Action Hours

November 15 (4 hours)

Miss Floyd and the Chamber Orchestra planned to go paintballing November fifteenth. It was my first time going so I was a little nervous. I was scared of how much it would hurt to get hit, and I didn't really understand the rules of the game. We went to Dan's Land Paintball. It was two teams of five. Each team had two people that had played before and three people that never played before.
Before we got started, Dan explained everything to us. He talked to us about safety. There was a safety button on the guns so that, when it was pushed, the guns wouldn't fire. They also had orange barrel covers on the guns so just in case your gun did go off it wouldn't shoot anything. Dan also explained to us the rules.
The field was set up with all kinds of barriers in it. One team started on one side of the field and the other team started on the other side. When the game started, everyone ran behind a barrier and would peek out and shoot at people. The team that got all it's players shot first lost. It was pretty fun. Most of the time you would get hit when moving from one blockade to another, or when you are shooting at someone and they are shooting at you at the same time. Sometimes, though, you get hit by someone who you just don't see.
We played four games. My team one 3 out of four. I only got shot twice. That means I stayed in for the whole time on two of the games. Paintball was so much fun! My legs were soar the next day, though, from running, squatting, and getting shot.
We are talking about going paintballing again next semester. I hope we do. It was so much fun!

Orchestra Hours

Hey yall. We recently had a few of performances with orchestra.





August 28 (1 hr)


The string quartet I'm in, the LHS Emerson Quartet, performed at the PTSA meeting tonight. We palyed the Star-Spangled Banner and Eine Kleine Nachtmusik by Mozart. The crowd seemed to enjoy our performance. Performing in a quartet is always such a great learning and growing experience.





October 28 (1hr)


We had our fall concert on October 28. It went pretty good. The quartet was the opening act. We played the Star-Spangled Banner and Scherzo Opus 18 No. 4 by Beethoven. I was actually disappointed in our performance. The Star-Spangled Banner was great. But the Scherzo was not up to par. It started much faster than we had ever played in rehearsal. It just wasn't as good as we could have done.


Then the Concert and Symphonic Orchestras played. Then the Chamber orchestra, the one I'm in, played the first movement of Brandenburg #3 with the Symphonic orchestra. It was really nice playing with them. In rehearsal and everything leading up to the concert, the Symphonic Orchestra was able to learn a lot from us and, I think, grow a lot musically.


Then the Chamber Orchestra played by ourselves. We played the first, second, and fourth movements of Concerto Grosso for String Orchestra by Ernest Bloch. Miss Floyd played with us so we didn't have a conductor. We also had a piano play with us. I really love that piece of music. The first movement was probably the best. The fourth movement was my favorite, though. The second movement was good too.





November 8 (1 hr)


We had Solo & Ensemble in the morning. The quartet got a chance to play the Scherzo again. We did a BILLION times better this time. It started off the speed we rehearsed it in and we remembered dynamics, phrasing, and all that good stuff that makes music musical. I also performed a duet with Rachael Blaylock. It was a duet for two violas. It didn't go very well. Neither of us were totally prepared really. We didn't know our parts well enough to perform it. Miss Floyd had to order us music for two violas and it didn't get here until two weeks before the performance so we didn't have much time to work on it. We want to do a duet again next year and do better.

Hey Yall

I'm at Katie's house doing this because I lost my CAS stuff and Katie is awesome because she showed me everything. See yall at school.
Love,
Cathy