Where Did It All Come From?

Well, Hello there fellow musicians. How nice it is that we are to become acquainted with one another. Shall we begin with some background into where my own musical influence came from? You have no choice, neither did I. Let us begin.

I am a pastor's daughter. This most likely will automatically fill your mind with all these assumptions as to my musical background. Most of which are correct. Yes, I was raised on Psalms and Hymns. Yes, I was raised listening to organ music and pianos and choirs. No, I don't find this weird. No, I didn't actually hate it. In fact, I find the history of the hymns and the singing of the psalms quite interesting. Most of the hymns we have today were written in Europe, which makes sense since that is where the heart of the Reformation took place. Martin Luther, John Calvin and all of the other major reformation leaders also wrote hymns. These hymns are either taken straight from Scripture, or based on the words of God written there. Many of them are nearly word-for-word perfect when compared to the scripture which they came from, which I absolutely love.
The Psalms are also very fascinating to me because they date back even farther than all of the hymns I sing. The Psalms were sung by biblical characters such as King David, who wrote a majority of them, and his son Solomon. This means that the Psalms we sing in church today are the very same psalms (although to different melodies) that kings sang almost 6000 years ago! How cool is that?

Okay, so no I'm not completely a pastor's daughter. I am also an Army brat, and a country girl when I can afford it (being country isn't cheap). So, I listen to country music, and I LOVE music with a good beat (the Grass Dance we listened to in class was my favorite if that tells you anything). Country music, if you follow it back far enough, goes back to the revolutionary war, when they were singing "old" folk songs and mountain music, most of which originated in England. Apparently I have a very European-based musical taste.

PK, Army brat….oh yes, musician. At Converse, I play the Clarinet. This is majorly because I play that better than any other instrument, but my real passion in music is for the violin. I am not very good at it, but I absolutely love to play my violin. This instrument ties in all of my musical taste, from church music to old folk music, even to heavier music with a beat. This video below shows one of my absolute favorite violinists, who has taken the instrument from fiddle and orchestra to a whole new level of entertainment.

I hope you enjoyed that. She is very good and I'm kind of obsessed.

Well here ends my story. I look forward to reading through some of y'all's blogs and finding out about some of the people I'm in class with. Good night!