Cheesiness, Nerves and Violins

Deep breath.

Double check strings.

Still in tune.

Another deep breath.

Stay calm.

I press my fingers into the wood, reviewing the notes, waiting for the moment.  The moment the piano will cue me in.

It starts before I'm ready, but then, it always does.  My bow falls lightly to the string.

A soft, milky sound echoes through the cavernous living room, reverberating off the glass chandelier.  Gentle whispers of previous notes fill the pauses.  Like ghosts.

Ahem.  Er, let's just skip the cheesy details and get on with this, shall we?

Anyway, I had an informal violin concert last Friday night at my grandparents house!  I haven't played at a concert for a year or two now, so it really did me good.

I won't deny it.  I was nervous.

Unlike in skating, getting nervous while playing violin has bad effects on me.  Like, my hands shake a little. And a little would normally be okay, but, seeing that my hands need to be precisely on the right note to play it right... well... it doesn't sound as good.

Anyway, enough talk.  My mom videoed the concert and I decided to share it with you.  I play it a little too fast, and I hit some wrong notes, but overall, I think I did pretty well under the circumstances.

(Excuse my grandma for saying "let's do a retake" at the end please...) So here's me playing:

And, I think you guys have the right to hear it the way it's supposed to be played, so in case you have enough time, here's Sarah Chang playing it:

Have a great weekend :)

--Jess

X is for Xenophile

X is for Xenophile

I'm not entirely sure if this is a word, since my spellchecker says it's spelled wrong.  But the definition on google says:

xen·o·phile/ˈzenəˌfīl/

Noun:

An individual who is attracted to foreign peoples, manners, or cultures.

I know I've been writing a flash fic for each day, but I have no idea what I could possibly write for Xenophile.  The only other X words that came into mind were:  Xenophobic, which is the fear of foreigners or foreign things, and Xiphias, which is the genus of the swordfish.

It was either that or Xylophone.


So if you don't mind, I'll just awkwardly creep around this letter and pretend that this post was in some way a 'success'.

Okay, and here's a cool song called Palladio, played by Escala:

Let me just say, this song is awesome to write to.  Especially to really dramatic scenes.

So there you go!!


Anyone else having trouble finding an X word?

Have an X-citing day!

--Jess


P.S.


I'm not sure how much an individual has to be attracted to foreign things to actually be considered a Xenophile, but I'd like to think that I'm somewhere in there. 

The Secret Ingredient...

I don't know if I've mentioned it before but I am a violinist. No wait, that sounds too professional. Okay, I play the violin. Anyway, I had my violin lesson yesterday and my teacher and I started working on this song:

First of all, it does not sound that good when I play it. Not even close. But I just love this song.


So me and my teacher were going through the music, deciding the fingerings and when I should shift into a higher position. All that fun stuff. But as I was watching/listening to Sarah Chang (the girl in the video) play it, I realized my fingering was different than hers.


Instead of playing a certain note on a certain string, I was playing the same note on a different string. Confusing, right? On the violin, there's more than one way to play the same melody and make it sound just as good or better.


Hmm. Sound familiar?


Playing the violin is a lot like writing. Writing (specifically fiction writing), is all about saying something someone's already said before and making it yours. Without the inspiration of other stories, I'm not sure we'd have as many ideas. And without previous stories, our WiP's probably wouldn't be what they are today.


We're all playing the same song but we're all playing it differently, in our own creative way. So maybe I really do play this song better than Sarah Chang... (I wish :/ ) LOL.


Like the fingering or bow direction I decide for myself while playing the violin, the special ingredient you add to your writing is what makes it yours. That's what makes it special in the first place!


Have a great weekend, everyone!


--Jess

Going up North + Weekend Plans

As you've probably guessed from the title of this post, we are headed to Michigan for the weekend. Okay, maybe you didn't guess Michigan in particular, but yeah, we're headed up North.


Me and my sister (Over at Life is Good) are both on a synchronized skating team with a bunch of friends, and we have a big competition on Saturday! I'm really excited.


After that, we'll be spending a day at my grandparents house. It's cool because they have a grand piano (opposed to our coffee brown, rectangle one...) and it sounds so pretty when it's played. I'll have to make sure to bring my violin.


So, yeah. That's about all I've got planned for my weekend. Oh, and I have to try convincing my sister to read my novel... She agreed to 'beta read' it a while ago but hasn't gotten to it yet.


What do you guys have planned for the weekend?


--Jess