It makes it very easy to get around, but not so nice for musicians. There are hardly any concerts in the summertime. This leaves many traveling to festivals around the world.

I like to stay home, so for me it means finding something else to do with my time. This year, I am going to be working at Disney doing odd jobs that require no special skills. Wish me luck! I’m hoping it is going to be fun. I do like people.

I’ll let you know how it goes!

First of all, let’s look at the left hand. The strings are round wound instead of flat wound like the viola. That means that the metal winding around the core of the string is round. This has a whole different feeling on my fingers.

There are also 2 of each string. This makes putting down the fingers very different feeling than the viola. In addition, it has frets. At first I thought this would make finding the notes easier. Boy was I wrong! Frets are unforgiving things. If I put my finger in  the wrong place, I’m not just out of tune, the note doesn’t even sound!

The neck is a lot longer than the viola, so the notes are farther apart from each other.  This means some stretching is needed.

Okay, now I’ll talk about the right hand. This part is freaking me out! Picks? I have never played a picked instrument! It feels weird holding a little piece of plastic. Also the movement is back and forth, like a flipping of the hand, as opposed to drawing the bow.

Eventually I will get better, but for now I am slow and steady. (The only way to really learn, in my opinion).

Someday I will put up a video. When I feel braver. For now, I’m just going to share how learning to do something new feels. So far, it’s pretty great. It’s helped me with teaching a lot. Now I remember what it felt like to do something different for the first time. The awkwardness, the frustration. It’s helping my patience.

I’m a little nervous about the promenade, because there is choreography! Each section plays something while walking onto the stage at the beginning of the piece, hence the promenade!

Hopefully I won’t trip! I’m sitting principal this week. Everyone has been wonderfully supportive and kind.

It should be a great concert. Oh! Yes, I should tell you where…Brevard Symphony Orchestra in Melbourne FL. Saturday at 8:00pm. It will be a fun one!.

Here we are in August, school starts in a couple weeks, the season slowly starts in September, and I am going out of my mind!

I am so looking forward to this year. Sarasota Orchestra is looking for a new conductor. I have never lived through a conductor search before, so I am excited to see what happens.

I will make it through these next 2 weeks. I guess I will have to find some projects to do.

We started our long drive on a Sunday morning. We were happy and ready to go!

When we got to Jacksonville, FL, we had 2 different cars pull up beside us and tell us we had a flat tire! We couldn’t even feel that one of the trailer tires had shredded.

We pulled off at the nearest exit, and as luck would have it, there was a closed restaurant with a large parking lot. Mike disconnected the truck from the trailer, and went on his way, leaving me and the dogs in the camper.

He found a WalMart close by, and they happened to have the exact tire we needed all ready to go. He put the tire on, and we were on our way.

That’s the old one. I was so happy I forgot to take a pic of the new one. You know what that would look like anyway.

Hobo finally went to sleep! It took her a while.

We camped in North Carolina that first night. It was lovely to relax.

The next day, we were on our way to Pennsylvania. We made the HUGE mistake of listening to the Garmin, and went right through the center of Washington DC! We ended up with our truck pulling a trailer on Pennsylvania Ave at one point during a detour.

Our third and final day of the trip was through Baltimore, and then NY City! We listened to the Garmin once again and ended up on the George Washington bridge right after a woman had died. We sat for an hour, only to go on the Bronx expressway right through the middle of the Bronx! Incredible traffic! We made it out of NY only to hit traffic in CT.

Yes, we drove through the Baltimore tunnel pulling a camper!

We finally arrived in Middleboro, MA and set up our long term camp.

The visit with family was wonderful! We had a very relaxing time and thoroughly enjoyed the cooler weather.

On our way back, we took the Tappen Zee bridge instead around New York City. It was a lovely drive.

We found a much better way to the PA campground, and got there with no event.

The next day, we were driving in Virginia, and all of a sudden we heard a huge noise on the side of the truck. Looking at each other asking “What was that???” we saw a Hyundai Tuscon bounce off our truck. We pulled over and spoke with the woman. She said she was sorry and had fallen asleep!

Her husband and Mike exchanged information. The dogs and I waited in the truck. Fortunately all of the really bad ways this could have turned out didn’t happen.

So here is the damage…

Looks like a big nothing. The truck still drove, so we all went on our merry way without any further ado.

We had peaceful driving the rest of that day and landed in NC where we were able to get some famous BBQ from Holt Lake BBQ. It was amazing and well deserved after the day we had!

The next day was our last on this adventure. Everything was smooth, except for the dishwasher in the middle of the road in Georgia! No-one would move out of our way, so Mike did some fancy driving and got us around it with 5″ on each side!

Now we are home and safe.

We got the truck estimate. Here is where the story gets sad. They totaled it! It still has a beautiful motor, and runs perfectly, but fixing the damage costs more than 90% of the truck’s worth (according to Blue Book). So we were allowed to sell it for parts, or take the total.

We took the total.

Now we’re waiting for the check so that we can try to replace a great truck. It was a sad day when they took it away. Hopefully we can find another one with even close to as much personality as the old one.

Once you learn how to say no, and budget your time, it’s amazing how much can get done in one day. Then just keep doing that every day, and you will be amazed at your accomplishments.

I’m tired of people not being able to be honest. It’s not an easy thing, though. To be brutally honest with yourself about your ability is hard to do. You have to really pay attention and self-assess. Not easy when it comes to music. It’s much easier to just have a recording playing in your mind of some famous soloist or orchestra playing the piece you are working on than to actually listen to what is coming out of your instrument.

This is a key skill to succeeding in music. We are taught at a very young age to listen very critically to ourselves. That is the only way to fix problems. We have so many tiny details that must be fixed on a secondly basis. If we can’t hear these problems, we continue to practice incorrectly, and that sets us back instead of moving forward.

As we all know, we either improve or decline. We can’t practice one day, then take 4 days off, and expect to be at the same level. We will sound worse without daily attention. This doesn’t stop for the rest of our lives.

I guess the easiest way to become more honest is to record oneself playing. Listening back with an objective ear is key. The more times you record, the more critical your ear will become. Eventually, the need for recording will go away, since you will be such a good listener. I do have to say that I record myself every once in a while to make sure that what I think I’m hearing come out of my viola is actually what is happening. It isn’t always good news, but it keeps me honest!

All day long we make a series of choices that determine in which direction our day will go. These choices lead to certain results.

I’ve been thinking about this because it has been coming up in lessons frequently. You choose to practice or not on a daily basis. As a teacher, I hope the choice is to practice, since I am concerned with the future self of the student. I leave the lesson hoping that what I said helped, and inspires the student to run home and get to it.

I’m usually wrong.

That is the hard part. I hope that my students would always be thinking of their future self, but they usually aren’t. Contrary to popular opinion, I do remember being young. I remember not wanting to practice, and paying the consequences of those choices during the frustrating lesson.

I also remember when I did practice and how good it made me feel to accomplish things I had thought impossible.

A very wise person (random guy I met at a train stop once- I’m not kidding!) once told me that the best way to conquer laziness and procrastination is to tackle the thing you least want to do first. Get that out of the way, and everything else will fall into place. The more frequently you do that, the easier it becomes. It becomes your habit. Then you won’t be afraid to tackle anything, because you are in the practice of doing more difficult things first.

It has to be a choice that you make every day.

That is the role of the private music teacher. We not only guide you towards a career in music, but we hold you the student accountable. You know there is going to be a lesson each week, and so you practice accordingly.

When you become a professional musician, you are held accountable by yourself, your section, the conductor, and the whole orchestra. You become very aware of the quality that everyone would like to achieve. That level of perfection can only occur if everyone holds themselves accountable.

I believe that when you are growing as a young musician, you need to put yourself in as many situations as possible to hold your feet to the fire. The more frequently you feel pressure, the stronger you will become.