melody

[phineasjones]

i just got really tired of playing with my lj format and started zoning out and i was thinking about the orchestra rehearsal the other night and how i had been wondering if my violin skillz would have been up to their standard... so this led me to take the old girl out of the closet and give it a whirl. so weird, and good. my conclusion was that i could play the mozart with a few weeks of practice.

of course, i couldn't stop there, out came the bach partitas. the fact that i can still make something out of the prelude of partita no. 3 is probably what keeps me from giving away the violin. (that along with nostalgic love and adoration). i'm not saying it sounds good, just that i can still manage the triple string crossing and such... and my fingers more or less remember where to go. that and the allemande of partita no. 2 kept me busy for a while. i think bach is key - brilliant musicians can make bach sound astoundingly gorgeous but even mediocre musicians have a hard time making him sound really bad.

when i took out the violin, the g string was broken. i had an old one that i put in its place. this strikes fear in my heart. i'm always convinced the thing will snap and whip me in the face. hasn't happened yet. but it could!

[/ramble]

Comments

ex-instrumentalist ramble

[anabelwumpkins.livejournal.com]

i have a really similar relationship with my old oboe, especially what you said about the ol' muscle-memory being able to play some of the old repertoire. but it gets more depressing as the reeds get more and more out of date... with the way things are going, the poor thing is going to be sold for moving-money in the near future. my parents will be disappointed. but they haven't heard what it sounds like.

Re: ex-instrumentalist ramble

[phineasjones.livejournal.com]

yeah. your reeds = my strings. they're totally out of true. i don't think i could ever sell it. ::clutches:: it was too big a part of my life for a while. no matter how bad i sound now (and it's pretty bad).

and you know, i don't feel like those people who say things like, 'i wish i had never given up those piano lessons.' because... well, i made a choice. and even though i ended up going into music, violin wasn't it for me. and it's ok if, at 17, i just sort of let it go. it wasn't meant to be. i didn't want to play 5 hours a day like my teacher wanted me to. just wasn't me. yeah. i miss it in some ways, miss orchestras and ensembles sometimes... but i am not a violinist and i don't really regret giving it up.

sorry... this has been in my head since yesterday.

btw, i <3 oboe. we can play bad violin/oboe duets someday. :)

Re: ex-instrumentalist ramble

[anabelwumpkins.livejournal.com]

yep. the teachers pretty much said you can be either a singer or a pianist or an oboist, but you can't do all three and away went the oboe and the piano was shifted to the back burner (which i find to be an extraordinarily funny mental picture right now!!) and they both stopped coming out to play after sophomore year of college. and of course, i'll probably never sell my oboe, either. i must have been in a weird mood when i wrote that. bad oboe/violin duets sound fun.

hee... seems there's a lot of pent-up ramble on this subject!