I don't have time for a real post...

Because I am going to bed at 10 tonight, which is in three minutes. This is so that I won't be miserable tomorrow. I NEED SLEEP.

Anyway, people that are just APPLYING for colleges, and not auditioning into music programs TOO, have it sooooo easy. Ughhh. Sorry to whine. There is just SO much to think about. I will go into detail another time. Because it's my bedtime. Bye :)

My brain hurts...

kind of literally. I feel like I have the beginnings of a headache, and I never get headaches. I just practiced piano for an hour and a half or so. "Clare, that isn't a very long time." You're right, it isn't. I'm far from done for the day. At my piano lesson yesterday my teacher asked me how much time I'm putting into the Beethoven every day, and I said maybe an hour or an hour and a half. She told me that when she was preparing to play a concerto she practiced maybe three hours a day. Which is good. Good, good, good. I hadn't had a lesson in a few weeks, and I needed someone to crack the whip. I've realized that I need a certain amount of structure in my life, like a lesson every couple weeks, or else I don't get work done. And with this performance coming up in (hopefully) December, work needs to get done.
I say "hopefully" because Sharyn, my youth symphony director, told me that if I don't feel prepared in time for the December concert, we can push my performance of the first movement of Beethoven's first piano concerto back to the next concert in March. I would normally take the March option, but the December concert is at McIntyre Hall (REALLY nice hall, REALLY nice piano) and I'm pretty sure the March one is in some church somewhere (questionably nice, piano of questionable quality.) So I really hope I can have this learned in the next couple months.
Anyway, maybe my head hurts because I was practicing the same 6 or 8 measures over and over and over. I have realized, with the help of my piano teacher, that the only way to learn this is practicing it SLOWLY with the metronome. If I think I already have the passage down, practicing it AGAIN and AGAIN SLOWLY with the metronome.
It's a really beautiful concerto though. I'm excited to have it all learned. :)

Dude, FML.

So I'm driving home from the football game, and I'm about 10 minutes away from my house and I turn left at this light. I'm in the middle of turning, and my car fricking STOPS in the middle of the road. The wheel gets really hard to turn, and I barely manage to get to the side of the road (there was no shoulder) and it just coasts to a stop, and it won't go at all so I turn it off. I freak the @$%# out and call my dad, who, along with my mom and sister, is conveniently out of town for the night. He tells me to try to start it again, so I do, and it starts and I stay on the phone with my dad while I drive over the bridge. There is only a tiny bit of gas in the car, so I think that might be part of the problem. I'm almost to the gas station, when it does it AGAIN. So I pull over onto a side street and restart it AGAIN, and cross the road to the gas station. As soon as I got gas, it was fine. But the thing is, I wasn't completely out! My dad said that he thinks that has something to do with it, though, and that it's not good for the car to run on only a little gas.
So that was not fun at all. But I got home, and now I'm fine. I'm home alone though, and just a little freaked out, which I know is stupid. I don't think I would be if it hadn't been for the car incident. Also, about half an hour ago I heard A NOTE ON MY PIANO. I freaked the @&#$ out again, and I walked into the living room and it was my damn cat. I related this story to my best friend on facebook; her response? "Clare, it's ok to say fuck." I'm like, wow, thanks for the sympathy.
Other than these two incidents, I've had a pretty decent day. I think I'll blog more tomorrow; I should probably get ready for bed.

First day of school tomorrow!!!!

So much for finishing that last post tomorrow.

Anyway, CHOIR.

So at the end of last year, I tried out for concert choir, which is basically the highest one if you don't count the smaller groups like Bel Canto and Synergy, and I got in, I'm pretty sure for one reason and one reason alone. That is the fact that I am a decent sightreader, meaning depending on how hard it is I can often look at a tune and be able to sing it, using my knowledge of music theory, it if you give me a starting note. When I had to do that during my audition I did pretty well. My actual voice sucks as of now. I'm hoping to improve it, a lot.

I am an alto. When I was auditioning and she was testing my range, I am like 99.999% sure that she said "A soprano!" when I finished. And for my sister, "An alto!" (My sister got into advanced treble, and is an alto without question; she can easily sing down to a low C.) So I thought that I was a soprano, and I learned the soprano part for the song that Ms. Lizama gave us to practice. I went to Emma's and she helped me learn it. Emma is AMAZING. She's our section leader with Lindsee, who is also AMAZING. A few days later, I got a facebook message from Lindsee, telling me about an alto sectional. I told her I would love to come, but I wasn't an alto! She told me I was on the list of altos, and she called Ms. Lizama and asked about it, and apparently I was an alto all along! So I went to the sectional, and learned the alto part. And I definitely AM an alto, but it's weird because I'm so sure she said I was a soprano at first. Anyway, I'm happy being an alto. :)

We had the concert choir retreat on Saturday and it was really fun. I can tell choir is going to be awesome. (Of course, band wins over everything, but still.) It's a very different feeling not being the one who pretty much always has their part down. Emma and Lindsee are so eager to help everyone out though, even though they could totally just ignore everyone if they wanted and wallow in their little bubbles of perfection.

But choir is just the beginning of all the exciting stuff that's going on this year!! The rest will be posted about soon.

Band camp!

It started today, and goes through Friday. Today was just seniors (ME!) and freshmen, and we taught them how to march. We also worked on some music... our field show this year is going to be Earth Wind and Fire, and one of the two songs is In the Stone, which has really tricky rhythms and which I've never heard, and also which I got to lead a sectional on. That was difficult... thank God I had Gracie there to count off for us and to make it less awkward. Yeah, it was awkward standing there for like an idiot for probably two whole minutes trying to decipher the rhythm in two measures before I could even attempt to teach it to the freshmen, who had no clue what was going on. But we managed, and they aren't really bad at all for freshmen on their first day of band.



"What other exciting musical things are you participating in this year, Clare?" Oh, I'm glad you asked! Because this year, I'm in CHOIR!



Me, to two of my friends last year: "I'm thinking of being in choir next year."



Them: "Wait, so you would.....sing?"



Me: "Um, yeah...."



They bursted out laughing uncontrollably.



Yeah, I never really considered singing in any ensemble or really anywhere outside of my car until last year... until I thought about it and realized there were a few really good reasons for me to try out.

1. I'm going to be a music major, and don't music majors have to take some classes that involve singing? And wouldn't it be embarassing if I had to sing in front of people and I had never really done it before? Because I have NEVER really done it before, unless you count the solo I had in the second grade play.

2. I think it will really help me with ear training and intervals and stuff... I'm not really doing any formal ear training, but more and more when I hear an interval, I try to figure out what it is, and when I hear a chord, I try to figure out what kind of chord it is, and WHAT chord it is relative to the key, etc. etc., and I'm getting better and better at it. And I think I would be EVEN better at it if I approached it from a different angle, that being my voice. Does this make any sense? Oh well, it does to me.

3. Our choir is REALLY GOOD. I like playing with people who are really good, because a.) Well, it sounds good, and b.) it's a challenge. So I assume that it'll be fun singing with people who are really good, and under a really good director.

I'm going to cut this off and finish it tomorrow, because I should really go to bed...

:)

:)


I guess I don't have that much to write about. I haven't posted in a while though.



"How is your summer going, Clare?"


It's going great, thanks for asking! I went to Wenatchee, where three of my friends and I went to the waterslides. Well, the waterslides were actually in Chelan, but we stayed at Natalie's grandma's house in Wenatchee. She goes over there all the time, because a bunch of her family lives there, and this time she convinced her mom to take us along. It was fun. I got this ridiculous looking sunburn on my back, because my friend Natalie (this is a different Natalie; 2 of my best friends have that name) did not do a very good job with the sunscreen.



Me: "Are you SURE you got it all?"



Natalie: "I'm POSITIVE. If you get burned, you can slap me."



I did end up slapping her, but I was lying on the ground at a weird angle and she was standing up so it was more of a weird awkward pat.

Oh, and Natalie C's grandma doesn't speak English, so that was a liiiittle awkward... her mom speaks both English and Spanish; I'm pretty sure she came to America when she was 12 or so. Her mom, not her.

Speaking of grandparents, mine got here today from Kansas! They drove up here and visited some places on the way, and they're giving us their blue van and flying back in a few days.. or a week.. actually I have no idea how long. And buying a new car. We might sell our red minivan... I hope not though, because then I can drive it and my mom can have my grandparents' car. :) Well actually I already drive it, but I can't some of the time because it's my mom's car. I'm going to start teaching piano lessons soon, so I could pay for gas.

Anyway, about a week ago my sister and I got back from the East Coast. Usually our whole family goes, but we couldn't afford it this year with the house remodel and the economy and all. We weren't going to go at all, but my two aunts have frequent flier miles that they said my sister and I could use. (Apparently you can give them to people? I have no clue how it works.) But they offered to fly us over there, so we did. My dad's family all lives on the East Coast, and they have a beach house on the Jersey shore. So we went there for a few days, and then my aunt took us to NYC and we saw South Pacific!! It was amazing. We ate dinner there and then my aunt drove us to her house in Philly. She lives a few blocks from the Liberty Bell, and her house was in the movie National Treasure! You know the part where they're being chased and they're running on top of the houses? It's one of those.

So, now I'm back, and I'm not doing much for the rest of the summer, except for BAND CAMP!! :P Oh, and I'm working on my piece. I'm making progress, but I still have a really long way to go.

Oh, I saw INCEPTION!! AMAZING MOVIE. SEE IT. I've seen it twice, and it was even better the second time. Mostly because the plot is really confusing and I caught a lot more of the details the second time around. I am seeing for the third time later today. :D

Oh, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt? You are ridiculously attractive. Juuuust sayin'.

Okay, my friends should be here any minute so I better go. This post has actually been stretched out over a long period of time, and I'm just now finishing it.