Why are old songs so sad and poignant?
"Old Folks at Home", by Stephen Foster, 1851
I must have a kind of past-life memory, I could retain the entire piece in my head even though I have not consciously heard the song before this. Not every song is like this, but this is one of those.
You can listen to the violin piece from here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yitfKfoGguU
or the original song from here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oN0eFJxf_Vk
We are also an accidental student for this other violin class.
Initially, I had wanted a teacher to complement the Suzuki method which is our main learning school. It was tough in the beginning because our Suzuki teacher is very strict and may I say- harsh, but we weren't giving up. So I was hoping for a teacher who could help me with my struggles but there wasn't many violin teachers (in my vicinity) open to younger children. We had one PRC teacher,,,, Kiki ended up in staring matches with the teacher. She refused to answer her teacher's questions because the teacher was just hurling questions after questions in a high-pitch voice in Mandarin. Her teacher would say to me- 你看！你看! 她都不回答！ So that didn't go well.
Our current other teacher is with the Trinity College London school of teaching (not the popular ABRSM group). She doesn't care about our Suzuki lessons. She is only concerned with bowing techniques, scales, and the G string, the straight bow, and the quality of the tones. So end up we have another teacher to satisfy. But it turns out to be a good thing because after all, her teaching does complement the overall learning and skills. Well, at least I hope we've progressed because we've mixed two different schools together. It's like when you play tennis, the backhand techniques are no less important that the forehand techniques. You will need to be good at both to be an overall good tennis player. So that's what I think.
Anyway. Enjoy while it lasts.
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