Squawking.
Aug. 8th, 2004 08:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
saxikathI thought my friend L was coming over this afternoon to squeak and squawk (that's our term for our violin/viola sessions), but it didn't work out. I've been idle and blah all day. But I finally got the viola out anyway, and scratched my way through some stuff.
I started playing viola in the elementary school orchestra in fourth grade. I originally wanted to play drums, but you had to have taken piano for a year before the director would let you play drums, and I hadn't yet then. How I got from drums to viola, I don't remember at all.
I never took private viola lessons (I did take piano lessons) or anything, but I played in the school orchestra until junior year of high school. I was always second chair to Miguel Ramos, and rightly so; he was actually good, where I was merely moderately competent at that level. I was always really bad about practicing. I dropped out of the orchestra senior year because the orchestra class was the same period as the math class I needed to take. That was the first year I did choir, and singing, over time, has displaced both piano and viola as my primary instrument.
I hardly touch the thing anymore, and the muscles in my neck and hands are telling me that after I played for 45 minutes or so. And my fingernails are too long. But I haven't completely lost my instincts. My fingers can still interpret the notes written in viola clef (oddly, I have a great deal of trouble reading that clef in any other circumstance, but my fingers know what to do when I have a viola in my hands).
But, it feels good to do it anyway. Playing some of my old music, I flash back to standing in the living room on the relatively rare occasions that I did practice, or to the band/orchestra room in my high school, or to those earliest days in Eisenhower Elementary School, with a patient man named Mr. Lichtfuss teaching me the beginnings.
I suppose someday my hands may grow arthritic or succumb to RSI, and I won't be able to play piano or viola anymore. But till then, I intend to keep doing both, and recorder too, along with my singing. It's worth reminding myself, now and again, how much music really means to me. And when I feel depressed, I need to remember to take it out in music.
I'm not sure what the point of this entry is, except that I'm feeling reflective.
I started playing viola in the elementary school orchestra in fourth grade. I originally wanted to play drums, but you had to have taken piano for a year before the director would let you play drums, and I hadn't yet then. How I got from drums to viola, I don't remember at all.
I never took private viola lessons (I did take piano lessons) or anything, but I played in the school orchestra until junior year of high school. I was always second chair to Miguel Ramos, and rightly so; he was actually good, where I was merely moderately competent at that level. I was always really bad about practicing. I dropped out of the orchestra senior year because the orchestra class was the same period as the math class I needed to take. That was the first year I did choir, and singing, over time, has displaced both piano and viola as my primary instrument.
I hardly touch the thing anymore, and the muscles in my neck and hands are telling me that after I played for 45 minutes or so. And my fingernails are too long. But I haven't completely lost my instincts. My fingers can still interpret the notes written in viola clef (oddly, I have a great deal of trouble reading that clef in any other circumstance, but my fingers know what to do when I have a viola in my hands).
But, it feels good to do it anyway. Playing some of my old music, I flash back to standing in the living room on the relatively rare occasions that I did practice, or to the band/orchestra room in my high school, or to those earliest days in Eisenhower Elementary School, with a patient man named Mr. Lichtfuss teaching me the beginnings.
I suppose someday my hands may grow arthritic or succumb to RSI, and I won't be able to play piano or viola anymore. But till then, I intend to keep doing both, and recorder too, along with my singing. It's worth reminding myself, now and again, how much music really means to me. And when I feel depressed, I need to remember to take it out in music.
I'm not sure what the point of this entry is, except that I'm feeling reflective.
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no subject
Date: 2004-08-08 06:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-08-08 09:11 pm (UTC)Alto Saxaphone.
I, too, have no idea how that happened...
no subject
Date: 2004-08-09 11:55 am (UTC)