I would really like to listen to it again now.

All kidding aside, one of the odd things about having played an interior voice in an orchestra for so many years is that I have very little consciousness of what the pieces sound like as a whole. Even when I hear a classical performance live, I'm always straining to hear the elusive middle notes.

one of the odd things about having played an interior voice in an orchestra for so many years is that I have very little consciousness of what the pieces sound like as a whole.

My thing is that since the chorus always sits behind the orchestra, my sense of the balance is completely out of whack. I always hear way more of the brass and much less of the strings.

On a related note to un/mispronounceable cities and towns, a few of my favorite goofily named American cities:

Pugwash, Nova Scotia
Bug Tussle, TX
Cheesquake, NJ
Downers, VT
Humptulips, WA
Ojo Caliente (Hot eye?), MX
Lizard Lick, NC
Grosse Tete, LA
Sopchoppy, FL
Toad Suck, AK
Monkey's Eyebrow, KY
Chicken Bristle, IL
Gnaw Bone, IN
Knockemstiff, OH
Bunny Run, MI
Scalp Level, PA
Lickskillet, OH

Fritters are nasty and who thought it would be a good idea to put cooked corn into a doughnut in the first place?

All fritters? There's no need for cooked corn to be in all fritters. Damn, a good saltfish fritter is a thing of glory and beauty.

Grosse Tete, LA

The birthplace of James Van Der Beek.

Humptulips, WA

Founded by ruined Dutch speculators from the early Renaissance? Yeah, I got nothing.

Fritters are nasty and who thought it would be a good idea to put cooked corn into a doughnut in the first place?

But you have obviously never had the sweet bliss that is hot corn fritters from White Fence Farm--pure melt-in-your-mouth sweet, with a hint of corn-y goodness. Combine that with the best damn fried chicken in the midwest, and it's a feast!

Sits alone in the corn fritter liking corner.

On edit, or not so alone - yay!

Although I prefer hushpuppies.

Dana, I get that completely. I sing alto as well as play what is essentially the alto voice in the orchestra; I'm glad that I did play violin as long as I did before switching or I might never have even noticed that there was a melody!

Grosse Tete, LA

The birthplace of James Van Der Beek.

Ahahahahaha!!!

I played violin as well (for ten years before switching to viola), though I was full time viola by the time I hit the university symphony. The violinists were notoriously snooty about the whole 32nd note thing, so I got no sympathy there, lady. NO SYMPATHY!

But, but... I'VE never been snooty about 32nd notes! But maybe that's because I've never bothered to play the violin at the university. Mostly because the music people are all kind of snooty, actually. And I'm of the opinion that music should be fun.

Actually, the first piece we played when I hit the university was Stravinsky's "Firebird", so that pretty much took care of my "playing harmony is boring" issue. Phew, is that piece hard, no matter what part you're playing. The speed is difficult enough, but it's the counting that's really brutal.

See, speed and counting are what sucked about playing 1st violin. And I screwed it up enough times that I would never ever be snooty about it. But also, ooooh. Pretty music.

Alibelle, you can totally join the We Hate Pizzicato Club. I bitched about boring parts, but honestly I didn't envy the melody people most of the time. That stuff looked hard.

Yay! The melody was often insane. We usually just started laughing whenever we were handed a new piece. Like, "Hahaha, way to be optimistic, Mrs. Wilson." And yet, when we were second violins, we all complained about the boringness of it. Also, I think people who play harmony are infinitely better at counting, because they kind of have to be, whereas playing the melody gave me all kinds of horrible habits when it comes to rhythm. I rarely counted, because I could hear the melody, and you could sense when it was time to move onto the next note. Which is really a bad way to go about figuring out rhythm.

Oh, I liked Canon in D--yeah, yeah, I'm a plebeian--but the cellists all hated practicing it. Poor cellists. It was like they wanted to change notes every now and then or something.

Oh, I like it, too. It just irritates me because you hear it ALL THE TIME. It's at every wedding, played all the time on commercials, on TV or in movies, if some random violin playing needs to be done, it's always Canon in D. I firmly feel that Canon in D is to violin what Fur Elise is to piano, basically. And yet, our silly cellists complained about it, too. I don't know what their problem was. I mean, playing maybe three different whole notes, with ties of course, can be incredibly exciting.