Weekly Babbling
Saturday was my weekly violin lesson. My teacher wanted to know if I could have Jesu polished by mid October so as to be ready to play it at the recital in November. Yikes! I wasn't so sure so we settled on my working on Jesu *and* Minuet 3 from the 1st Suzuki book.
I'm at a tough part in Jesu. Lots of accidentals and the melody sort of remains the same but is played differently. This whole piece has its deceptive places, you think you know what's coming next but you don't. I've been working on about 8 measures of this tough spot and have another 4 or 5 measures to get down. One measure has some stuff in it that will probably have to be played in 3rd position. The very next triplet needs to be played in 1st position, except that one note is so high it'll either have to be played in an upper position with a shift to a lower position in the middle of a slur or a very big stretch. I'm not sure how I'm going to tackle that. This section I'm working on at the moment has me stretching my fingers out a lot as it is.
My sheet music has been scribbled on so much it's hard for me to follow. So, I entered the whole violin part into Finale Note Pad to clean it up and print out a fresh copy with all the changes my teacher has made to it. As a bonus, I can play it in Note Pad. It has that electronic MIDI sound. By playing it in Note Pad, I can get a feel for the tempo and even play along with it by using the aux input on the violin. Pretty cool for free software. The free version is a tease to get you to upgrade to one of the paid versions.
I tried to play what I know of Jesu with my teacher playing the piano accompaniment. I learned I need to practice keeping time so I bought a metronone. Guess what? It doesn't have 9/8 time. I set it to 3/4 time and use the TICK, tick, tick for the 1/8 note triplets and make up most of the piece. It works pretty well.
Sunday evening was dinner over at DJ's brother's. After dinner we played a round of miniature golf at Hyland Hills Adventure Golf.
Monday was DJ's birthday. We were supposed to meet some other 150 owner's for lunch in Saratoga, WY but the weather didn't cooperate. Instead, we went to lunch at a creole place in Boulder, Lucile's. I liked it. I had an andouille po'boy and DJ had crawfish etouffee. For dessert we had banana bengiet, yummy.
Tuesday we went for a hike in the mountains and went shopping for DJ's birthday present in Estes Park. She found an opal necklace and an amber necklace that she liked in a local shop. We took the dogs with us and they had a blast. Coming home down US 36 traffic was stopped between Pinewood Springs and Lyons because of an accident. We ended up going all the way back to Estes Park and coming down CO 7. Good thing too. I read in the paper the next day that the accident close US 36 from 5PM until 8PM.
Wednesday we went back up to the mountains. This time to our property near the Wyoming boarder. We hadn't been up there in over 2 years. The big aspen grove at the south end had expanded some. The dogs came with us again and had a lot of fun exploring. Leila found a couple of elk bones which she had to roll on. Later on, DJ found the rest of the carcass, bones mostly, they'd been picked pretty clean. From the looks of the teeth, that elk looked pretty old. The root cavities were clearly open on most of the teeth. I think that animal had serious dental problems. DJ brought the skull, spine and pelvis home. On the way home we stopped at Johnson's Corner for dinner and gas. I managed to lock the keys in the truck, with the dogs! DJ was able to get her arm through the slightly open window we left for the dogs but couldn't reach the lock. I ran into the truck stop and bought a set of mechanic's pry bars which she was able to use to hit the power lock. Phew!
We're planning on taking a Carribbean cruise in either February or March of next year. DJ wants to do some SCUBA diving so we were looking at either Aruba or Grand Truk as a port of call on a cruise line that offered a SCUBA excursion. Then we found a cruise that stops at Bonaire *and* Aruba. So far, that's my favorite. We'll need to take a SCUBA refresher at least as they require a valid C card *and* at least one logged dive within the previous 2 years. Hopefully the SCUBA review will count for the logged dive. If not, we're thinking we could take a Discovery SCUBA excursion at one port of call then log that as our dive and do the regular SCUBA excursion at the next port of call. I hope that the SCUBA review will count though. Bonaire has a really nice reef that I don't think we'll get to explore very well on the Discovery SCUBA excursion.
I'm at a tough part in Jesu. Lots of accidentals and the melody sort of remains the same but is played differently. This whole piece has its deceptive places, you think you know what's coming next but you don't. I've been working on about 8 measures of this tough spot and have another 4 or 5 measures to get down. One measure has some stuff in it that will probably have to be played in 3rd position. The very next triplet needs to be played in 1st position, except that one note is so high it'll either have to be played in an upper position with a shift to a lower position in the middle of a slur or a very big stretch. I'm not sure how I'm going to tackle that. This section I'm working on at the moment has me stretching my fingers out a lot as it is.
My sheet music has been scribbled on so much it's hard for me to follow. So, I entered the whole violin part into Finale Note Pad to clean it up and print out a fresh copy with all the changes my teacher has made to it. As a bonus, I can play it in Note Pad. It has that electronic MIDI sound. By playing it in Note Pad, I can get a feel for the tempo and even play along with it by using the aux input on the violin. Pretty cool for free software. The free version is a tease to get you to upgrade to one of the paid versions.
I tried to play what I know of Jesu with my teacher playing the piano accompaniment. I learned I need to practice keeping time so I bought a metronone. Guess what? It doesn't have 9/8 time. I set it to 3/4 time and use the TICK, tick, tick for the 1/8 note triplets and make up most of the piece. It works pretty well.
Sunday evening was dinner over at DJ's brother's. After dinner we played a round of miniature golf at Hyland Hills Adventure Golf.
Monday was DJ's birthday. We were supposed to meet some other 150 owner's for lunch in Saratoga, WY but the weather didn't cooperate. Instead, we went to lunch at a creole place in Boulder, Lucile's. I liked it. I had an andouille po'boy and DJ had crawfish etouffee. For dessert we had banana bengiet, yummy.
Tuesday we went for a hike in the mountains and went shopping for DJ's birthday present in Estes Park. She found an opal necklace and an amber necklace that she liked in a local shop. We took the dogs with us and they had a blast. Coming home down US 36 traffic was stopped between Pinewood Springs and Lyons because of an accident. We ended up going all the way back to Estes Park and coming down CO 7. Good thing too. I read in the paper the next day that the accident close US 36 from 5PM until 8PM.
Wednesday we went back up to the mountains. This time to our property near the Wyoming boarder. We hadn't been up there in over 2 years. The big aspen grove at the south end had expanded some. The dogs came with us again and had a lot of fun exploring. Leila found a couple of elk bones which she had to roll on. Later on, DJ found the rest of the carcass, bones mostly, they'd been picked pretty clean. From the looks of the teeth, that elk looked pretty old. The root cavities were clearly open on most of the teeth. I think that animal had serious dental problems. DJ brought the skull, spine and pelvis home. On the way home we stopped at Johnson's Corner for dinner and gas. I managed to lock the keys in the truck, with the dogs! DJ was able to get her arm through the slightly open window we left for the dogs but couldn't reach the lock. I ran into the truck stop and bought a set of mechanic's pry bars which she was able to use to hit the power lock. Phew!
We're planning on taking a Carribbean cruise in either February or March of next year. DJ wants to do some SCUBA diving so we were looking at either Aruba or Grand Truk as a port of call on a cruise line that offered a SCUBA excursion. Then we found a cruise that stops at Bonaire *and* Aruba. So far, that's my favorite. We'll need to take a SCUBA refresher at least as they require a valid C card *and* at least one logged dive within the previous 2 years. Hopefully the SCUBA review will count for the logged dive. If not, we're thinking we could take a Discovery SCUBA excursion at one port of call then log that as our dive and do the regular SCUBA excursion at the next port of call. I hope that the SCUBA review will count though. Bonaire has a really nice reef that I don't think we'll get to explore very well on the Discovery SCUBA excursion.