First off, last year I was a second violin since I had just made it into Symphony Orchestra that year. Freshman year I was in Concert Orchestra-- first violin. So this year my teacher moved me up to first violin and it's a big jump. I'm not used to all the notes in the really high positions, so I always have to listen to everyone else first. I've improved a lot though on recognizing rhythms when I'm just looking at the sheet music. Higher positions definitely need to be worked on with my private teacher!
For our concert that's coming up, we're playing "October" again, along with the piece "Light Cavalry Overture". If you've heard it before, you know that it goes extremely fast, with many notes in 5th position and 7th position-- my weaknesses! If you haven't heard it before or can't recognize it by the title, here it is...
As you can tell, I have reason to freak out about the playing test! It's 5:14-5:50 in the video. What my teacher does is he gives each section a part of the music to be tested on and then, because we're such a large orchestra (120 people total, maybe more) and listening to each of us individually during class would take away too much time from rehearsing, he has us record ourselves playing the test and then we email it to him. They're due on Monday... I'll be practicing a lot until then!
I'm still practicing for District Orchestra tryouts. I have the first two excerpts down (G Major Scale and Die Fledermaus) and I'm still working on the third excerpt (Tchaikovsky's "Romeo and Juliet Overture-Fantasy"). It has plenty of crazy high notes, so I'll be taking it extremely slow for a while. I have until November 3rd, so there's plenty of time!
That means more time to freak out about "Light Cavalry Overture".
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