Let me explain why crescendo and decrescendo: Because it's natural expression of human voice also in heartfelt speaking. And as the most popular issue in music has always been love between man and woman, love is the strongest kind of expression you find in music. Love talk, whispering between people in love comes deep from the diaphragm and the sounds tend to start soft, crescendo gently and finally end softly again. So it makes sense to play long notes with crescendo and decrescendo to add the natural feeling of human expression--unlike a primitive electrical tone generator which expresses nothing but plain, dull frequencies. We humans have the gift of feelings and can do more than that. Which is a big part of musical expression and way more essential than effects like vibrato.

Fran said
My immediate goals are to play in tune and get my bowing to improve. There are times I do 2 strings at once accidentally. I try to concentrate on these areas and yes I see now that I do need to learn to play with dynamics so there's always something to learn.  That's what keeps the violin a fun challenge!  I love it!     

You're perfectly right, first things first. It's also my first rule.

I just referred to your sentence, "Suggestions please so I can improve. Been playing since June." But of course, after about 6 months playing, watching dynamics might easily cause a confusion like hitting two strings at one time. The brain can focus on only one thing at a time, so our bowing must work like automated before we can focus on more things. Anyway, if I listen to older recordings of my playing, it seems I was involving dynamics without thinking about it at some point.

Frankly, I've always been afraid of the long notes of the subject, because I easily hit one more string there as well. And sometimes it still happens. During my concert I accidentally plucked the E string violently with a sharp part of my bow during these long notes. For a moment it was like a shock, but I started trilling right a way and this was a great measure to confuse the confusion and then go on like nothing had happened. But I really think, this accident happened, because I'm still a bit afraid of the long notes.

MACJR said
Okay, two things that come to mind. Right now, my playing skills are probably similar to Fran's, give or take a little.
And two, that group project video was awesome. Awesome is not a word I hand out like cheap candy either.
When my skills improve a bit more, I may be willing to participate in a project like that.
MACJR  

So you can record, Canon in D is baroque style. And it's also a relatively easy chord sequence to start improvisation. I tend to see that Canon as step two and put Cavalli's dancing bear chaconne on step one. Of course I recommend C major for the start.

I know that recording issue very well. It took at least a year to feel secure enough and not feel even more insecure just because a recorder is running. My first performances in August and October 2015 I struggled just because the light was confusing me. It's like a fly walks over your music stand and your so irritated that you have to stop playing.

The bowing issue depends on feeling safe on the fingerboard side. As soon as I was able to at least partly defocus from the fingerboard, I had the chance to work on bowing. Progress got faster then.

You had talked about keyboard and my strategy is always: build a connection between playing violin and keyboard. The keyboard is helping the violin if you improve your ear by working on chords. And here I just pointed out an easy option to start.