Evan! (And a college visit, but whatever.)

Yesterday my dad drove me (and Matthew) about an hour and a half to visit a college. I’m not gonna talk about which one it was because we’re dealing with where people live and stuff, so I’m trying to keep the details to a minimum.

Anyway, I’ve been there once before for a general tour, but this time I went in for an information session with the assistant director of the music department. When I went for the general tour, I ended up wandering into the director of the Music Ed program’s office, and I got to talk to him for a little while, but yesterday’s visit was much more informative. I have to say, I would be happy if I ended up at this school. I’m going to schedule a lesson with one of the violin teachers there.

Not only would it be TOTALLY AWESOME to get some feedback from one of them, but it also might be another excuse to go see Evan ^_^ He lives really close to there.

I went over to his place after my appointment at the college. This is only the second time I’ve met him in person. (last time was in April. We went to see a Tally Hall concert. ) Basically we are SO COOL. I brought my violin, and we played violin-piano duets. He also tried to teach me how to improvise, but that failed because it’s incredibly difficult to break twelve years of classical training XD And besides all that, I’m EXTREMELY insecure/nervous about everything, so it was weird. But it was a cool thing to learn a bit about, and I’m really glad he wanted to teach me ^_^ He taught me a couple songs he wrote (which were awesome, btw, if you’re reading this) and we played a bunch of video game music, such as Zelda, Kirby, Yoshi, Mario, and Starfox.

Well anyway…I guess the moral of this story (even though there’s no “moral,” or “story,” present) is that I think it’s really awesome to have a friend who will just PLAY MUSIC WITH ME. I mean I’ve been in chamber groups/orchestras, and nothing quite compares with the relationships you form with those people. Especially in chamber groups, when you’re practicing and working together frequently. However, all those were semi-formal experiences, and when we hung out outside of rehearsal, no one wanted to whip out his/her instrument and play for fun, which is exactly what I did yesterday with Evan for quite a while. I hope I meet people in college who will play with me just for fun. Even now, I really want to get together an informal chamber group. I don’t know how realistic that is. I tried to have a duet with Joan during sophomore year, but that didn’t really work out because it was sort of on a whim. When you’re dealing with most classical string players, if something isn’t TOTALLY STRUCTURED, then it just won’t happen. (This relates DIRECTLY back to the improv thing.) Which I understand, but I’m a little looser than that, or at least I’d really like to think so >_>.

My idea of “living on the edge,” is placing all the beats in weird places on cadenzas. What. A. Rush.

Well, thanks for being awesome, Evan And to all you classical string players out there; just try to loosen up and have fun once in a while. Things can get REALLY competitive/uptight, and if you don’t let go once in a while, something that you love doing is going to become something you dread. Or something that eventually gives you a stroke. LOL. (Wtf, not funny???) So mess up on purpose, change around the piece you’re working on, whip out your instrument and dance around while you play! (I DON’T DO THAT >_> )

Not that this is relevant, but making up interpretive dances to orchestra music is LOADS of fun.

…Bye!