A Find

Very funny:

http://xkcd.com/

Listening

I live with another violinist. Another violinist who teaches pretty regularly throughout the week. This isn’t really a problem with me, except for the fact that a majority of these students are beginners [bad] or tone deaf.

How long can you perpetrate the myth that becoming a musician is good for a person? Or that someday, with the right amount of hard work and discipline, you will even become one.. Anyway, the point is, I can’t help but listen to these lessons, and I’ve found that my reactions have instilled a sort of fear about the sounds that come out of MY violin when I’m practicing or rehearsing.. If these kids can’t tell the difference between ear-bleed pitch and A440 while they’re scrubbing away, then how can I be sure that my own sounds aren’t equally as repulsive to an even higher trained ear?

So I have come to the conclusion that ~listening~ is very important when you’re producing sounds.. Concentration is so powerfully focused on the actual process of making the sound – the placing of the fingers – the holding of the bow – that I think sometimes we forget to actually listen to the product. Maybe this is why the hyper-analytical korean boy rushes – he is fixated on getting to the next note like a video game.. or why the plump country bumpkin plays consistently a quarter tone flat – she is looking in the mirror and making sure she isn’t slumping and her perfectly polished nails are sitting on the fingerboard at the ideal angle to reflect their pearlescent shimmer.

Sitting

Sometimes I feel guilty about sitting on my ass in front of a computer for 8 hours a day. The thing is, I’m not working, or at least in the traditional sense of the word. In fact, when I sit here, most of the time I am artfully avoiding activities that could be put into the work category – productive tasks that I will eventually need to complete.. Instead, I find myself caught between emailing, facebooking, and leveling my characters on WoW.

I have even considered the possibility of radiation poisoning after a brief cold.. My tongue felt numb, and this all made very good sense to me. I was slowly poisoning myself by sitting in front of the computer hour after hour, day after day. Perfect sense.

Anyway, this is an attempt to do something slightly productive. I have always been a documenter. I like to take photographs, make lists, gather information.. So this information, or parts of it, will be shared here. I hope this doesn’t become too boring or I’ll have to actually get a life and leave the house. All for now..