♪ ♫ ♪ ♫ (Blog #5)

**Warning: There is LOT of ranting about my viola in this post. xD**

Everything has been going pretty well with my project. I got my viola back from Kris at McCourt's, and she made it look like an entirely new instrument! While there used to be scratches in the varnish, there is now nothing but a shiny, mahogany surface across the entire viola. It makes me so happy! I've been making sure to take extra care of it so that it'll continue to stay beautiful for a looong time.

A fellow violist friend of mine at IA suggested that taking the out fine tuners from my viola would help it to have a richer, darker tone. While that was a great suggestion that works for most violas, it didn't work out great for me. See, the pegs at the top of my instrument are not of the highest quality, and even at the best of times, they make macro-tuning nearly impossible. When a violin, viola, cello, or bass has no fine tuners, the pegs are the only things you can use to tune the instrument, so that is where my problem arose. Humid weather also causes the wood of stringed instruments to swell, so that has escalated the problem recently. Luckily, the fine tuners were not hard to put back, so no harm, no foul. I do miss the amazing tone my viola had without the fine tuners, but being in tune is far more important.

I'm a bit behind on my work with the Wolfhart viola technique book and my concerto because of my recent dental surgery, but I'm getting back on track. The Wolfhart book has been helping me a lot with finger precision while playing sixteenth notes, so the parts in the concerto with oodles of sixteenth notes are getting a lot easier for me to play. As far as guitar goes, I've taught myself bits and pieces of Black Sabbath's "Ironman" and Eric Clapton's "Sunshine of Your Love". Granted, I can only play those small parts of the songs rather poorly, but its better than nothing.

We still have about half the summer left, lets make it the best we can! :D

~Elyse Komarzec~