String Player Struggles

19 ~ Maine Music Ed Major ~ Cello,Violin, Bass, Uke ~ I make terrible music puns ~

[musicmajorblog]

Since every school is different, tracking your music school applications, pre-screens and auditions is essential!

[senfonikankara]

Kaligrafik Enstrümanlar - III

[bows-and-bridges]

me when my friend is approaching the car: *frantically turns off the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto and puts on Regular Teenage Music*

[soyouwanttoplaytheflute]

Spot the odd one out ;)

[bae-ssoon]

This would sound better on my instrument.

any musician listening to any piece ever (via b-assoon)

[bows-and-bridges]

Scales aren’t so scary...

It’s audition season and you’re probably prepping an etude, or polishing the finishing touches on a Bach or Mozart piece but you know what audition season also means? You gotta know your scales.

Ughhhh

I know I know, stop hitting me with your bow! Scales are boring, they’re repetitive, they’re Satan reincarnated but we gotta know them! They honestly do help you in the long run!

So how do we make scales less painful? There are lots of different techniques, and it’s up to you to find the best ones that work for you. I have a few tricks for practicing scales and if you have any others please submit! I want to spread to all musicians out there that we can make scales seem less scary!

 FOCUS: Don’t just “run through” your scales. Even the basic ones, take a tuner and take each note in slow whole notes. Match the pitch precisely and use a long, steady motion with your bow. Try and make the tone of each note sing like the gods have descended upon your practice room. Even with shifts, think about the sound of each pitch before moving your hand. If you can hear the pitch in your head first, you’re less likely to be out of tune. Take it slow and don’t get frustrated if it doesn’t work on the first try.

 Rhythm: This is the technique I use with my elementary students. Pick any old rhythm out of the air and play each note of the scale with that rhythm.Try simple rhythms first, then more on to more complex ones, ones that you generally struggles with. Then alternate rhythmic patterns for each note (i.e. triplets for one note, eighths the next, etc). Finally, go back to playing whole or half notes and focusing on tone. You’ll find the scale a lot easier to play now that you’ve worked on it in more complex ways.

 Randomize: (This is especially helpful the few weeks before an audition) When you audition, you have no idea what scales to judges are going to give you. Start practicing have random scales to rehearse every time you step into the practice room. Start by writing each scale you know well enough to play (or ones they will ask at the audition) on scraps of paper. That includes major, all the minors, chromatic, even some modes. Fold them up and put them into a jar. Each time you sit down to practice, take two out of the jar and those are the scales you will work on during that practice session.

 Quality, not Quantity: Make each practice session count. Focus on how well your tone, intonation or rhythm improved, not how many scales you ran through.

KEEP PRACTICING: You don’t improve overnight, or in one practice session. It takes constant work and attention to continue getting better. If you don’t want to hear it from me, hear it from world-renowned cellist: Pablo Casals.                   When Casals (then age 93) was asked why he continued to practice the cello three hours a day, he replied, “I’m beginning to notice some improvement.”

Keep practicing and break a leg at your audition! You can do this!

[bows-and-bridges]

Walking around a bookstore with no money:

Me: *stroking the books* I'll come back for you.

[bows-and-bridges]

me: *fucks up scale*

me: it was an abstract interpretation

[justyole]

Dear Cutie-Pie,

Recently, your mother and I were searching for an answer on Google. Halfway through entering the question, Google returned a list of the most popular searches in the world. Perched at the top of the list was “How to keep him interested.”

It startled me. I scanned several of the countless articles about how to be sexy and sexual, when to bring him a beer versus a sandwich, and the ways to make him feel smart and superior.

And I got angry.

Little One, it is not, has never been, and never will be your job to “keep him interested.”

Little One, your only task is to know deeply in your soul—in that unshakeable place that isn’t rattled by rejection and loss and ego—that you are worthy of interest. (If you can remember that everyone else is worthy of interest also, the battle of your life will be mostly won. But that is a letter for another day.)

If you can trust your worth in this way, you will be attractive in the most important sense of the word: you will attract a boy who is both capable of interest and who wants to spend his one life investing all of his interest in you.

Little One, I want to tell you about the boy who doesn’t need to be kept interested, because he knows you are interesting:

I don’t care if he puts his elbows on the dinner table—as long as he puts his eyes on the way your nose scrunches when you smile. And then can’t stop looking.

I don’t care if he can’t play a bit of golf with me—as long as he can play with the children you give him and revel in all the glorious and frustrating ways they are just like you.

I don’t care if he doesn’t follow his wallet—as long as he follows his heart and it always leads him back to you.

I don’t care if he is strong—as long as he gives you the space to exercise the strength that is in your heart.

I couldn’t care less how he votes—as long as he wakes up every morning and daily elects you to a place of honor in your home and a place of reverence in his heart.

I don’t care about the color of his skin—as long as he paints the canvas of your lives with brushstrokes of patience, and sacrifice, and vulnerability, and tenderness.

I don’t care if he was raised in this religion or that religion or no religion—as long as he was raised to value the sacred and to know every moment of life, and every moment of life with you, is deeply sacred.

In the end, Little One, if you stumble across a man like that and he and I have nothing else in common, we will have the most important thing in common:

You.

Because in the end, Little One, the only thing you should have to do to “keep him interested” is to be you.

Your eternally interested guy,

Daddy

Happy International Women’s Day

[firebraider]

When people in movies run directly away from the train / boulder / truck / etc instead of just like, taking two steps to the side of it

[feliszerda]

OH NO A GIGANTIC TREE FALLING OVER *runs away directly along its length*

[iguanamouth]

ugh i want to get really uncomfortably rich and then just. go around and anonymously donate huge amounts of money to people for things like HEY youre trying to move away from your abusive parents?? BAM 10 thousand mystery dollars oh whats that your dog needs surgery?? BAM paid for hey you cant afford to go to that con with your friends?? BAM better get your cosplay ready you fucking nerd

[classicalmusicconfessions]

[caffinatedstory]

In the Key of Chic Dress  by ModCloth

[speckledwithfreckles]

I reallllllly need this dress!

[leadingtone]

Paper sculpture of Beethoven conducting his Ninth, Tate Modern. Photo by ian boyd.

[ad3eline]

[housecatincarnate]

[musicalmelody22]

Fun Story: My director kept telling me and my tenor sax buddy to play softer. No matter what we did, it wasn’t soft enough for him. So getting frustrated, I told my buddy “Dont play this time. Just fake it” 

Our Band Director then informed us we sounded perfect. 

[fororchestra]

To my readers: “p” means quiet, “pp” means really quiet. I’ve never seen “pppp” before haha.

On the contrast, “f” means loud, and “ffff” probably means so loud you go unconscious.

[corruptbucky]

I had ffff in a piece once and my conductor told me to play as loudly as physically possible without falling off my chair…

[banavalope]

oh music

[justtkeepcalmm-deactivated20250]

Me and my trombone buddies had “ffff” and he sat next to me and played so hard that he fell out of his chair.

The lengths we go for music.

[fairiesandshitt]