I'm in love....

Guess who's coming to practice?
(read the above first!)

With a violin.

I can relate to this blog that Laurie Niles posted. My violin repairman (www.stringdokter.com) showed me this relatively new, whose creation was overseen by a skilled German maker. It was handmade, but "antiqued" to look old. It's a select model, and there aren't very many of them in existence. It's one of a kind :)

When I first saw it, I wasn't so sure I would like it. I relate to what Laurie posted - I only wanted to date this fiddle, and now it wants a marriage. A two thousand dollar marriage, not including a new bow. But I will find a way to be with this violin, whatever it may take.

Quotes

I had a lot of quotes saved in my computer, I thought I might move them here since they take up space.

"Immature love says: 'I love you because I need you.' Mature love says 'I need you because I love you.'" --Erich Fromm

"We loved with a love that was more than love." --Edgar Allan Poe

"In the end, everything is a gag." --Charlie Chaplin

"When you have seen as much of life as I have, you will not underestimate the power of obsessive love." --J.K. Rowling

"I'm all in favor of keeping dangerous weapons out of the hands of fools. Let's start with typewriters."-- Frank Lloyd Wright

"My advice to you is get married: if you find a good wife you'll be happy; if not, you'll become a philosopher." --Socrates

"You got to be careful if you don't know where you're going, because you might not get there." --Yogi Berra

"When you are in Love you can't fall asleep because reality is better than your dreams." -- Dr. Seuss

"Love is a promise, love is a souvenir, once given never forgotten, never let it disappear." --John Lennon

"We all live with the objective of being happy. Our lives are all different yet the same." --Anne Frank

"I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel." -- Maya Angelou

Love is like a beautiful flower which I may not touch, but whose fragrance makes the garden a place of delight just the same.
-- Helen Keller

"The most beautiful things in the world are not seen nor touched. They are felt with the heart." -- Helen Keller

" Lots of people want to ride with you in the limo, but what you want is someone who will take the bus with you when the limo breaks down." -- Oprah Winfrey

"You can kiss your family and friends good-bye and put miles between you, but at the same time you carry them with you in your heart, your mind, your stomach, because you do not just live in a world but a world lives in you." -- Frederick Buechner

"Only one person in a thousand is a bore, and he is interesting because he is one person in a thousand." --Harold Nicolson

"Hold every person close to your heart, you could wake up and realize they’re gone forever." --Unknown

"Love is everything it's cracked up to be. That's why people are so cynical about it...It really is worth fighting for, risking everything for. And the trouble is, if you don't risk everything, you risk even more." -- Erica Jong

“Love is like a violin. The music may stop now and then, but the strings remain forever.” --Unknown

“Irritability is immaturity of character. If you are subject to being cross and unpleasant with other for no apparent reason, you need to come face-to-face with the fact that you are thinking too much of yourself. After all, your feelings are not the most important things in this world.”

“Dream as if you’ll live forever, live as if you’ll die today.” -- James Dean

“Don’t wait until everything is just right. It will never be perfect. There will always be challenges, obstacles and less than perfect conditions. So what? Get started now. With each step you take, you will grow stronger and stronger, more and more skilled, more and more self-confident and more and more successful.” -- Mark Victor Hansen

“Few can foresee whither their road will lead them, till they come to its end.” -- JRR Tolkien

"Sometimes when you look back on a situation, you realize it wasn't all you thought it was. A beautiful girl walked into your life. You fell in love. Or did you? Maybe it was only a childish infatuation, or maybe just a brief moment of vanity." -Henry Bromel

Decorus Duo

My best friend Brianna and I have joined together to create "The Decorus Duo," a two-person ensemble aimed at playing for weddings, parties, and other small events. We are still working on our webpage so for info before it's done, you'll have to contact us.

You can visit our website at:
www.wix.com/decorusduo/thedecorusduo

Essential Characteristics for Music Teachers

Nancy Shankman: Essential Characteristics for Music Teachers

You have to be passionate about what you’re doing. You have to love children. You have to love music. You have to love bringing music to children. You have to be organized. You have to be well prepared. And you have to be able to take the good days with the bad days. Not every day is great, but sometimes when you have a really great day, it makes up for all the other days that weren’t so great.

And you know, it’s interesting, music teachers always have a chance to perform and they always have a chance to get the applause. Other teachers of other disciplines are sometimes resentful of that because all they have to worry about is whether their kids are going to test well on the math test. And they don’t get the kind of kudos that a music teacher does. So [for] the music teacher, it’s implicit in their operations in a school to include, to be as inclusive as they can of other teachers in working with their programs so that everyone gets the applause.

Preparation is a very important thing. Anybody that goes in there and wings it is not going to be very successful because students pick it up right away. So, a teacher has to be well prepared and a teacher has to know the music that they’re teaching. [It’s] very important. A teacher has to be sensitive to the needs and learning styles of the students in her class. And not everybody learns the same way. The actual classroom management piece is probably the most difficult thing for students to learn. Because while you can teach certain techniques, other things are just experience. The more you do it, the better you get at it.

And we try to send them to schools where the teachers they work with are masters of what they do, so that they have good role models. Then I also look for: Do they love it? Do the kids love them? Because if they’re going to do this for the rest of their lives, they better love it. I would hope that they come out of that student teaching experience, as most of them do, and say “oh I love it there. I love it there.” And if I hear that, then I know they’re going to be successful.

To be very honest I think you can teach it up to a point. But it’s something…you can learn classroom management, you can learn how to choose repertoire, you can learn how to write a lesson plan. But to teach someone to be passionate about something… you either got it or you don’t. And if a person doesn’t, and they really are having a hard time and they really don’t seem to be enjoying what they’re doing, I encourage them to look at another area, look somewhere else. Because they’re not going to be happy or successful. So why start out with something that you’re not going to want to do for the rest of your life?

I really think it’s a calling, because your day doesn’t end at three o’clock. And I’m not saying that other teachers’ days end at 3 o’clock. They have to take papers home, they have to grade them and so forth. But you have rehearsals after school, you work with individual students, and the older they get, you prepare them for auditions. It’s just not a nine to three job. And then if you’re a musician and you do your own music outside of school, it’s a full time profession. For the music teacher, students need individualized ensemble rehearsals after school, and need to go to performances and need to be exposed to the world of Arts outside of school.

In addition, music teachers themselves need to do music outside of school. It’s like a doctor who continually takes courses to be up to date on the latest techniques. A person who doesn’t practice his or her own music, loses something and loses something in their teaching. The more you are a musician, the better teacher you are.

- http://www.artistshousemusic.org/videos/essential+characteristics+for+a+music+teacher

Varnish.

Recently, I put a sticker in the shape of a heart on my shoulder and ended up sunburned like that.

I was thinking.

What if you could do that with violin varnish?

You could put an itty-bitty heart on the back, in perhaps the corner, and stain everywhere but the heart, getting as close as possible, leave it on while it dries, and clear coat polish over it.

Just a thought.

Antonio Stradivari

I haven't blogged in awhile. I guess that's the downside of having to be in three different places at once when there is only one of you. Every day since school got out I go to PE from 8-12, sometimes longer. On Tues/Thurs, as soon as that gets out I go to orchestra, where I should have been two hours prior. That is usually over at 12:30 and then I hang out for a bit, go home, eat, shower, and then I go help Mr. Powell with the 5th grade beginning orchestra from 3:30 to 6. After that, I finally get to relax and I'm usually so exhausted I fall asleep not long after that.

OK. Back to the real reason for this post.

Lately, I have been fascinated by violins from mainly the late 16th century and early 17th century. That was the time of Antonio Stradivari (1644-1737), who is considered to be the best violin-maker ever, beating Andrea Amati (1500's) and the Guarneri family (17/1800's) for quality. All three were Italian families from around the area of Cremona.

Make sure you don't get his last name mixed up with what he put on his makers tag, which was often printed or handwritten. Tags that are authentic read "Antonius Stradivarius Cremonesis Faciebet Anno (date)." That is latin. It's the maker, where it was made, and the date. His instruments are also often referred to as "strads."

During his lifetime, he made over 1,100 instruments. Only an estimated 630 of them survive, 512 of which are violins. But Stradivari didn't just make violins, he made everything. Violins, "viols" (or violas), the violoncello (or cello), and guitars. I'm not positive as to whether he made the double bass or if it was around at that time. Only one guitar is left in existence. Many of his instruments were ruined in floods, fires, accidents, at sea, and during WWII. Surviving instruments today sell for 2 million dollars or more.

Yo-Yo Ma, a celebrated cellist, plays the "Davidov" Stradivarius cello which is on loan to him. You can visit a Strad violin at the National Music Museum in South Dakota, where it is currently on exhibit.