Day 17: Experimenting with a Chinese Ocarina

If you play a woodwind or brass instrument, your assistance would be greatly appreciated :D

On Saturday, before kungfu class started, my master gave me a Chinese Ocarina as a gift. In Chinese they're called "Tao Xun" (陶笛). He showed me how to hold it and blow into it and everything, but we both knew that he didn't really know how to play actual songs. I took it gratefully, and today I decided to figure out what combination of holes (is that what they're called, band people?) would create which notes. Luckily my perfect pitch helped with this a lot.

As I was experimenting and recording notes, I found that this was the kind of instrument that played different notes depending on how you blew into it. For example, blowing into it with all the fingers covered could either produce a "B" or "A". Does that make sense? Am I doing it right? *COUGH BAND PEOPLE COUGH*

Also, I would like to know some tips on playing wind instruments well. I played clarinet for one year in third grade, so the only three things I got out of it was 1) cover hole-thingies completely 2) don't puff out your cheeks and 3) clean out the spit after you play, but I don't think that applies to this instrument.

I kinda actually want to be able to play this xD So I would love it if you guys could help me :P Thanks!!

Day 16: Orchestra Concert + All States Results

Today was my local orchestra's concert. The concert consisted of thirteen chamber music groups, and one group performance at the end. My group was a quartet, with two violins, one viola, and one cello. We played Nocturne by Borodin, a quite well-known piece. I had just found out today by the conductor that this song was played in a Disney film. When I went home, I researched a bit and found out that it played in a short film by Disney and Pixar called "The Little Match Girl". You can watch it here.

The group performance at the end of the concert was a song composed by one of the orchestra members. He's 17 and has been composing music since 14. Yup, genius right there.

Anyways, today the high school all-states results came out too. I made it in, but only second violin. This year was really weird though. Another violin player who goes to my school was first violin second chair in regionals didn't even make it in. And the concert-master (first violin, first chair) of regionals only got second violin. Many people I know did much worse than expected. My family, teacher, and orchestra director speculate that there must have been some mistake in the scoring  So I guess considering the circumstances, I should call myself lucky.

Day 15: All-States Auditions... and my bro's bday!

This was the day that I had prepared for. Reluctantly waking up at 9:15, my family made the one and a half hour drive to a high school in southern New Jersey for the all-states auditions. After my brother and I made it in to the central Jersey regionals orchestras (my brother was in the middle school one while I was playing for the high school one), we continued to practice for the all-states, which includes participants from all three New Jersey regions.

The all-states system was weird. Ok, not weird, but different from regionals. In regionals, the warm up room is usually a huge room such as the cafeteria or auditorium. After you feel that you're ready, you enter a hallway. You have three rooms to go to, solo, sight-reading  and scales, which you can go in any order that you like. In all-states, they assign you to one of two warm up rooms, in which you stay inside as moderators call five audition numbers consecutively at a time; only when you hear your number can you go outside at wait in line. They did this so to prevent players from "cooling down" while waiting for hours in a long line and not being able to play.

Since I had to wait for about three hours and was bored out of my mind, I ended up practicing for about two hours in there. By the time they called my name, I felt pumped. My solo playing, as usual, wasn't my best, because of nerves. At the end, during a tremolo, my bow kind of went on my bridge, causing a loud scratchy sound. Oh well. That could have been worse. The scales and sight-reading was pretty good, because for some reason I never get nervous for those. I guess it's because I usually do really well in scales, and even though I suck at sight-reading, everyone complains about how they stink at it too, which makes me feel a tad bit better. Plus, I have a kind of "yolo" attitude when I do sight-reading.

Ah yes, and it was my brother's birthday. He's 12 now. I can't believe he'll be a teenager next year. Today my kungfu master lectured my brother on how it's the Chinese Year of the Snake, my brother's year, and so this year he must be calm and mature. According to my dad, it's a custom to do so, or an accident could occur later on in life.

Day 14: Busy Weekend Ahead...

Sorry for not posting anything yesterday. I was way too busy. And this weekend I will be busy as well. Tomorrow will be the high school all-states orchestra audition. My audition time is 11:45, and as many violinists will compete against me, the auditions could take a few hours as I wait in line just to play for thirty seconds. If the auditions don't take too long, I plan to possibly go over to Allison's house and work on a Latin project with her (if not, then we will split the work and do them separately). Then I will leave for dinner and kungfu class at 5:00 and come back at around 9:30.

Usually I have a violin lesson on Sunday morning, but because the audition , there will be no lesson this weekend. However, that morning I will have to go to Red Bank to work on TSA with my group. I'm part of digital video production, and we'll be filming that day. Afterwards, my local orchestra, will begin rehearsal at 4:45 for a concert that starts later that evening.

All of this wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for the homework I received for Bio, English, World History, Math, and Latin. Hopefully I can squeeze in time to finish all of this without sacrificing too much of my sleep time. I'm actually being quite productive today; usually on Friday evenings I try to do the least work possible.

Day 13: Suffering through Pain

Yesterday I was super tired. I also had a raging headache and my arms and legs were super sore (not muscle sore. JOINT SORE. And it hurts much more.) At 9:00 I couldn't do any more homework, so I took a shower and all that jazz and fell asleep by 10. That was the first time in months that I slept before my little brother did.

Today wasn't any better. As soon as I woke up, my shoulders and arms were killing me. I had to cope through it the whole day; luckily, it began to die down by fourth period. During lunch I usually eat a whole sandwich without a problem, but today I struggled to take bites before I threw half of my sandwich away (I know, I feel guilty about wasting food. Don't judge me.)

When I got home, I wasn't hungry at all, even though I ate half of what I usually ate for lunch. I figured I should eat something, so I forced down an apple. This resulted in a stomachache for about thirty minutes. My mom called me to remind my brother and me that we were going to have a violin lesson and therefore would have to eat dinner super late (I ate dinner today at about 9), so I pretty much shoved a little more food down my throat. A few minutes later I got another stomachache.

The ride to my teacher's house was horrible. Since we were driving during the rush hour, there was heavy traffic in the highway. My stomachache was still there, so I felt sick every time my mom abruptly pressed the breaks.

Not only that, but my teacher was not happy with the way I practiced for the last couple of days. Yesterday I couldn't really practice much because of my fatigue, but that's not really an excuse. I only have THREE DAYS until the All-States auditions. Hopefully I will feel better and my playing will be much less sloppy by then. I really need to practice.

Wow, this is a long post.

Day 12: I HATE NLES (not really).

Ok, maybe not hate. But this year's Latin II NLE exam was so weird. Usually they have about 15 grammar questions, 15 culture questions, and 10 read-a-story-and-answer-questions questions. Today I looked at my question sheet and saw the word "Story" on top. I flipped the paper over, thinking maybe I was accidentally looking at the wrong side. But no, they completely changed the test format by having you answer about ten grammar questions of each sentence to a story.

They also added a map question to the culture asking where Gallia was located. THERE WERE NEVER ANY MAP QUESTIONS IN PREVIOUS TESTS WHY D; So yeah I got that one wrong. The only part that was similar to past exams was the reading and comprehension questions. But still.

Day 11: Skypeing with my old friends <3

Sorry there's no title here. Blogger is being a butt.

It's been such a long time since I've seen some of my middle/elementary school friends. A few I've seen a couple of times this school year, but many I haven't seen at all. So occasionally I go on Skype and chat them all in one huge group. I rarely use video/voice chat, because my computer is kinda downstairs and it would be awkward screaming into the computer when the rest of my family can hear me.

Today I spent a total of about 20-25 minutes just chatting miscellaneous things: school, listening to others fangirl, etc. The more I see their typed text on my screen, the more I yearn to see them all in real life and plunge into a gargantuan group hug. I've actually been much more quiet and reserved since I've gone to my magnet high school. This sounds really cliche, but you should see me with my friends. I'm pretty much bouncing off the walls when I'm with them.