and the picture is my own, you can copy it and look at it if you like. I'm not sure where it was printed off from, I just took a picture of the cheat sheet.
http://www.musictheory.net/exercises
Here's a great site to learn how to do stuff with music.
Enjoy :)

Another Monday to Carp Diem

Isn't this just how our lives go? We survive a week, get to Friday only to have another Monday looming on the horizon? Yuck.
I'm getting kind of sick of not having anything to look forward to. So I'll give you something, maybe. :) I'm going to be making a series of video diaries on how to write and publish a book, I'm not an expert on how to do this, but after 5 years worth of writing experience under my belt, well, I've got some tips you may enjoy. Especially since I made the first video at 10:00 pm after I had a big bowl of ice cream and watched a hilarious Mythbusters episode and I couldn't stop laughing, or think up a cool beginning so, watch out for your fridge, it may secretly be plotting to get away from you.
Oh and carp diem! (hope I spelled that right!)
Sieze the day.

Friday

I am so happy it's Friday. It's been a tough week. :(
I don't have much to say other than I've managed to get over the dullness of writing seemingly endless chapters that don't seem to matter in my book (Entangled 2nd book in the Twisted series) currently I've got a cute boy who's terrified for his life, a wraith running a rampage and another wraith ready to start popping heads off shoulders and oh! I just killed off the king (sorry King Wallace, but you wouldn't listen anyway) okay quite technically I didn't kill him, the spy did (I'm not giving names, of the spies, that will ruin the surprise!) My top bad guy Amaarzar is really making a mess of things. Hopefully my arsenal of mismatched good guys will come to the rescue, provided they can ever get their act together and reunite. :) It all ends happily...at the end of the third book. My characters still have a while to go before their 'happily ever after.'
As for my violin playing...well, I'm on week three of Minuet #1. What's wrong with it? Nothing really, I'm just perfecting it. Next time I have a lesson, I'm killing it. I think I'll put it out of the book once it's passed off and burn it. And yesterday I attempted to play Don't Forget by Demi Lovato with the actual audio of her singing. Yow. I could hardly keep up, then I tried to play The Story of Us by Taylor Swift and I really couldn't keep up!
Long story short, I need more practice. :)

Two Days

Two days in a row of posting, I have nothing new to report.
Except that I'm marveling in the joys of having a sister. Ah. I had a bad day yesterday (like a really bad, nothing is good, nothing CAN go good kind of a day) and my sister (the guitar playing one) cheered me up.
She also pointed out several things about my characters that you think I'd notice considering I work with them on a daily basis, but I never do until much later and my sister gets a nice laugh over my stupidity.

Combining

Sorry, day late, but I had yesterday off and decided to take advantage of it. :)
Anyway, my older sister plays the guitar, and we learned, that with some careful picking and a lot of foot stopping to keep in rhythm, we can combine the violin and the guitar together and it actually sounds pretty cool, it got my other sibling (who feels no fondness for my violin at ALL) to come in and say it sounded cool.
Still working on swooping and vibrato, and I have managed to practice enough that playing double strings isn't too painful anymore. It used to be so bad, I'd stand there and laugh as I attempted to play it. Bile Them Cabbage Down is actually sounding okay with double strings, I'm not crazy about standing my fingers on end to get the A string and the E string, see, I cut my fingernails too short and...well, we all know the pain of where that story is going. :)

Try

Sad story.
I spent the whole week practicing Minuet #1 wrong. Ouch. It's the first time I haven't passed off a song on my violin, but I suppose I couldn't get away with it now, my practiced wrong version sounded awful. But on the upside, I learned how to swoop and it's a lot of fun, (swooping is purposefully starting out on the wrong note below the one you mean to hit and then swinging your finger up to the right note, it sounds really cool!) and I managed to memorize an entire five page song in just three (maybe two) days. Now I need to work on perfecting it. :)
Oh, another sad story, I finally updated my iPod and my technological brother told me to back it up, but I figured I didn't have anything that I needed to back up. Mistake. I hadn't backed up my pictures, they're gone now. :( Fortunately, the ones I took on Christmas were safe, I would've been really sad to loose them.
I also learned today that doubt is a useless thing. It inhibits, it destroys, it stops great ideas from becoming real. What do we need with doubt? It's useless, and what do we normally with useless things? We trash them, forget doubt and get up and try.
The song in the video below is P!nk, Try, I found this cover last night and I've been addicted to it, I'd like to share it :)
Get up and try, what's stopping you besides you?

Remember, I'm not claiming rights to this video, it belongs to Nathan Hutson, (the violin player) here's his YouTube channel
http://www.youtube.com/user/Violin4Real

Because I Felt Like It

Hey! Top of the morning, I can barely stay awake :)
Anyway, I wrote an awesome poem and I feel like sharing it. It's a satirical poem addressing something I'd like to change, guess what it is as you read it. No, I'm not trying to be mean, it's just my feelings spilling onto this page. Sadly I've felt like this for most of my childhood and teenage years.

Oh how I hate you

Let me count the words

One, two, three, forty-two

I despise you from head to toe

From your witty voice, that grinds like ice

To you perfect skinny legs, don’t you know?

How I hate the way you laugh like you can’t see

How much you’re really hurting me

Your voice is like an anvil

Pounding on my ears

Your smile is like vat of fish guts

It can cause the cracks of many mirrors

I hate how everyone adores you

Ignores me

I’m different, I know

I don’t care about the things you do

I don’t care about school, boys, or who

Sung that song or this one

My likes are different, alienating

I am like a creature from under the ground to you

A strange thing, that titters, writhes, and moans

Twists, gasps, chokes and groans

You can’t see past the weirdness to what is really there

You can’t see past the frizzy red hair

Your fakeness has caused me to vomit over the abhor

I can’t take it anymore!

 Yes it’s true

There isn’t anything alive that I hate more than you

If I am an alien far from space

That is fine with me, honest

As long as my planet is far away from beings of your race

 Here's to treating people, no matter how strange they may seem, like you would treat your best friend. I've been on the brunt end of the "You're strange, I'm going to avoid you because of it" for most of my life. I can't lie, it hurts like a punch to the gut to be there. I've spent so many nights bawling over how much it hurts, I should have drowned. :) I'm not professing that I'm perfect at treating people as I would my best friend, but I'm at least going to try. Really, all it takes is a true smile, a real question with your heart behind it, and voila! You great person, you just made some one's day! You just saved someone from an endless night of bitter tears!

PS, the poem is mine. I wrote it for an English assignment and liked it so much I decided to share it.

Again, I don't mean to be a jerk, I hate the shallowness that people treat me with, I'd like to change THAT.

:)

There, there's a smile from me to you. Hope it makes your day. :)

Got a New Love

Yes, as the post title says, I've fallen in love. But with a type of music, not person. I started listening to Celtic music and it wound a Celtic knot around my heart and won't let go. Naturally after such an event a craving will occur, and what is that craving? I want to learn how to play it on my violin.
Sadly I'm about as far away from Ireland and Scotland as a person could get, in the middle of a desert no doubt, but I have no lack of Irish heritage, and I figure that if I'm going to be blessed with lovely Irish hair (red, thick and curly, thanks) I may as well learn to play something from my Irish heritage. The biggest problem is finding this music, it's difficult to find it, even on YouTube! I've looked through MusicNotes (great place, by the way, if you've never looked there) but I can't find any Irish fiddling, and I, (he, he) have fallen in love with fiddling as well. There's something positively thrilling about playing a hundred miles an hour, granted, my fingers are slipping all the time, but still!
Oh, yes, and I've learned how to slur! I'm horrible at it, but I can do it! Loads more practice and I may finally get a video worth watching on YouTube. I'm kind of lazy with my YouTube channel :)

Moving Up

Happy news!
I'm using my whole bow on the violin now! I feel so awesome! Granted, I'm so used to only using half of it, that it's difficult to remember that I can use the whole thing now. Yay :)
I'm also fiddling, (with the violin) and I'm amazed at how quickly I was able to memorize the songs in the fiddling books, they're longer than the Suzuki ones!
Another bit of joyous news, I'm about four (maybe five) songs from moving to Suzuki book 2 and that means I can get rid of the Twinkle Medleys, I kind of hate them now. Twinkle Twinkle Little Star is only cool until after the fifth time you play it. After that, you get kind of sick of that diamond in the sky.

Practice Makes Perfect, and If Not, It Sure Passes Time

I've been working like a madwoman on trying to write the second book of my series, and OUCH, it's making my brain hurt. It's like I can't keep the humor going, the first book is full of hilarious scenes that make me laugh out loud, but in the second one, I can't even seem to bring out a single giggle. That snarky little audience behind me (i.e. the audience in my head) keeps telling me I'm doing it wrong, I should restart, or give up, that sentence is wrong, the characters are likable, it makes me want to scream and bash my head into my keyboard. But I think I shall resist, I think my keyboard is older than my house, and it's had at least eleven years worth of greasy fingers tapping across it, slamming my face into it would only yield a face full of zits for the snarky voice to make fun of.
How do you get rid of this little voice? I thought I had it smashed, but it came back (much to my dismay, I didn't know it could come back in a smashed garbage can form) and has been nitpicking me to death. The saddest part is, it's me, I can't get my inner editor to shut and lock its lips long enough to write. It's driving me CRAZY.
Oh, but on the upside, I managed to memorize Etude, (Suzuki song) and I'm moving through the first book of Suzuki pretty quickly, I only started three months ago, (LONG three months.) I'm really happy with my progress, especially now that I'm not seeing it as my downfall that other violinists are better than me, I've got ninety days worth of practice, they've had years, so lessons learned, I need to practice on stopping those nasty thoughts that tell me I'm not good enough. Who says I'm not good enough eh? Well, introduce me to them so I can smack them upside the head. :)
Final thought of the day, I'm fascinated (and dearly in love) with horses, I find it truly amazing the way they organize themselves in pecking order and aren't mean about it. I'm hoping to lease a horse soon and I hope I can learn to be as progressive a leader to this horse as possible. What does this have to do with anything mentioned above? Well...nothing, it's just like everything else, it's going to take practice and you can only go forward if you're willing to take a few steps backwards.

Enjoy the cyclops smiley
0)

Slurring

So, after memorizing the Story of US, I thought I'd move up in the ranks of violinists who know more than one song. I decided to go with Narnia, a song very accurately called, Narnian Lullaby. Fairly easy to sight read, fairly easy to play, until this brilliant voice inside my head said, "Hey, the person on YouTube was slurring! I think I'll try it!"
I learned two very important things,
1. I am not that person on YouTube
2. I should learn how to slur properly before actually doing it
Lessons learned, I decided to just stick on working with vibrato.
I am also learning a good deal about writing, I have been having issues with my bad guy, Amaarzar (fear the name!!!) he is supposed to be the big bad guy behind all the schemes, but for some reason I can't make him seem terrifying. There's a snarky little voice inside my head telling me I'm doing it all wrong, maybe I don't WANT to make him seem terrifying at first, maybe at first he should look like a pacifist until the truth is revealed, he's the main bad guy. Isn't that how evil rolls? The first appearance is mortifying (Amaarzar is a wraith, thing ringwraiths, with an eviler twist, naturally, seeing him at first is SCARY!) but once he pacifies you, you don't see that anymore because he has you in a trap and you're comfortable until he springs the latch on that trap and you're stuck.
Hmm, something to think on.
Kind of like one of my old bad guys, the Relentless Shadow, I guess I've got to go back to the old if I want Amaarzar to stick out among bad guys.
Sigh.
:)

Look mom! I can vibrato!

So, after about three months worth of rubbing my fingers on the strings, and then wiggling my wrist and feeling like an idiot while I do it has paid off! I can vibrato, very badly! But I can vibrato! I watched a YouTube video on how to do vibrato and in it the lady said that you should practice whenever you have a long note to hold, so I did, and what did the result behold? I can do it! (I think) Okay, so I still have a ways to go to be able to do it correctly, or for a long time, but at least I can do it, and YOW, it makes your arm sore while you practice doing it. Another year and I hope I'll have it down. :)
I also discovered that by learning how to play The Story of Us by Taylor Swift, my hour worth of practice goes a lot faster and is more fun than before. It helps if you play something you're passionate about.
Yeah, that's about all I have to say, practice makes good playing. It takes time to become good at something and even longer to master it, I'm still working on mastering the art of writing books, everyday (mostly) I'm surprised by what happens. I'm looking forward to adding Nova, (think big powerful black shire horse) back into the story. He belongs to the Secret Keeper and I'm totally in love with this horse. (Oh, the Secret Keeper is one of my main characters, he's a wraith so he's REALLY difficult to work with, he kind of makes the Witch King from LOTR look sane.)
:)