My Joy

Hello and welcome to my music blog! Here I will be posting everything music. I love music, you could say that I'm obsessed. I fell in love. With the violin. When most people think of the violin, they think of classical music and composers such as Bach and Handel. To me, violin or fiddle, rather, means something quite different. I think of celtic music and the Scotts and the Irish and how they played their instruments. I adore the music. I knew I HAD to play it, and here I am! Enjoy (:

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The San Francisco Scottish Fiddlers 2014 Spring Concert Tour

I've just been on tour! It was a beautiful ten day tour throughout Northern California with the San Francisco Scottish fiddlers. There were about eighty-five of us on the tour and it was quite a great time. Over the course of ten days, I got to play a ton of music, which was really nice. I saw old friends, made new ones (mostly adults within the SFSF club. It was really nice to actually connect with them.) So many magical things came about on that tour, most of it I still can’t even think about because tour withdrawal is a real thing, apparently. I had many great musical opportunities like leading the San Francisco Scottish Fiddlers teen band which is a group of teens in the SFSF. We’re all quite good friends and we all love playing music together. Each year we do a set of tunes during the concerts on our own. I really enjoyed leading all of my friends and playing music with them; I had wanted to do this for years but didn’t think I’d actually get around to it before college. We played a total of 7 concerts on the tour. My favourite might have actually been the first one. There was so much energy on the stage and everyone was very happy to be there. Naturally, after ten days with a group of 85 people, the energy starts to diminish but the end concert was still really great and I can’t believe we actually managed to pull it off. The whole tour was quite a success and gave me a hopeful taste of what I want to be doing in my future.

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Abundance and more

Abundance is the title of the new Alasdair Fraser (world famous Scottish fiddler and my idol) and Natalie Haas (world famous cellist)album released in December (I believe). This album is different from many of their others albums because in some ways it is more modern and in some ways it is more traditional celtic. Their previous albums Fire & Grace and In the Moment are both modern sounding compared to many other celtic albums I’ve heard. They still stick to the roots of traditional celtic and primarily Scottish music using traditional and new tunes, but they’re greatly influenced by newer sounding music. Abundance is a great combination of both and had more instruments in it than ever before. Some of the tunes and the way they were arranged sounded like they were straight from Fire & Grace or In the Moment and some of them sounded like what Alasdair does with the San Francisco Scottish Fiddler or some of his older albums even. This album inspired me to play a lot more than I had been playing and I’m very grateful for that.

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SFSF Spring Concert Tour

The SFSF is a group of about 200 Scottish fiddlers called The San Francisco Scottish Fiddlers. I'm in the group and have been since I was 10. The SFSF has a variety of ages and skill levels. They hold club meetings and play at various events mostly in the bay area. Every year in the spring there is a concert tour with about 150 or so of the fiddlers (and cellists and harpists and guitarists….we’re not all fiddler that would be a bittt too chaotic) led by Alasdair Fraser. Usually, we have 3 concerts 3 days in a row near the end of April. The whole time I've been in the group I've done them. This time, they're going on a 10 day tour all over Northern California. I'm going too! They have done this tour in the past but I was not even in the group when those tours occurred. It will held over spring break from April 10th-20th. There’s going to be a concert on my birthday (the 18th) at my favourite venue, The Freight and Salvage Coffeehouse in Berkeley!

One of my most-liked parts of this concert tour is the SFSF “teen’ band. Basically what it is is all of the kids (teen or not) in the group have a sort of band and we work up a couple of tunes and perform them. Each year the teen band has a leader who organizes everyone and helps put the tunes together. I desperately want to be that leader this year, especially for the 10 day tour. I’ve never been it before but I have helped very much with the arrangements of the tunes in the past. I’m quite confident that I could be the “leader”. I really enjoy all of the kids that make up the group and I adore playing music with them. Actually, I enjoy playing music with all of the members of the SFSF. I really can’t wait for this years tour. At all!

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Into The Dark by Laura Cortese 

This is a very recent music video of the great singer/songwriter/fiddler/beauty Laura Cortese. I first discovered Laura at Alasdair Fraser’s Sierra Fiddle Camp, a music summer camp (and my favourite part of the whole year). Laura taught the singing class. When I first started listening to/playing Celtic music and discovered Alasdair, I didn’t really know a whole lot about music in general. I didn’t even know that Celtic music was such a wide variety of things either. Now, I tend to listen to things that have Celtic roots but aren’t exactly straight up Celtic, if I even listen to it at all. Laura is a great example of this because what she does is just based off of Irish and Scottish traditional music. What she’s done is almost created her own genre based off of many things.  Through out the years, to me, her music has gotten more bluegrass and singer/songwriter influence to it. But a good sort of singer/songwriter influence. This video is the song that’s the title track of her new CD, Into The Dark. My favourite song on the CD, however is not Into the Dark, even though I do love it. My fav is either Train on the Island or Brown Wrinkled dress which can be found here, on her beautiful new website. The new video posted above is the reason for posting this song. It's very new and exciting for Laura and all of us who are fans of hers. Enjoy! (:

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A few shots by John Taber, a local photographer, at this years KVMR Celtic Festival.

The first pic was taken right after we played our first set on Sunday at 11am on the main stage. Before we played this set, we were having some issues with the set list because we had too many tunes to play. We had to cut out a lot of them and keep only the good ones and the new ones. When we first got on stage I was overjoyed to be there and share my music with the audience. In the mornings at the Celtic Festival, everyone has pretty low energy so I tried to cater to that through my music. Even if the set was sort of sleepy, it was still great fun. The most exciting parts were when I got to announce about how our brand new EP was available at the merch table (which we sold an abundance of!!) and how we invited up our “String Cousins” to play with us. We played a set of tunes that we learned this year at Alasdair Fraser’s Sierra fiddle camp. Our String Cousins are Zane (fiddle) Cullen (fiddle) and Matias (guitar). They’re all in the last picture which was also taken after our first set. I’ve been playing music with Zane and Cullen for about 4 or 5 years now and I just met their friend Matias this year. I couldn’t wait to ask them to play the Celtic Fest with us and they were a big hit and made us sound better (; The second picture is of us playing on the main stage. In this picture we were playing a tune we were a part of writing called Echo’s Reel. Overall, taking the spotlight and starting off the second day of the KVMR Celtic Festival was a huge honour and success. (:

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HI, Emilie! This is very cool! -Sally

Wow thank you, Sally! I'm glad you enjoyed it (: see you @ the Celtic Fest 

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KVMR Celtic Festival This Weekend, EP Update and A Tune

First off, the Celfic Festival is this weekend (yay!!) my band, The String Sisters, will be playing twice on Sunday and once at a private party (sorry) on Saturday. We have been anticipating this festival for quite a while now and expect it to be great fun. We are going to have guests on stage too AND this Celtic Festival will be our fourth anniversary as a band! We'll also have our newly recorded EP for sale (; 

On the last post I made, I promised a track or two off of the EP. However, the formatting was really weird and I haven't been able to convert it yet, even though I have tried many things. My apologies. I would have really liked to post one of the tunes off of it. One that i wrote, naturally (; 

Okay, just had to update about those two things. Now, I'd really like to post a tune and talk about one of my newest favourite fiddlers. This is a musician I have known about for quite a while because I was taught a tune that he'd composed, but I never really heard much of his music until I heard something of his on my Molly's Revenge (they're play at the Celtic Fest by the way) Pandora station. The set of tunes I heard was called The Golden Plover Set which I posted in my first blog post (here). I automatically fell in love with the completely different and modern sound that was finding it's way to my ears. When I realized who it was, I knew I had to look into his music more because I already knew OF him. Jeremy Kittel, is his name. Upon listening to this music more and more, I stumbled across I tune that I had learned when I first started playing and thought I should post it. I really like this tune because it's so soft and beautiful and he kind of puts a modern/jazzy edge to it(excuse the video, it was literally the only result that came up on YouTube although it is very beautiful): The Napkin Tune- Jeremy Kittel Version

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Absolutely post some tracks!

I plan on it (:

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Recording My First EP And Updates On The KVMR Celtic Festival

On Monday night, 4:00, I got the chance to record my first EP CD ever. I had been in the recording studio before, but not for my own band. I do plan to record much more in the future, and I already knew that but I really didn’t think I’d be recording this young. When we play gigs, my band usually gets asked if we have CDs, and we never did until now. I think it’ll be really nice for my band to have a CD out there and my biggest hope if for people to hear the tunes that I’ve written and want to learn them and play them with me. I have a few musician friends who probably will (yay!)

Recording was very fun and sometimes stressful. I was, however, really proud that we nailed the first track in two takes. We were in the studio for a total of 3 hours which is pretty productive. We mix and print the CD on Thursday.  My favourite part was the first time we got to listen to the first track. I was pretty happy with it. My favourite track on the EP is the last one. A tune I wrote this summer for a friend. I hope to post some of the tracks on this blog once I get them in digital form over email. And maybe even YouTube too, that would be nice! The EP was a total of 6 songs. I cut one of the songs because I decided I didn’t like it at the last minute. Typical.

The reason we made the EP was because we needed a CD, like I said earlier and for our big upcoming gig, the KVMR Celtic Festival. We can sell them there and sign them at the CD signing booth! Omg! Our schedule for playing at the festival looks like this (in case anyone was wondering): Saturday, 1:15-2pm Pine Tree Stage

Sunday 10:45am-11:30am MAIN STAGE!!

Sunday 2:15pm-3pm Sugar Pine Stage

We’re also playing an AJA party, but that’s private. We’ll have some guests on stage too for some of our sets! I can’t wait (:

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Nice post, although some images would be nice. Also, I will try to actually attend the KVMR gig.

Awesome (: thank you!

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My Weekend And Upcoming Musical Events

This past weekend (Sunday, September 1st), I attended the Scottish Highlands Games in Pleasanton California. There, I played some traditional Scottish music with one of my favourite groups of musicians, The San Francisco Scottish Fiddlers. This group has helped me so much through my musical career. For me, it's really nice to play music with a big group of people (around 150 during performances, there are many more members in the group) and see how it's directed. We also have multiple generations and that makes it more enjoyable for me because the teens there are some of my best friends in the world and the audience enjoys to see young and....vintage (; 

The games themselves were fantastic too. It's at the Alemeda county fairgrounds, a huge place. The SFSF played 3 times that day. The first performance I was maybe 10 minutes late to because we had to drive from good 'ol Grass Valley. When I first arrived and heard the SFSF playing, I instantly had a smile on my face. There was no where in the world where I would have wanted to be more than there. All of the tunes that were played were ones I knew and it was just good fun. Shortly after, I found all of my friends in the group (it's hard to tell who's all there when we're all together on one stage) and we walked around and enjoyed the festival. It was very exciting. There was Scottish food everywhere (lots of meat...in the hot sun...the smell was rather foul at times), Highland dancing, Bagpipes.....LOTS OF THEM (which lead to my headache later in the day lol), living history and so much more. Then we played again and after, walked around some more. 

The third set was my favourite of them all. Alasdair Fraser, the leader of the SFSF, asked me to play a set with a group that I got to hand pick. We played one of my newest tunes that I wrote over the summer and one of Alasdair's tunes which the group joined in with at the end. It was amazing. I love having those moments of stage where I know that many people in the audience have their eyes on me. Being on stage is my favourite thing in the world. 

SPEAKING OF BEING ON STAGE, 

My band, The String Sisters, is playing at the KVMR Celtic Festival on September 27th-29th. Some of our scheduling is still unknown to me, but I do know that we are playing on the main stage a few times! We have also been asked to play at the AJA after party! I've been looking forward to it since the festival last year. I can't wait (: 

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This looks good! I will even ignore my hatred of tumblr as long as you keep posting things like this!

Alright! Thanks (: 

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Introduction Post

Today, right now, I'm making my first post on my new blog about my life as a musician. My URL (viologies) is just something I thought sounded unique that incorporated the word violin. My blog title (My Joy) is the name of an album by one of my absolute favourite people and musical artists, Hanneke Cassel. On this blog, I will be posting music, videos, opinions, events, and possibly my own music that I've written, if I can get a decent recording. During freshman year, I had a blog quite like this one but I deleted it sophomore year because I decided I would change my English blog topic. I hope that this blog will stay with me for quite a while, even after high school. I;d like to have a way of documenting my life as a musician and sharing it with the public. I plan on showing this blog to other fiddlers that I know. Freshman year I did and it was quite successful and many people liked it. That made me happy. My skills as a blogger have greatly, so hopefully I can get a larger audience! I encourage anyone reading this to check out my links page however, they are not entirely finished yet. I definitely plan on having more information on my about me page and possibly an F.A.Q about fiddle music page. I'll be working on that. If you wish to ask something or comment on a post, send me a message here. I hope you can tell that I've already put great effort into this blog. I'm rather proud (: 

I will be posting every Wednesday. For now, here is a tune I've been enjoying that popped up on my 'Molly's Revenge' Pandora station. 

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Adding photos to pages on my blog (: 

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Just uploading these photos for pages on my blog (: