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I just came up from practicing. From the basement that is. That is where I do most of my practicing as I serenade the furnace. The poor thing works hard this time of year, why not give it a little joy.
I am mostly practicing the following things:
my G major scale
Boil dem Cabbage on the A string while trying to drone the E string
Southwind Waltz
Tennessee Waltz
and now Golden Grahams (ah, Slippers)
Each item is teaching me something different and/or new. I am finding that Southwind is a very uninteresting song to me. I am learning from it, in particular left hand fingering and keeping my wrist straight, but I find the song as interesting as rotating tires.
Now Golden Slippers, I am proud of myself on that one. Again, I picked it out by ear and memory and was able to get through the whole basic tune. It is all basic squeaky notes but it's another real time fiddle tune that I was able to figure out and can't believe I'm playing it. I think I might post it, as horrible as it sounds right now, so I can compare later.
I went to our school play last night and there was a student playing violin in the orchestra. He has been playing for a while and is very good, but the one thing that really struck me was that it must be difficult to play in the dark. Forget how well he is able to play, but add that the only light he had was a tiny little light on his stand so he could read the music. Otherwise, he was totally in the dark. Adds another dimension besides playing in front of 500-600 people.
I just ordered an Intell-600 tuner to replace my old one that doesn't clip on and has trouble tuning when there is other noise in the room, like when the furnace turns on. Oh, boy...another toy.
Time for dinner
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