New Bow Arrived.

It is lighter than my old bow so will have to get used to the new action. Already feels like I can play faster with it and switching strings seems easier.

New Bow

Finally buying a better bow. I've inherited 3 and only one of the 3 is even partially acceptable. The local music shoppe says it will cost $85 to fix my good cello's broken neck so I decided to celebrate and purchase a Coda prodigy cello bow from cellos2go.com.

Spare Cello

Picked up a student cello (Cecilio CCO-200) for $250 from craigslist this evening so I would have a spare for my chamber music class until my real cello gets fixed. It has low bridge issues which effects the "C" String but otherwise it plays okay. At least the low bridge makes thumb position easier. A new Cecilio CCO-200 runs around $385 online with shipping and would still need to be adjusted. I'll have to be satisfied with this deal as renting a cello would have cost me $130 (minimum 3 month rental). My Suzuki teacher friend came along with me to look at the cello and thought it adequate for my needs. I wasn't enthusiastic but I guess I am spoiled by the way my good cello plays and sounds.

Second Life Project

Our class had to build a museum exhibit in Second Life this term.  It was fun but I didn't have a lot of time to devote to it.  Here's a classmate who did a really cool one.

Ouch!

Just dropped my cello after chamber music class and the neck broke off. What am I going to do?

Object Lesson on What Happens When You Don't Practice Enough - Recital Horrors

The chamber music recital was moved up two weeks due to various scheduling issues.  I would have preferred to just have the Schubert Quintet deferred until next September but was outvoted.  The cellists didn't get a chance to practice the week before the recital nor warm-up beforehand.  Intonation was very very very bad.    Chamber music teacher said that it was a very ambitious piece for our skill set.  However, the piece was a lot of fun to practice and the moments where it comes together are nice -- too bad they only last a few phrases at a time.  For masochistic and morbid curiosity sake I will post the video.

WARNING: listening to this version of Schubert's Quintet in C will hurt your ears.  

My husband's piece, the Vivaldi Mandolin didn't fare much better.  He decided it was a horse race and took off running.  I did get to play the viola for this piece.

Interestingly enough, it must actually sound like a real musical piece as YouTube sent me this warning "Your video "2012-04-Mandolins.m4v", may have content that is owned or licensed by Music Publishing Rights Collecting Society and The Harry Fox Agency, Inc. (HFA), but it’s still available on YouTube! In some cases, ads may appear next to it."

The guitars memorized their piece.  It's sweet and short.

The Boccherini Sextet wasn't too bad.  I sat out on this one.  Three cellists would have been overkill.
It should have been faster.

Excitement in Chamber Music

Read through Schubert's Quintet in C Major this evening.  I'm to do Cello I.  We did it at half speed and it wasn't too horrible!  By the time we finish working on the first movement, I'll probably be finally able to read tenor clef :)  It's such a lovely piece.  Will have a lot of work to do to get it ready for a recital.

2012

Well, its a new year.  Time to dust off the cello.  Signed up for chamber music class once again.  Had taken the last term off due to conflicting travel schedules.  Signed up hubby as well, he needs an excuse to play the violin.

Added another FSU online class towards the MLS degree to my schedule (5 of 12 to go) -- Museum Informatics which looks like it might actually be fun -- one of the projects is building a virtual museum exhibit using Second Life.

Language studies continue -- Chinese once a week with a new friend so I don't forget what I used to know.  Adding Korean to the mix with an online Rosetta Stone course since hubby and I are going to Jeju, Gyeongju and Seoul for our twentieth anniversary May 1st.

Add accounting work for tax season, stamp club work, and  helping out the local magnet school to totally book my dance card until April 27th when I plan to run away, far away -- first Korea, then China and Mongolia.