Top 5 Classical String Musicians:
1. Gary Karr (Double Bass)
2. Edgar Meyer (Double Bass)
3. Yo-Yo Ma (Cello)
4. Vanessa Mae (Violin)
5. Elspeth Hanson (Viola)

Top 5 String Alternative Trios, Quartets, Bands etc.:
1. Apocalyptica
2. Rasputina
3. Break of Reality
4. Kronos Quartet
5. Tran-Siberian Orchestra

Top 5 Classic Rock Bands/Artists:
1. Pink Floyd
2. Jeff Buckley
3. Led Zeppelin
4. Queen
5. Eagles

Top 5 Christian Rock/Metal Groups:
1. Underoath
2. As I Lay Dying
3. Red
4. Thousand Foot Krutch (TFK)
5. Skillet

Top 5 Instruments:
1. Double Bass
2. Piano
3. Guitar
4. Banjo
5. Cello

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Besides my fundamental desire to become the “best” there is in blogging, a lot’s been going on lately. UIL was Saturday and for lack of better terms – we sucked. The judges apparently thought so as well. In both sight reading and contest prepared music we made 2-2-3s. 3 is the lowest score, 2 is in the middle, and 1 in the best. We made no 1s. I’m rather disappointed, but it’s more of a bruised ego than anything. Only one out of our four different string orchestras at school made sweepstakes (1-1-1) and it wasn’t even the top group – they made a 1-1-1 in contest music but a 1-1-2 in sight reading. Oh well. Today we were supposed to get audition music for the next year of orchestra, but our conductor hadn’t run all of it off, so we shall receive it tomorrow. I’m looking forward to it.

My greatest bit of news to share with the world: I have a job! I had an interview to day in response to an e-mail I had written, and I was accepted for the job. I start work tomorrow, and luckily it’s only after school and on Saturday. They’re closed Sunday. Anyway, the place is called World Music, and it’s a local music store right next to my AA meeting. How convenient is that? Quite literally, my AA home group is a few stores down from World Music. Both are within walking distance from the house. Tomorrow, I go in and I’ll be filing, organizing, and cleaning. I’m allowed to teach, but first I must get my own clients and refer them to the music shop. I’ll probably wait for the summer to start teaching again simply because… What’s the point of teaching middle school kids who’ve already had a year of teaching under another instructor? I like the fresh out of elementary school, just picked out their instruments kids. They’re much more fun! Anyway, I think the point I’m trying to make is that I’m VERY excited!

TAKS is coming up as well, and I’m not looking forward to it at all. I had a tutorial to go to this Saturday, but I had to go to UIL instead. Luckily, there’s one more this weekend. TAKS starts next Tuesday and I have testing Thursday and Friday as well. Joy! I plan to spend much of the weekend studying, preparing, and getting LOTS of sleep! I hope to score well on the TAKS tests. I’m also trying to get prepared (or at least start the process) of taking the ACTs and SATs. I need as many shots as I can get at those tests so I can take my best score and apply to a college that I really want to go to. Like Rice University in downtown Houston! That’s been my dream college for a while now, but I’ll probably have to transfer in after I go to University of Texas or North Texas State University for a while. I’ve decided not to go to community/junior college to start out simply because it’s too many transfers and I if I didn’t go to a major university before Rice, that’d be a HUGE leap from community college to a big prestigious school.

Although I have lots of college plans, I must first graduate high school, which is what I’m working on now. I’m taking two college dual credit courses next year – English and U.S. History. Aside from that, I also have to maintain a steady job (World Music, hopefully), eventually get a car, and be able to support myself financially. So, it’s a long process that will most likely take a couple of years, but I’m looking forward to it. It’s nice to be free and to grow and make my own decisions, which is definitely not something I was able to do a year ago.

I celebrated 11 months on the seventeenth of April, so that was really exciting. God’s definitely given me more than enough blessings in life, and I pray I continue! Until next time!

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Contest consists of two divisions – performance of prepared music and sight reading. Sight reading is my strong point and I love it. What happens is you get a piece of music that has never been seen by the orchestra before and we have seven minutes to go over it, shadow bow, look at key and time signatures and then play it. If you make any noise while going over the music, aside from asking the conductor questions, you are disqualified. I’m pretty nervous about that one; we have one rowdy bunch of orchestra kids in my class! The conductor can sing the different parts but there is absolutely no playing on the instruments until we play the entire piece. It’s exhilarating!

I’ve also been job hunting – it’s offically been approved by my Probation Officer. After a few days of getting applications and not turning them in, I think I’ve found the ideal job for me. I’ve done this job before and I love it. I want to teach music again. When I started high school, I was still in contact with my middle school orchestera director, and I’d have her refer incoming students to me for private lessons. I had about two or three clients I worked with once a week each and it was amazing. Being on house arrest, I would most likely have to have my students come to the hosue, and I’d also have to get back in touch with my middle school director, which I’m actually looking pretty forward to.

My old middle school director (Ms. C. I’ll call her) always rooted for me from day one. When I started playing, she got me passionate for the music along with my private music tutor. I have a lot of fond memories with my middle school orchestra, as well as not so great. I started in the beginner’s orchestra in sixth grade and by the end of the semester, I was moved to Intermediate – a first for the school to have a beginner move to a higher level in the middle of the year. 7th and 8th grade, I was first chair in the top orchestra as well as first chair regions in the 2004-2005 school year. I went to several camps and improved and improved.

Around seventh grade was when I started getting bad into drugs. I’d do them at school and then go to orchestra class. Ms. C has seen me so messed up out of my mind, but she’s always been there for me. I think I have an ammends to make. I would go to class messed up and have to leave to the nurses office, where my mom would then proceed to drive me to the ER to see if there was anything they could do. I’m so blessed and happy to say that I’ve cleaned up my act as well as my drug addiction.

Speaking of my mom, we had our visit and it was great. She left about two weeks ago and I was pretty sad to see her go, but I’ll most likely be going up there this summer and taking distance leaning courses through Texas Tech, to get some of my missing credits. Mom and I got to bond a lot and it was a lot of fun. We laughed, we played around, we just had a really good time. It was so nice. I’m beginning to think that with sobriety do healthy relationships really come.

All that aside, life has honestly been pretty up and down. My friend continues to tell me that I’m blowing her off, when really… My sobriety is more important than hanging out with friends. It’s irritating because I’d love to tell her that, but I don’t think that she would understand. She doesn’t drink or drug, but she’s also not in the program. She lives in the same town as my probation officer’s office, so everytime I go she asks if we can hang out. And everytime, I have to tell her that I go to women’s meeting with my sponsor and go to dinner afterwards. Which was amazing, by the way. Such a strong group of women!

I don’t know how all that will be resolved, but it’s in God’s hands and for now, I’m not going to worry about it.

I wrote this during my study hall period, and the bell is about to ring for my next class which happens to be English. My favorite! We’re still working on our research paper as well as reading Of Mice and Men. I read that book once in 8th grade and loved it. It’s really nice to read it again. Although I am on a roll and culd probably write for hours, class comes first and now I must depart. Farewell and have a BLESSED day.

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“Absence makes the heart grow fonder.” Have you ever loved something such as a hobby that it made you a better person? Have you ever lost that one special ting? If I didn’t have music in my life, whether it be creating music or just listening to it, I would not be here today. Music is my number one passion, my confidante, and the only thing that has kept me alive besides the Grace of God.

I think it’s crucial for everyone to have something they love – whether it’s a person place, hobby or idea that keeps them going and gives them guidance. For me, that thing is music. Music and performance have been in my life since I was a baby, still in my mother’s womb. My mother used to put headphones on her pregnant belly with me inside. I would jam out to Mozart, Beethoven, Bach, and Vivaldi. Once I grew older, I found the joy of my life. In middle school, I joined orchestra and started playing the double bass.

Really the double bass found me. I went to orchestra orientation and my new orchestra conductor asked me what I wanted to play. At that point in time, I had an attitude problem and I told her I really didn’t care. So she pointed at a big wooden instrument, bigger than a cello. I picked it up and even though I was tall, it still stood taller than me from the ground up. I experimentally plucked a string. It was actually the E string, the lowest string on an upright bass. It had such a deep, rich tone. I immediately fell in love. From there, I learned how to read music and taught myself piano, guitar, drums and the violin.

There have been times in my life where I have felt a lot of regret, shame and guilt over the things I have done in my past as well as things that have been done to me. These things affected me in such a way that I started to act out. I began using drugs and started cutting myself with razorblades. Because of this, I lost my music. I started getting locked up, sent to rehabilitation centers, and was arrested on a consistent basis.

Music in my eyes is the Universal Language. My double bass carried me not only physically to other places, but also through my trials and tribulations. Yet, at the same time it showed other people how I was feeling. That’s just something one musician can see in another.

The way one creates such a melodic, melancholy vibrato is beautiful to me. I believe my emotions flow straight through my fingertips onto the fingerboard and strings of my bass. Have you ever heard an instrumental duet? Notice how each instrument’s voice battle each other, loves each other or even cajole each other. I also believe musicians communicate through their instruments – a language of love and passion or anger and strife, a language of happiness and joy, or sadness and depression.

Loving music so much and then having it taken away from me has definitely taken a toll on my spirit; however, I also believe this test has made me stronger and merely love music even more. Music has always been there for me when nothing else had been there, aside from the love of my higher power. I believe with all my heart that God and music are the only things that really, truly make me happy. Music keeps me going no matter what and for that I thank God!

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