The Musician

Army of Saxophones!

2011-01-21T18:55:00.000-08:00

FUCK CSARDAS.

You know what? I still can't get the spiccato bowing! I can play it a lot faster and I've got the bowing a little better but it's no masterpiece. FML.

Oh, so I figured out where I'm applying for university (in Musicology, of course). I'm limiting myself to four campuses, just cause it's a lot of money just to apply. So, here goes:

Mount Allison (obviously)
Université de Laval
University of Ottawa
U de M (I really don't wanna go there, but this is my "in case" application)

So yeah! Hopefully I'll get into at least one of them :)

My violin teacher finally gave me the sheet music to Schindler's List! About damn time! My mom almost started crying. I think it's a beautiful piece, especially on the violin. Louis tried it on the banjo. LOLWUT.

Did I tell you I started teaching violin? Well, I did, back in September. I now have 6 students and it's a lot of fun.

*FREE PUBLICITY*
I charge 10$ / 30 minutes.
Must have own violin.
Suzuki method.
9 years experience.
Know anyone who'd wanna start?
Give 'em my number.

K fine, I'm done.

Avenged Sevenfold released a new single, "4 AM".
Sex. For. My. Ears.

They also have a new drummer, for a non-specified amount of time. Let's see how that goes.

*NEWS FLASH*
If all goes according to my music teacher's plan, there should be 8 saxophones in our music class next semester.

I'm talking 5 altos, 2 tenors, 1 barritone. I believe there are only 17 of us in total.

HOLY SHIT.
Yeah, that's about half the class. We're not gonna be a stage band, we're gonna be a saxophone band! Not good! We won't even be able to hear our 3 trumpets..

The teacher should put some back to their original instruments, like clarinet. Go back to clarinet! (She shouldn't put me back to flute, cause that would involve me transposing all of the jazz pieces she buys. Plus, I had dibs on the sax).

FFS, I was the only alto a week and a half ago! I mean, I knew about the barritone and the tenors, but now there's gonna be 4 more altos! That's insane..

Okay fine, I'm done ranting. Maybe I'll write again in like, another year.

I wanna know..
What's your favorite band?

Fuck Spiccato...

2010-11-13T20:47:00.000-08:00

I'm thinking maybe I should post more often. But then, I figure no one reads this anyway, so what's the use?

UGH! My flute is out of tune again. Remember that key with the leak that made this reeeaally sharp Bb? Yeah, it's back. Son of a bitch. So I gotta send it back. Hurrah. On a better note (haha, note), I rented a saxophone! I'm actually not bad at it, even though it's really similar to the flute. I'll be playing most of next semester's music class with it. AWESOME.

Oh yeah, I started the coop education program with my music teacher. Not bad, I'm working with the 9th graders (what a bunch of chatter bugs) and the 11th graders (OHMYGOD FUCKIN CHATTER ELEPHANTS).

K did I tell you about that song that I'm playing on the violin, "Csardas" by Monti? If you don't know it, look it up. So I can play the whole song, but I can't seem to master the spiccato bowing. Like, I just literally can't do it. I've been trying for months and I don't get it. How the hell do you make your bow bounce? I can play just one note, but then I have to play a bunch of them one after the other, I just can't. GAH, I'm using this song for my audition to Mount Allison University! If I can't get it by March, I am s-c-r-e-w-e-d.

Mastered "Samson" by Regina Spektor on the piano. Pretty easy stuff, but it's so nice :)

Grad pics are Monday. I'm thinking one pic with the gown, one with the music guys (Derick, Jimmy, Patrice, Matt, Louis), one with all my instruments (piano, violin, sax, flute) and one with my violin. Kinda stressed though but don't know why. Not sure what to do with my hair either, but that has nothing to do with music.

G'night!

I wanna know ... do you play any instruments?

While your nightmare comes to life.

2010-05-19T15:21:00.000-07:00

Ohai, fellow music-listeners! I hadn't seen you there, staring at the screen, waiting impatiently for me to write a new post! No, I'm just kidding, pretty sure no one even reads this crap.

SO!! Great news, great news!
Avenged Sevenfold's new single, "Nightmare", came out on May 18th at midnight. I heard it last night for the first time, and uhhmm .. yeah I cried a little .. ;) It's SO amazing, you will want to hear this. The vocals are absolutely wonderful, the guitar is sick, and the drums! Good job, Mike Portnoy! (For those of you who don't know him, he's the drummer for Dream Theatre. Did I say that already? I don't know. Oh well. Suck it up.) It's on Itunes if you wanna buy it.

Also, my violin teacher gave me a new song. It's called Csàrdas (sp?) by Monti. Go check it out, it's f*cking crazy. I'm pretty sure I can't play violin that fast. Oh boy.

Oh! And my teacher also gave me the 3rd violin part for Canon in D by Pachelbel....... hurray....... It's a really nice song, don't get me wrong, but I'm kinda sick of hearing it. We'll be about 15 playing that song and we're playing it for the concert in June.

Fun fun. -.-'

I don't know if I have anything else to write.
I think there's a chance I'm going to Avenged Sevenfold's concert on July 25th :D
Their next CD comes out two days later. Guess who's buying it?
That's all, I think.

LOVELOVELOVE!!

PS : I also started thinking about my prom dress, but I'm too lazy to describe it now.

Chapter Four

2010-03-13T14:44:00.000-08:00

WOW! I haven't written in quite a while ..
Not much going on, really. I got my flute back!! :D Yeah, I had to send it away about a month ago to Halifax, the 3rd key from the top of the body joint didn't close all the way so it made it really sharp and icky. But now it's back! And in tune :)

What else .. we started playing the song Opus 1 in music class, pretty sick tune, go check it out. Oh, and Viva la vida, did I mention that? Well if I did, suck it up. The talent show is in 2 days and I'm playing Grace Kelly, translated by Mika himself. It's a suuuper easy song to play, especially on the piano.

Alot of people asked me what I did during March Break, but I have nothing to say but "I worked on my music". Seriously, that's pretty much all I did. Monday I had violin and played music all day, Tuesday I played music, same for Wednesday and Thursday plus I had flute, Friday same, oh and Saturday I went to Moncton and I went to Long & McQuade's and I bought a tuner input :D

K so, I went to orchestra practice this morning and we're playing a Hungarian Dance by Brahms. It's an awesome song, I'm sooo glad I'm first violin! It's like really slow, then at bar 23 it goes like super fast and two octaves higher and there's a bunch of scales and stuff :) Go check it out, yeah?

Louis is coming over tonight, we're gonna have a movie night :)

OMG AAAND I bought Avenged Sevenfold's second CD, Waking the Fallen. It's soo good. Oh, and I found out they hired Mike Portnoy, Dream Theatre's drummer, to record Jimmy's part on the CD. Mike is Jimmy's idol, so it's all good, I'm really happy.

I also watched the Olympics in February. Pretty sure Sidney Crosby made an impression on everyone! I liked Marianne St-Gelais, she's cute xD

Well now I wrote too much. See what you made me do? I started writing and I couldn't stop ;)

I wanna know .. Did you watch the Olympics?

Diamonds in the Rough? I think so.

2010-01-18T18:13:00.000-08:00

So I turned 16 yesterday .. about time! :D Had a great party with a bunch of friends, it was great.

There is one present that I got that made me like, the happiest person on Earth. Derick got me the latest Avenged Sevenfold CD that came out in 2oo8, "Live in the LBC & Diamonds in the Rough" !! There's a live DVD and a CD of unreleased songs. Can you say, I freaked? Hell yeah.

Therefor, there's a song that you must listen to. It's the fifth track on the album, called Until the End. The violins mixed with the piano & electrics guitars is just astounding. I just can't get over how beautiful this song is, seriously, go look it up on Youtube.

And then of course, there's still their same old awesome songs like Girl I Know, Crossroads, Demons, Flash of the Blade, I could name them all but I won't to spare you :)

Avenged Sevenfold makes my life. Just sayin'.

OH! Also, we had our music show last Thursday, which kicked ass by the way. I was surprised at how good we were. Okay, so we screwed up one song (because of me, but that's minor detail, I had the melody). Unfortunately, about 2 days before the concert, my flute decided to be stupid so my Bb didn't work well because one of the keys didn't press down completely. So I was like hey I'll just tape it. It worked .. until I realized that because I blocked it, my B natural won't play. So I'm like, crap, what do I do? Of course, I had to use the old crappy school flute. What a joke. At least I could play though.

Oh yeah, and then my awesome music teacher turns into a super-mega-freakin-amazingly-awesome music teacher by asking us if we'd like to keep playing during 2nd semester, a couple of lunch hours a week. Guess who said no? ..

NO ONE !!

We'll still have music class twice a week during lunch, and I'm so pumped !! :)

Pretty sure that's about it. Besides, I wouldn't wanna bother you any more than I just did ;)
We really did kick ass. Just sayin'.

The Musician.

2010?

2010-01-05T18:27:00.000-08:00

So I haven't posted in awhile, although I don't believe I have many readers, so .. Merry Christmas, Happy New Year!

Hopefully 2010 will be so much better than '09! .. '09 sucked. No, I mean, it really did. I've noticed so many negative things, and I barely had anything positive going on that year. I wish '010 (oh'ten? seriously?) would make up for it. And it better.

I'd like to mention the death of one of my idols, James Owen Sullivan. He died on the 28th of December (I would've made a note sooner, but I was lazy and too busy crying, kthx), and the medias say it's from natural death. Well, we all know what the media says. The guy was 28, not 72. Although, it could've been an anevrism .. I sure would like to find out.

It's been over a week, and I still can't believe it. Like come on, he was Avenged Sevenfold's drummer (as seen in description, that's my favorite band), and he basically was the band! He wrote all the songs for them, and he even composed and wrote the sheet music for an entire symphony! The kid's a total genius!

Thing is .. they were about to release their 5th CD .. and what are they gonna do without him? Oh, and if anyone knows what his favorite drink was, I'd like to drink something in his honour. But in the meantime, I raise my empty milk glass (I love milk), here's to you, Jimmy. Love you.

Anyway, on a happier note .. (haha, note, get it? Ok, lame joke, I know) I'M GETTING A NEW FLUTE!! Yeaaaaah it's my Christmas present. It's a second-hand, open-holed Armstrong 303B flute, with a B footjoint (which lets me play a low B at the bottom of the staff and a high B, two octaves above the staff), offset G, tuned to A=442. Super happy? I think so! I'm paying half, but it's SO worth it, and it's not even that expensive. Right now, it's in Halifax getting cleaned out and all that stuff. But I can't wait to get it. Seriously, I'm like, freaking out.

So we're playing this song in music class .. FREEZE FRAME !! Haha .. It's really fun to hear the rest of the class play it, but my part's really boring. Like, worse than Austin Powers (which was really sad .. I played the same two lines 64 times throughout the whole song). Honestly, this one's annoying, cause I play the rythmic section, the piano part. This is all I play, for 6 pages :

Interesting, right? Yeah, for the first 7 seconds .. Oh yeah, and then we play Star Wars with École Arc-En-Ciel in 8th grade. K so, Star Wars is a Level 1 song. We play Level 4. Boring much?

BUT !! Thank God, out teacher is smart and gives us awesome songs .. I'll post them later, cause I'm too lazy to do it now. And this note's getting quite long, sorry about that ..

Ohai, one last thing .. 12 days till my birthday! :D .. kthxbai.

>The Musician

Influenced

2009-12-23T07:57:00.000-08:00

So about a week ago, my mom bought Mika's new album "The Boy Who Knew Too Much". I thought, eh, okay, his first album wasn't bad so why not? Turns out Mika, on the 4th track, Dr John, has been incredibly influenced by the Beatles and Queen, especially in the chorus. I was flabbergasted! (I like that word .. it's funny).

Well, that's when I realized how few of my friends know about the music that inspired today's songs. So I was texting my friend (which I will not name, sorry) telling her to go listen to Dr. John because of the Beatles' influence, and she's like "Oh, I don't know them well enough to tell you so I wouldn't be able to agree".

.. Say what now? How can you not know the Beatles? Don't get me wrong, I'm not obsessed with them and I don't even have their songs on my music player, but PLEASE! The Beatles, Queen, Pink Floyd, how could you not know them?

It's like that girl last year in French class (again, no name, sorry) that asked who John Lennon was. I nearly died. Then, when we told her he was in the Beatles, she's like "Well, why are they so important? What did they do?". GAAAAAAAHH !!

Anyway, Mika's new album is good. All songs are different, and I really enjoyed it. Go check it out, yeah?

>The Musician

Tik Tok - Ke$ha

2009-12-22T18:09:00.000-08:00

No offense to anyone who likes it, but this song is a disgrace. There is no musicality in there whatsoever! And the lyrics? Come on, anyone could come up with that. What kind of new stuff do you have to offer? This is a joke!

The sad thing is, it's catchy. Which means I've got it stuck in my head all the time. Therefor, I know all the lyrics. I feel like shooting somebody. Where has all the real music gone? Why is this new crap popular?

Oh yeah, that girl can't sing. When you start using an autotuner, you can't sing. Plus, she has no vibrato. Don't get me wrong, I believe everyone can sing; that is, to a certain extent. Not everyone can sing. You know, with the strong, powerful voice and the vibrato and the trills .. you get my point. If Ke$ha can pursue a singing career, then I most certainly can too, and if managers tell me I'll never make it, I'll mention girls like her. We need singers. Real singers. As well as people who are in tune without needing an autotuner.

I'd also love it if people could start using real instruments instead of all that electronic crap. You have enough money to shoot a music video in Paris, you have enough money to hire a drummer and a few guitarists.

>The Musician

Well that's a first ..

2009-12-22T17:54:00.001-08:00

First blog ever! Didn't expect to get into one of those, actually, but I decided to try it out. As you've probably noticed already, I'm a musician, therefor this blog will be all about music. I'll write about pretty much everything, like my opinion on certain songs, recently discovered songs, etc. Pretty simple, really. I might write about other random things once in a while. but I'll mainly stick to music (I don't really talk about anything else anyway).

Well, hope you enjoy!

>The Musician