Week Thirteen: Amazing Grace

This is my final entry for my grade twelve passion project.

For the past few weeks, in preparation for my presentation, I have been working on learning Amazing Grace. The sheets for this song were in an old piano book of mine and were fairly simple, which made it perfect for violin.

Today, I had my last lesson before my performance, and Piotr was very pleased with my playing. He told me I am still progressing wonderfully, and that I should be very proud of my achievements. Quite perfectly, Amazing Grace fits right into what I have learned about fiddle music and is a great way to finish off my project.

Piotr originally was very excited that I had selected this song to learn, and he proceeded to teach me various different techniques to increase the depth of the tune. "Think of the story behind the song," he told me. Some of these techniques included sliding my fingers, which is quite opposite from what he had been teaching me for classical music, and playing fiddle chords. Conveniently, I had previously learned about fiddle chords and I was very excited that I would get to use them. However, a little to my disappointment, I was unable to practice very much last week, and so I am not prepared enough to perform the song on Monday with the fiddle chords.

Regardless, I am very excited to show my class what I have learned, and I look forward to the day when I can confidently use the fiddle chords and other techniques in the song.

My highlight this week has definitely been learning about all the different techniques to use on Amazing Grace. I am in love with the sound of this song on the violin.

My struggle this week was learning how to play the melody so that it sounded like fiddle music, and not like classical. It is not only a different rhythm, but also a different bow approach. This makes this genre both challenging and exciting.

Looking to the future, I hope to continue using this blog as much as I can in order to track my progress and look back on my improvements. This project has been a fantastic opportunity to learn about the violin, and I am thankful for the chance to better myself and be enlightened by so many people and experiences.

This is Laurel Farrell optimistically concluding her English project, but continuing her life project, where the violin is her passion.