End of Semester 1: Blog post

End of Semester 1: Blog Post

In the beginning of the school year, though I had played some over summer break, I was still a little rusty. I had lost much of my intonation, so during the first concert I had started to gain my intonation back, but I still had some ways to go.  Much like intonation, there were many aspects of my playing that had become rusty of summer break, and were still not up to par by the first concert.
Some of the things I wanted to improve on and did were....
1. Better Intonation- during the first concert we played a piece called Break That Third Wall.  Similar to its title this was all about being able to play in third position.  I struggled with being able to transition from, one position to the next, and much of the higher positions were out of tone.  Not saying that this concert my intonation was excellent, but this concert it was a lot better.  I felt a lot more confident in my playing, because of it.  In the future to improve my intonation further, I will practice scales that go into high positions, and play music that challenges me to switch positions frequently.
2.More Dynamics-  My dynamics and the whole orchestra's dynamics in the first concert were not very good.  Many times when we would need to get quiet we would on play mf, instead of p.  Though, in this concert, I felt as though when it said to play p we did, and that made the transition from p to ff or f, seem very emphasized and heard by the audience, adding a musical aspect to the piece. To improve this we practiced many techniques to get a quieter sound, such as turning the bow towards you, or applying less pressure with your index finger.
3.More consistent bowing and playing as one instrument-  These two, though not the same, are linked together, in many aspect.  By having the whole ensemble, or certain sections be in the same area of bow and have the same bow direction, it helped us stay together, and play as one instrument.  Many ways this occurred is that some people cued, also people memorized some if not all of their music and looked up more, finally, we had the same style, which made sure we were all on the same page.
All in all, the concert was much better than the last one.  We improved on our intonation, dynamics, bowing, and were able to play more as one instrument.  Though we improve a lot in this concert I know that I have a lot more to improve on.  I can only hope that next concert I and the whole ensemble will have improved even more!