musical nerdiness

~you can't handel my dank music memes~

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update

I started this blog in the ninth grade and now I’m about to enter the last year of my undergrad in college. I’ve made nearly 8000 posts and quite honestly feel like I don’t have too much left to post and certainly don’t have the time to post frequently anymore. so for those of you who were around a few years ago and are still lurking, I thought you might want to hear what I’ve been up to and what I plan on doing in the future, because I probably won’t be talking much about it on here

I’m getting a bachelors in violin performance and broad area music education. I managed to fit that into three years and I’ll most likely be graduating next year. so in this upcoming year, I’ll be doing lots of classroom observations, student-teaching, practicing a ton, reading a ton of books about education and different philosophies and methods, and preparing for job interviews

I gave my junior violin recital a bit over a month ago (played the amy beach violin sonata and summerland by william grant still), which was cool, and I’ll have my senior recital in a year (probably going to play lots of pieces based on folk music)

after I graduate, I’m hoping I can become a public school music teacher! my hope is that I can move into an apartment with the clarinet guy I’ve been dating for years and teach full-time. there’s a big shortage of elementary music teachers in my state, so that might be what I end up doing for a while. or I might really love it and stick with it. but with the broad area degree, I can teach band, orchestra, choir, or whatever else comes my way, which is really exciting

I’m moving into a campus apartment with a musician friend in a few months and I’ll have this giant cat that’s part maine coon and hopefully my little pet crab that I accidentally kidnapped from the beach two weeks ago will still be alive

I’ve been focusing a lot lately on learning to play clarinet and sing, and both are actually going surprisingly well. I’ll have a voice student next month and I’ve spent this month really making sure my vocal knowledge and teaching techniques are solid

I went busking for the first time a few days ago, which was a little strange at first but ultimately felt super liberating. played lots of fiddle tunes while little kids came by and danced. made $15. think I’ll do that a few more times this summer. in this past year, I’ve become much more comfortable with performing in front of other people and I’m really excited to do more in the future

so that’s kind of what’s going on in my life lately. I’ve been going outside a lot and trying to learn lots of things unrelated to music, which I think is really good for me. this post is just sort of to let anyone who remembers me making music memes a few years ago know that I’m on my way to becoming a full-time music teacher. I used to post a lot about how upset I was with some of the apathetic music teachers I had throughout my schooling, and my goal is to help my future students find a passion and appreciation for music. I’m really happy that there’s been a community here for years where I could share some of the joys (and frustrations) of being a musician with you all, and I learned a lot from it, but it’s getting close to being time for me to move onto something else. won’t be deleting my blog, though, because I think it’s a really cool time capsule of my musical and life progress and I’m happy to have it

tldr: I’m doing well, I’m going to be a music teacher, and I won’t be posting too frequently from now on. I really enjoy my time on here and I’m happy to see that so many people have enjoyed my content over the years. I hope you all are doing well and still enjoying music

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read as flat ass clef

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me: I am very busy and frequently stressed and need some time to myself :( me the instant I get any amount of free time: hmmm this online masters degree program looks interesting

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music history book: this instrument fell out of favor in the late 18th century because it was incredibly cumbersome, required four people to play, and had a tone nearly indistinguishable from that of a constipated whale. its successor was the tuba.

my dumb instrument-collecting ass: hmmmm I wonder if I can find one on ebay

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anyway what I’m saying is I bought a lira da braccio

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at the music camp I’m volunteering at, the violin coaches are really good. even as a volunteer, I’m learning a lot during sectionals. for example, I learned that there’s a camp for orchestra teachers and on the last day they make a big bonfire and burn instruments that are beyond repair and all of the orchestra teachers stand around it and sing “the swan” by camille saint saens

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wanted to add that I am now a music teacher and have attended this camp a couple of times. ah, the circle of life

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today I started teaching orchestra full-time in a high school and getting paid for it

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is anyone else’s tumblr app playing circus music when it opens?

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throwback to when I encountered this question on my midterm for the class where we learn how to write tests

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this is a really terrible picture but I attended the midwest clinic and in one of the sessions I went to the speaker featured a meme that I made like 6 years ago and it was one of the proudest moments of my life to have my meme presented to and enjoyed by a room full of music educators

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Hey, I found this blog while looking for information on the erhu. As someone who plays the erhu, do you think it would be possible for me to play the erhu with long nails? Specifically the nails on my left hand are about 1 and 1/2 cm or about 0.59 of an inch.

no, you should cut your nails

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if I hear another freshman music major who insists on playing the first few measures of the chopin minute waltz in a practice room over and over for an hour because they can’t play anything else on piano I’ll have no choice but to become violent

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was teaching a beginning piano student the lines of the treble clef by using “Ernie Gave Bert Dog Food” and she didn’t get the reference and her mom said to me “yeah, I think that was more our time” and that interaction doubly aged me

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just went busking and some guy said he wanted to give me $5 for my fiddle playing but he had no cash so he offered me a handful of weed

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so this is a sample question from the educator’s skills test that teacher candidates have to take in my state, and while I know that Eb and D# are enharmonic, no musician would look at that note and say “that’s a D# :)”

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not sure I would call tuning to concert pitch a “technique” but okay

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haven’t spoken to a composer that begins writing a piece by thinking “this will be in sonata form with an introduction, a subdominant recapitulation, and a lengthy coda” it’s usually something along the lines of “huh, that sounds cool, I should write that down and see where it goes” who wrote these questions I’ll hurt them

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so this is a sample question from the educator’s skills test that teacher candidates have to take in my state, and while I know that Eb and D# are enharmonic, no musician would look at that note and say “that’s a D# :)”

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not sure I would call tuning to concert pitch a “technique” but okay

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so this is a sample question from the educator’s skills test that teacher candidates have to take in my state, and while I know that Eb and D# are enharmonic, no musician would look at that note and say “that’s a D# :)”

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I just played clarinet in band for the first time ever and wow. I already don’t like the brass