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.)
:)