Too Definite For Words

Forgot to practice yesterday because I had to do a long drive and by the end of it I was tired, but I practiced études a bit today. Violin is so painful and hard. ;-; I keep playing the easy parts of the études and moving on. Next time, I’ll pick one to master and force myself to learn the hard parts.

Instead of taking shortcuts I should do it the proper way: master the student pieces and études first. I may not be taking lessons now, but I’ve taken enough that I know the right way to study and I know I’m being lazy now. x.x

Not to mention, scales and arpeggios. Boring but necessary!

Yuna Shinohara’s playing is so beautiful!

i practiced the violin yesterday and the day before, and printed out some sheet music to play. (lindsey stirling zelda medley, bard's adventure from genshin, and love's sorrow by kreisler.) must practice today.

even though i've lost the motivation to play since i can't see myself being in an orchestra again and no one would want to listen to me solo, it's good to be able to play an instrument and that feels like a crucial part of my identity that i'm not willing to give up. that should be enough of a reason to continue, right?

Also, I’ve been neglecting this account. -_-;

It’s hard for me to feel motivated to practice when I’m not going to use it for anything. When I was in orchestra, I practiced obsessively because I knew I could use my skills, but now I have no one with whom to play and no prospect of getting to play with people again in the foreseeable future. My mom has a violin, but when I ask her to learn a duet with me, she makes excuses not to. Alas.

I’ve just been in low spirits lately, not really in the mood to play music.

Every time I start up Genshin on my PC, a little alert comes up asking me if I want the program to be allowed to modify the hard drive or whatever. There’s an alert tone, and every single time, I automatically sing “Thirty-two thousand troops in New York Harbor....” because apparently my brain thinks the tone sounds like the beginning of the song. I wasn’t sure if I was remembering correctly, though, or if my brain was making random connections.

So today I finally checked if the song really starts that way and if it’s in the same key, and YES, YES IT IS. >:3 The exact notes. (I know I skip the first line though, haha. Oops.)

Won’tcha look at me, practicing yet another day in a row. :P

Played two-octave scales in every key to practice knowing the keys, Kreutzer etude no. 11, and the Veracini Gigue from the Suzuki book.

Decided to make a recording and upload it no matter what, even if it was full of mistakes.

I’m historically a very cautious player, but that can be a bad thing because my natural instinct is to play without dynamics or sounding stiff and restrained while trying to hit all the right notes without accidentally playing adjacent strings. However, something musicians I admire have reminded me is that the most important thing is to make music. Someone will be more moved by a (slightly) messy and out-of-tune performance that’s played with passion than a stiff, boring performance that’s in perfect tune and tempo.

Sooo I just went crazy and tried to put in dynamics and emotion even though my playing was super messy. There are still moments where I start thinking “Oh my god I’m being recorded” and lapse into Careful Mode, but I’m getting better at expressing through my playing.