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(6 votes) 
Fiddlerman said
Cool.
Did you do all the parts yourself?
Are you singing too?
Yes, I enter the stage with violin and 3 recorders (soprano, alto, tenor), plus I sing and dance (baroque dance—mostly chaconne, menuet, gavotte). So I have to change between instruments quickly within each piece. That's why I put vocal stanzas between violin and recorder solos, or I add a spinet interlude. I certainly play the spinet at home and use the recording as play-along. I'd like to perform with one pluck instrument player, but as I'm developing fast on violin, it's probably better if I wait. As a better violinist in a couple months I can get a better accompanist. I don't want to use my own spinet sound forever.
Thanks for saying "cool"!
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Demoiselle,
Very nice!
Thank you for the history lessons on baroque music never looked into it before.
Mark
Master the Frog and you have mastered the bow.
Albert Sammons
In the official baroque part I did more. When I realized there was just nothing, I knew I'm supposed to deliver there something. I read old German books, not even most Germans understand. So if I don't share that, nobody will, for people who are crazy enough to read that stuff are rare. Though, it doesn't feel to me like history if I read it. People of 300 years ago speak to me, so they must be real. Probably sounds to common people like living with specters. 
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@demoiselle thank you for these videos and performances! Wow! You are talented. as Pierre said-Very cool! Very nice to hear your performances. It is all very Pleasing. You have a talent for making music. It is so very nice to be transported'in time"cheers Toni
Vibrato Desperato.... Desperately seeking vibrato
Thank you, you're very nice! I just listen a lot and I'm extremely one-way in choosing CDs to listen to. I want to absorb the sonata style of the 1600s and early 1700s as deep as possible to be able to express myself that way. And I watch myself that I make it technically as easy and comfortable as possible while playing. That's why I do not vibrato yet, it would only add a spasm to my music and totally ruin my performance. I will add a little vibrato now and then after having developed an almost infallible routine (certainly not this year). Then I will be able to experiment with it in relaxed ways. Whenever I detect something unrelaxed in my playing, I stop and pause a couple minutes. After that break I will start with very simple phrases, keep it easy and then slowly dare more and more. I let it go as long as it sounds and feels relaxed.
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That is a very nice version of House of the Rising Sun. Of course I like the Violin parts the best. 
Vibrato Desperato.... Desperately seeking vibrato
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You'll do great @demoiselle - good luck with the event !
You say ...
I think, it will be fun and afterwards I will be free to play what gets me further ahead and what I find interesting. Every day trying a new piece is just right to keep my inspiration.
Well, indeed, exactly ! Nothing beats the thrill of a live performance - awesome - and afterwards - there's always something new to concentrate on !
Have a great time with it and let us know all about it afterwards ! 
I seriously recommend not copying my mistakes. D'oh - 
Please make your own, different mistakes, and help us all learn :-)
Thanks, I did enjoy my performance yesterday except for my first piece "Sonnerie de frère Jacque". I just felt all the pressure I had put on myself and could not relax. It probably was also the fear of Marin Marais' famous "Sonnerie de St.Genevieve du Mont de Paris" I had amended with the vocal part "Frère Jacque", although I fiddle it my way, so it isn't exactly more difficult than the rest of my repertoire. Whatever, the other three pieces worked fine (the above Gavotte by Bach, House of the Rising Sun, and the final Fireworks Music Minuet by Handel). I had a very happy feeling while playing House of the Rising Sun and the audience told me afterwards they liked it very much. I'm really glad I added that title to my program and also with the decision to start with French and finally sing the traditional Alan Lomax version ( http://folksongcollector.com/r.....ngsun.html ). The Lomax version is sooo beautiful and the French quite powerful.
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Great projects you are working on. Keep up the good work.
"The richest person is not the one who has the most,
but the one who needs the least."
Fiddlerman said
Great projects you are working on. Keep up the good work.
Thanks, I have to : 2 hours concert in our club in December (without pay of course). Today I figured I have 22 musical pieces now, after ruling some out. 21 are with vocals, from which 6 contain baroque dance sequences. In 8 the violin does play the melodic theme, which gets more and more now, after I had started to train myself with improvisation only. I think the concert challenge is a healthy thing, it's pushing me.
Right now pausing because during noon pause, between 1 pm and 3 pm, I better not practice—especially on this national holiday. Many renters in Germany don't give a darn, but I'm lucky enough, my neighbors never said anything against me playing my violin for quite some hours. So it's wiser to follow the rules.
During my 10 minutes act in our club's open stage (it belongs to the association where I'm an active member too) I came to the conclusion, that a music stand spoils the show. Therefore I printed lyrics on little cards and fix them under the tailpiece whenever I start a tune on violin.
It's easy to organize that for a short act of 10 minutes with 3 or 4 pieces, but currently I test out how to do it in my 2 hours concert in December. Because I really have to peak now and then, what instrument plays the next chorus. I have already decided, in which pieces I use soprano, alto or tenor recorder, for it definitely makes a difference if I use the one which sounds best in a certain piece.
I had made a wooden violin stand and stained it dark, like my 3-recorder-stand. And at the violin stand I fixed something where I can fix little sheets. But 22 little sheets for my 22 pieces would be chaos. Anyway I have joined most of them together to sets where I won't talk in-between. I don't have to announce and explain House of the Rising Sun, or Greensleeves—sparrows sing that from the roofs anywhere. I made little DIN A6 booklets with 4 pages and I glued tiny paper bags on the right page of each piece where I fix the lyrics cards. On the left page I can see what instrument solos in what chorus. So these booklets are designed for a set of 3 pieces. Later I will insert sheets with keywords for my announcements too. I think this way it's gonna work. I can fix these booklets now at the violin stand, which is not standing in front of me, but at the right side, so I can go there and learn what's next. Because sometimes, I'm just standing around with an empty head, having no clue what's next....
In the middle of the show there's gonna be a break and I'm planning to play harpsichord music from CDs—not the usual music they would play in the club. It's supposed to feel like a time travel until the show is over. When the audience comes in there will already be that harpsichord music and after the show as well for a while. We have stage light, but I told them to keep it off: all candles that evening and of course no microphone. Microphones haven't been invented yet of course. 
Today I realize once more I'm able to play faster and faster on the violin. In the meantime I even warm up raving over that track #5 presto movement (Handel is using the same melody in one of his organ concertos, calling it Gavotte there and I think it is a gavotte still):
https://www.muziekweb.nl/Link/.....o-continuo
Today was the first time I was relaxed playing that, trying quite risky things and having fun. So it's definitely a good idea to train improvisation to these Edition Peters play-alongs, starting with adagios and lentos, go on with andantes ect. and finally being able to try presto stuff. What I will play in my concert is definitely easier than all these MusicPartner tracks! In the end I will be able to completely relax and let the audience wonder how I learned to play the violin so soon. The improvisation method is THE method, if you don't care to adapt to director's and conductor's ideas, but develop your own individual style, they will possibly reject (because it's not integrating well into an orchestra sound). But you also have to constantly buy CDs with violin sonatas by professional players and play them over and over again. If you hear them even at night in your dreams, you've downloaded them deeply into your own musicality and they will influence your style. Because the professional violinists are playing together with harpsichord and cello and you have also harpsichord and cello on the MusicPartner CDs which will definitely remind you of phrases your professional models play on CD. Which is the same I did on trumpet before: Listening to famous jazz trumpeters and then raving over Aebersold jazz play-alongs. It works in baroque as well—you can act like Corelli and play your own phrases out of the cuff, leaving his notes aside. You must not necessarily become such a great violinist like Corelli, but that's not important. As I said before, you should also get yourself a keyboard (cheap one is okay) and explore the world of chords. And then why not start improvising to your own keyboard chords until you're fit enough for the slowest movements on MusicPartner CDs. That's how I did it.
Oh, on a very long note I'm able to add on a slow vibrato and maybe I will do that once or twice that evening. But I have so many ideas I want to put into my solos, maybe there won't be any time left to vibrate. Because I like trills much better or to develop a long note by changing intensity, speed, volume. A pure long note can be played with a very intense feeling and vibrato might only take something away of it. I will see, but it looks like I won't even have to practice vibrating: I will start doing it on very long notes in very slow pieces, those notes will get shorter daily and pieces faster...... ect./ect.
Why torture myself with training that superficial vibrating? It will come casually....
You're joining your first jam session tomorrow, I just read. That's awesome. You know what you practice for and that's a good thing. Going to concert alone means going there alone sitting and listening passively and finally coming home alone again. Going to a session means being musically passive plus meeting other musicians and share something. The chance to make new friends must be at least about a 1000% higher.
My 'problem' right now is, I changed my nutrition by going alkaline and it's like I'm on drugs like speed. I have more power, my violin seems to explode and sometimes it's really too much. I have to learn to step on the breaks and limit that.
My one and only instrumental: Ciaccona by Johann Heinrich Schmelzer. Photo was made in November, my violin looks different now: unvarnished and without First Frets.
The response is changing these days, the grab is weaker and I take more rosin. It is very obvious that this is a consequence of fall, as it gets colder outside. In September I had over 75°F in my rehearsal boot, now it's under 71°. It caused some confusion, the feeling is different while playing and I have to get used to it.
Last year I was kinda helpless and unable to explain things like this to myself. A beginner then usually assumes it is his or her own mistake. But it's really obvious: in summer, when I had 78°—at times even around 80°—there was way too much grab when I took just a little rosin. I was then wiping it of the strings now and then. Now I take a lot more, the grab is just right, and I don't wipe off any rosin.
I should share that in a rosin topic where beginners ask questions....
Very happy with my 'new' Bach sonata BWV 1035. I had always worked around it for I don't play E major. Today I loaded the movements on Nero Wave Editor and transposed it to F. Beautiful, especially the 3rd Siciliano movement (track #12)!
I had to make the play-along at my spinet for this will be the last song in my December concert. The lyrics have been written by the famous Berliner Lutheran pastor Paul Gerhardt in the 1600s. So I feel like I owe this song to our city and this man. The violin solo is a bit brisk and I have to get used to it. The title means in English: Now Rest All Forrsts.
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It occurred to me that you didn't have a video performance badge.
Added it. Thanks for all your posts.
"The richest person is not the one who has the most,
but the one who needs the least."
Fiddlerman said
It occurred to me that you didn't have a video performance badge.Added it. Thanks for all your posts.
Okay video badge, that's good--thanks.
I have a slow-slow day today, means I'm tired and not concentrated. But at least I did this to compare my Pachelbel Canon now to April. Because today I seem to tend to negative thinking too and was telling myself I'd play that piece just as bad as a year ago. Which certainly isn't true if I compare to half a year ago:
The bass line after the first version belongs to Marin Marais' "Sonnerie de Sainte-Geneviève du Mont de Paris". In my program I play the Canon twice and the first one in my vocal version where the violin is hardly soloing (because I couldn't manage it at all at my first performance in August 2015). I usually start the program with the Canon, but this version here is the second start after the break, it's just for violin and goes directly over to the Sonnerie. The trick in my kind of Sonnerie is, that I mixed Frère Jaque in, to change from violin to tenor recorder while singing just one stanza and later another stanza to change back to violin.
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