2014 String Festival

String Fest started August 4th through the 8th. (from 12:30 to 5:00pm) Five days of really fun music practice! We all had 5 songs. 4 orchestra pieces, and 1 quartet (or bigger) song.
Fiddler's Fare, Enchanted, Pizzicato Polka, and Andante Festivo. My quartet piece was called Red Wing. Twas a fiddling piece. :) And actually, we had 7 people in the group, so what would that be called? (Google say's 'Septet.')
Enchanted was my favorite piece. I've never seen the movie, but the songs via youtube are pretty awesome. This piece was a bunch of Enchanted tunes combined into one song.

Fiddler's Fare was an accompaniment piece for our soloist. The soloist had a bunch of fiddle tunes, and the orchestra played "background music." Somehow we all got behind at the end and skipped a few measures of music. Oh well. Our conductor was great at not freaking out, and got us all together fast. I asked my family if they had heard it, and they said they didn't. :) Oh, and this one was cool because the piece hasn't even been published yet. And the guy who wrote it was at the concert. That was fun! It's not that often you can play a piece for a live song writer before that piece has been published!

Pizzicato Polka - we didn't have a conductor for this piece. Our concert master led us in unison. :) Haha! And like the name, the entire song was pizzicato. (that means no bows are used, and it's all plucking the string.)

Andante Festivo was a "big" song, in terms of volume. It wasn't really that long (actually it seemed the whole concert went by in like... 5 minutes.) of a piece, but it was mostly forte the entire time. :)

Red Wings song I really didn't like the song the first day we practiced it. It didn't sound good... at all! And then a different instructor came in our practice room. And she really helped us lighten up and have fun with the piece. Since it was fiddling, we got to slide notes, play really short bows (see below) yell "yee haw," and for the concert we all wore cowboy hats and bandannas. It ended up being much more fun than we thought!

Our orchestra director was hilarious! She has this box of things she calls "torture devices to torment teenagers." Basically 1/16 size bows, and clothes pins. When you have a full size violin, than you have a full size bow. I like to use full bows. I can't use full size bows in fiddling. So I used a 1/16 size bow on a full size violin for practice one day. :) We were laughing so hard! In fact, then everybody got a really small bow, just for fun! Except the bass, I don't think he got 'em. Or she'll hand you two clothes pins, and you fasten them on the bow about 5 inches apart. Then you are restricted to using only that amount of bow. It's hilarious. And also helpful. ;)


Disclaimer: Don't worry!  No one and no instruments were harmed at all during these methods of learning violin.