Haunted by Imelda May

I first heard this song two weeks ago when I was searching for new music for my dance class. Her voice and this song in particular has been haunting me. I love it, therefore it's constantly stuck in my head. The slow sultriness speaks to my curves. I'm hoping to break this out in class tonight, we'll see how it goes!

My Great Aunt's Violin

There just happens to be this lovely tan colored wall across the street from my music academy and since my lessons are only a half hour long I end around 4pm. Which is just about the time the sun starts going down here in LA at this time of year. So I took a few moments to breakout my violin and take some pics while I still had the warmth of the light. 

This is my violin, it was found a long time ago in my Great Aunt Dot's attic. It had some water damage at the time but we were able to have it repaired. I love this old violin it's a pleasure and a privilege to play it. At the time it was found I was using a rented violin which sounded, well, it sounded a little like I was trying to play inside the Tin Man. I'm hoping that once I get bold enough I will actually post a few videos of me playing. We shall see :)

You can see that my poor case has been used as a cats' scratching post. The little stinkers. 

Percussion Head: Lesson #2

I truly had forgotten just how much you have to keep track of while playing music, especially a stringed instrument. There are the normal things that I remembered, such as the placing of my fingers and how to use the bow(rusty but still working skills) and then there were the other things. Such as counting the timing in the song while reading each note and paying attention to whether there was an extra flat♭ or sharp♯ just waiting around to trip you up.




Today for my second lesson we moved on from Twinkle Twinkle Little Star into something slightly more complicated Bach's Minuet 1, and finally onto the classical piece that I had brought with me to work towards Bach's Concerto for Two Violins: 1st Movement.


Just to give you an idea of what madness I am working towards:

BACH'S MINUET 1

BACH'S CONCERTO FOR TWO VIOLIN

Attempting to do all of the above creates quite a lot of confusion in my brain these days. I marvel at how when I was in high school doing all of that seemed like a piece of cake. Now it just feels like someone is playing percussion with my brain. Due to all this pounding in my head today I sounded a bit like a stampeding elephant. Hopefully after another week of practicing I will be a bit more graceful with my playing. 

Jessism of the Week: Leftover Lover

Ok I will admit it, I LOVE leftovers. And I would say that 9.5 out of 10 times I eat them cold. No re-warming them for me. Nope. Although I have noticed that ratio has gotten a lot greater since we no longer have a microwave. Although if I am not being lazy, the convection oven works just as well. And hey, sometimes they're just a dish best served cold!