strings

I have joined the orchestra at my church, so that's pretty fun stuff. Well, my brother (who conducts) TOLD me I was joining, and I didn't argue. We had our first practice last week, and we have it again tonight. I play violin, although I don't own one, so I have to borrow one from the church. Our orchestra isn't really big. Last week we had three violins including me, a clarinet, bassoon, two flutes, two trombones, a trumpet, two french horns and then my brother who conducted and played piano. We're supposed to get more people though.

I get there last week and my brother has a violin sitting out for me, but one of the other violinists asks if I want "a real one." Um...as opposed to? I say sure and he tells me I can use his other one. I go get it and find out that it's one of those violins that doesn't have the fine tuning pegs, just the big ones. No big deal. Those aren't my favorite, because it's harder to adjust slight differences, but no biggie. I go to tune it and it's HORRIBLY out of tune. I finally get my A in tune and try to tune the others off of it, but the E peg won't stick. It took a large amount of effort to get to actually move, but once it did, it wouldn't stick. In high school, you know how my orchestra teacher would've solved that? She had us unstring it, and rub chalkboard chalk on the peg. Oh the horribleness of it all! NOT good for an instrument, but um...at least it stuck. Anyways, I'm battling with my E peg, which will stick fine about a whole note above and below where I wanted it. I finally gave up and went back to the other violin, which DID have the fine tuning pegs.

The auditorium was pretty humid though, so once again, my strings kept slipping in and out of tune. We had to tune after every break pretty much. It was fun though, I haven't played in a long time, but it's amazing what you remember. My brain still knows what notes to play and my fingers remember where it's at on the strings. Good stuff!

The music we're playing is stuff that my brother wrote/arranged and if I may brag, sounds VERY good.

El fin.