The Quiet Girl

As you all know, my Junior Recital is in 2 weeks, on February 9th! I feel very excited and nervous at the same time. I have had my dress for quite some time now. I just recently bought shoes.  I love the bright blue of the dress! I found this dress at the Goodwill. It looked like it had been worn only once, twice, or never at all. It was only $15, so it was a deal. I especially love the sequin design on the bodice. The shoes were from Shoe Department Encore. I found these in the Roanoke mall. They were only $16 and have cushioning in them, which is a bonus since I need something comfortable to play clarinet in! I love the black sheer ribbon and bows on the back.... Here's a close up picture for the detail! I still have some jewelry to get. I am not sure what I will wear as far as jewelry goes. It needs to be professional and not too gaudy. Just for fun, I drove into a lovely sunset the other day. I was able to get pictures of the sun setting on the road.

 There was a snowstorm in almost all of Virginia. We got about a foot and a half (calling for 2 feet) of snow.  I tried making a snowman, but the snow was powdery rather than stiff. I ended up with 2 and both turned out very small.  My neighborhood could look like a Thomas Kinkade painting.

I am taking a Pro Tools class this semester! I am VERY EXCITED. It has been a dream of mine to learn Pro Tools.I do like PreSonus Studio One, but AVID's software is the world's industry standard. It has many more features that Studio One does not. And it probably has hundreds more MIDI instruments. I hope to use Pro Tools in my career many times. I am actually saving up for it right now (putting extra change into my kitty bank). What I want to do is learn in this class, then purchase the software and use what I have learned.  I am also learning Logic Pro.  Logic has a very good layout, and I look forward to using it as well, but I am used to PC's. Logic only works on Mac. Someday, I may get a Mac just for recording. But a little MacBook Air is $1500+! That is not the budget of a broke college student! My first choice is to buy Pro Tools (It is the #1 industry standard anyway) and put it on my PC.                                         It has been

First of all, I happened to feel well enough to go to band the day after I wrote that "I'm a sicko"..... I called my band director the morning of the first day and he told me to feel better. I came in time for the first rehearsal. Needless to say, I blew too much air to feel if my sinuses were uncomfortable or not. We practiced from Friday afternoon until evening, all day Saturday, and one 90 minute rehearsal on Sunday. The inside of my lip had a dent in it by the time I was done. It literally felt like it was going to cut open at any moment (that is probably an exaggeration)! I play the E-flat piccolo clarinet for most of our pieces, which requires more mouth muscles. I do like the shrill runs I have to play, they are obnoxious and sound like a dog whistle sometimes!                                           (This is the E-flat clarinet, isn't it tiny?!) As the Liberty University Wind Symphony, we play modern, contemporary advanced music for wind band. We p

I have had BALLOON HEAD for the past few days. I took SEVEN PILLS today, vitamins included. It just happens to be the day before I have to go to Wind Symphony practice. These practices are very long, and the director wants to go over a lot of music. I love the music we are going through. But with an infected sinus and headaches by the hour, it makes it painful to circulate air through your head and lungs to play the clarinet, even for a short time. I just hope the steroids do their duty and the kombucha works.

I have been preparing for my upcoming Junior Recital. I am playing a piece by twentieth-century composer Robert Muczynski called "Time Pieces". It sounds very quirky in the first and third movements. The second movement is rather dark. The other piece is a French piece by Ernest Chausson entitled "Andante et Allegro." I am also premiering a solo I wrote entitled "Solitude." You can listen to it in the video above. After a Freshman year of a rude and angry clarinet professor (who was fired for lying after the year was done), I had the privilege of taking lessons under a new professor, Dr. Hibbard. She has added to my playing skills very immensely! She is very goofy and fun, making my learning experience great! Dr. Hibbard took me to an International Clarinet Association conference in Ohio and taught me what professionalism is. She also introduced me to unaccompanied music. Unaccompanied music  is written purely for effect, not for tonality or for mus