inspiration...

my siblings keep telling me i need to start blogging again. well anyways, here we go. i'm back home for the summer and it's kinda weird. i like being at school, and when i get back home and there's no schoolwork or anything like that i just get restless and wish i was back at college. i love college, it's so many millions of times better than high school, and i'd rather go to school any day than work. it's not necessarily working i guess, but it's the whole summer job thing. once you're out of college you have the freedom to pursue the type of career that you trained for, doing what you want to do. but in the summer, well for one thing you have to work to make money for college. if you didn't, you would just be plain bored doing nothing. but it's only a summer job so it's hard to find a job that really means something to you, motivates you, and interests you. the best parts of summer are definitely when i have chances to go on any type of trip. ty and my dad are on their 2nd work trip of the summer already, they went to a woodworking show in germany and now are at software training in montreal. so far i've been to vancouver/whistler. it was fun, but i want to go on a big exciting trip. my mum wants to go somewhere with me and my sisters, but so far there's not really anything planned out. in the meantime, i want to have some type of project this summer to keep me busy and so that i have a goal and something to work towards. i'm hoping that me and my siblings will make a cd that will rock everyone's socks off. tyler has recording equipment so i need to start thinking of some killer musical ideas. anyways that's all of my ponderings for now. seeya next time...

southern 08/09 video...

this is a video of pics of me and my siblings and friends throughout this school year. if you watch it, you might see yourself...

my composition...

so for analysis of musical forms class i had to write a canon the other week. a canon is a contrapuntal composition that employs a melody with one or more imitations of the melody played after a given duration. a simple example is row, row, row your boat. anyways, i wrote it between my classes on the day it was due and finished it on time to hand in. it's a 2 voice canon in c major, with the 2nd voice coming in at an octave below after one measure. so now i will let you hear this amazingly inspired composition, haha...



now we have to write the exposition of a fugue, which will be millions of times harder. it's supposed to be kind of like the equivalent of a term paper. so we'll see how that goes...

animation pictures...

ali gave me the idea to post an animation pictures blog...so here it is! now, for all of those who don't know what in the world animation pictures are, let me tell you. or rather show you. or how about both. ok, animation pictures are a set of at least 2 pictures (or sometimes 3, maybe even more) that are similar but slightly different. they are taken one after another, with slight or more varied movements from some people or objects in the pictures. in order to see the animation, you have to go back and forth between the pictures as fast as possible. the key here is not just going forward and then stopping, but after you reach the last picture, you have to press the back arrow and see them backwards, then go forwards, then backwards...and so on for quite a few times to get the full effect. they can get really funny sometimes, especially with ali's computer since it has the ability to go from picture to picture basically at the speed of lightning.
animation pictures were first discovered during orchestra tour to europe last year, when ali and danielle discovered 2 very hilarious pictures that we got of a fellow orchestra member. thus these types of pictures were called animation pictures. i'd love to show you this particular set of pictures, but it may cause embarrassment to this person if they found my blog. but i'll show you some others that we have happened upon. i wish there were a way to put them on here so you could arrow back and forth between them, but i guess if you wanna do that you can drag them to your desktop and try it from there. anyways, here are some examples:

this first set is of ali during this past christmas when we were getting our christmas tree:





next is from orchestra tour last year...the main animation is me going from sitting up to lying down:




also during orchestra tour is this group of 3 jumping pics in gronigen, holland...the first picture was an entirely separate jump from the last 2 pics, but i think they kinda work well all put together, mostly looking at AJ (the guy who's jumping really awesomely):





to end off, here's a set from last summer when we drove 2 hours into maine from new brunswick just so we could get to our 43rd state...so this is ali and tyler demonstrating "hip shifts" that was shown on a sign at a welcome center, telling you to change your position when you're driving for long periods of time...so first the sign, then the animation pictures:

tucker's 6th birthday...

so today we had a family birthday party for my nephew tucker. he turned 6 on january 6. whoa i just realized he had his golden birthday!! wow! anyways here's ali and coral and me playing with legos first off:



then we ate...and tucker's mom made him this awesome magic treehouse cake...



i don't know how she did it cuz it looks super hard to create. coral ended up with a really chocolatey mouth:



tucker got a stomp rocket toy so we were all playing in the backyard with that for like an hour. that was the funnest part. here's tuck about to try it out:



and here's coral with her quiver:



tucker and me:



and now i shall show you a couple videos of me and tuck teaming up on the stomp rocket:

#1:


and #2:

christmas break current events...

wow i haven't blogged in so long! for over a month! hopefully i'll have a chance to update this thing a little over christmas break. so um...ok here are some current events:

1-got through christmas concerts, gigs, my violin jury, and finals...
2-got home for christmas break yesterday morning after being stuck in seattle airport for awhile due to weather...my dad came to rescue us cuz our flight to kelowna was canceled...we got a flight arranged to vancouver for friday morning, but instead my dad drove 6 hours to seattle to pick us up, got there in the middle of the night, turned around and we headed home...
3-one of my suitcases got lost on the flight from minneapolis/st. paul to seattle...so i'm waiting for it to get here, and in the meantime i have no shoes cuz they're all in that suitcase (i was wearing some of ali's shoes on the trip home), so anyways, for now i have to rely on ali's shoes till my suitcase finds me...
4-kelowna is very cold and snowy! yay! right now it's around -20 degrees, but fluctuating up and down between -10 and -30...
5-i have an organ now! our church got a new organ, and one of the organists at our church got the old church organ, and so she gave me her old organ! i've been playing it tons since i got home...very extremely fun!...
6-i got a viola loaned to me from the music department at southern since i'm playing viola in a quintet next semester, so i brought it home and am trying to learn my part for the trout quintet...
7-i'm freezing constantly cuz my room downstairs does NOT really seem to get warm no matter if the heat is on or not...
8-ty moved to the room downstairs across from my room (he used to be upstairs)...so now we're just across the hall from me...it's pretty awesome having him down here...
9-it's hard not having my own car here and having to plan things out all the time since ali's, tyler's, and my cars are all at southern and we just have my mum's car and my dad's truck here...to split between 5 people...
10-i still have basically all my chrismas shopping left to do...so i have just a few days left to get everything!...

well merry christmas to you! have a great holiday season...

oh and here's a picture of tyler piggy-backing me to my room last night when i was too tired to walk down by myself, haha...you can tell from my eyes being basically shut that i was sleeping before this...i fell asleep upstairs and woke up enough to get down to my room...

remembrance day and poppies...

this video was created for remembrance day in memory of the veterans who served in the war...by honoring them with 2 minutes of silence, as is practiced at 11:00 am on november 11 (remembrance day) in canada...



this is another remembrance day video that reminds us to wear our poppies (a canadian tradition) because of the poppies in flanders fields...