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"Dickson, You are so lazy you would marry a pregnant woman!" - H.S. Math Teacher

Winspear Concert

Yesterday I performed with the Taiwan Univeristy Alumni Association Chorus at the Winspear Center and out of my many years with the choir, I think yesterday was one of our best concerts. Ironically, yesterday was also one of our worst organized concert as 5 hours before the concert, no one knew who was playing the piano for our finale song. Further, when I opened up my violin case, I was shocked to find my E string missing. In the end, I had to play on 3 strings instead of 4. With ease!

It was a long day for me starting at 12:30 pm with nonstop rehearsals and practicing all the way till the end of the concert. We had a variety of different performances from choir songs, a lot of solos, dances (yes, Mabel was dancing), guest performances from the Children's choir, a Spanish dance group and of course my duet with my brother. I only have a few pictures (most of them during rehearsals) as my brother and I were preoccupied but hopefully in a week or two our photographer/videographer will get the pictures and videos published and I will be able to post them up! For now, check out what I have. Don't expect any pictures of Mabel...or videos for that matter!

We celebrated our concert with a post dinner party at the old Marco Polo restaurant but there were fewer people than I expected there. Normally, we would fill the entire restaurant but I guess being a Sunday most people had to work the next day so just went home instead. In any case, the 10 tables that we did have there did not generate enough noise to drown out the mahjong playing that was happening in a room at the back of the restaurant. I went to check them out and the players looked intense! Gotta love chinese restaurants!

Pictures.
Published 11-07-2005 11:16 by dicksonw
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KoGs said:

So what have you learnt from all this? People work best under chaotic, time constraint situations. I know for me personally I can only retain information required for an exam if I begin to study it hours before the actual exam.

Next time you have a concert like this, you should ask me to go. I would definately like to go listen. That is if you can get me in for free. I like how on that flikr site you can put little box things around the picture with captions if you hover your mouse over it.

How exactly do you play with 3 instead of 4? Do you alter your hand positioning to give off the impression that you are making the sound from the fourth?
July 12, 2005 1:47 AM
 

Dickson Wong said:

Yeah thats why I pull all nighters :)

Music is composed of 7 notes that repeat in a pattern: C, D, E, F, G, A, B. THe difference between any given two C's or two D's is the pitch. SInce I was missing a string, I was limited to playing at a lower pitch.
July 12, 2005 6:01 PM
 

KoGs said:

I still do not understand. So you played the entire song normally as if you had 4 strings? If so, that doesn't sound all that challenging at all lol.
July 13, 2005 12:33 AM
 

Dickson Wong said:

If you look at a piano, you will see the white and black keys have a pattern. Looking at the whites on the piano, you have keys:
C, D, E, F, G, A, B, C, D, E, F, G, A, B, C... and it keeps repeating. So if your piano was chopped in half, all you would really have to do is just start playing at one of the lower "patterns". On the violin its a little different because you have different strings (G, B, A, E) and thus the finger position to play for example, the note 'B', on one string will be different from the position of the note 'B' on another string because of where the sequence begins. The difficulty is more just translating the finger position in your head from one string to another but once you get use to it it really isn't that hard.

Its just that you don't usually walk into a performance missing a string :)
July 13, 2005 12:47 AM

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