December 2007

12/16/07

December 16, 2007 20:56

Lesson day today. Not too terrible, but we're sticking with the same three pieces for next week. What I mainly have to work is the hand position for G major, being able to get quickly in and out of the low 2. Liz wants me to be able to get into a block fingered A on the E string...which is giving trouble.

Had an interesting conversation with my stepdaughter today, who's been doing cello for 9 years. She critiqued my practice and said she thought I needed to include some improvising for fun and find some other easy pieces to work on outside of lessons. It sounded good to me so I started improvising during practice tonight. Strangely I wound up coming out with the cue from Star Wars where Luke watches the double sunset. That must have floating around in my head for years. I wonder what else is in there.

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December 14, 2007 18:52

12/14/07

OK, a lesson learned: When practicing a piece in G one uses low two to get C natural rather than playing the wrong note for 4 days in a row. No wonder it never sounded quite right. Embarrassing.

Today:
~1 hr
scales, Suzuki book 1 pieces 9, 10, 12. At least the metronome is becoming much easier to use. I can't believe I was out of key all this time. I now have excellent cerebellar muscle memory for playing the piece that way.

I will not do this again, I swear.

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12/12/07

December 12, 2007 19:08

Thanks everyone for the comments yesterday. It was a friendly welcome.

Today was one of those days at work where I spent about six hours pipetting. I was wondering how it was going to affect my practice and sure enough I was bouncing the bow all over the place with some slipping thrown in.

Buri- thanks for your thoughts on metronomes. to some extent I've noticed what you were talking about and found myself mangling the rhythm to stay on the beat. I'll watch carefully for that and develop my internal rhythm as I go along. However, I'm going to keep using the metronome because 1) my teacher asked me to and 2) it's really very hard for me. That second point makes me think that it might be a good idea in my case, in the sense that since it's so hard it must be something I need to work on. Rhythm has always been a weak point with me.

Today: 30 minutes
scales G, D, A
PM in Dmaj trying to push the tempo while keeping a clean delivery.
Allegretto, Etude.
The etude is starting to flow a bit better as the fingerings get ingrained. At the next lesson I want to get some feedback on my posture and my left hand in particular, that inward forearm rotation is tough.

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Starting Violin, or how my cat learned to stop worrying and just hide

December 11, 2007 21:05

Well this is my first entry here. Do people really read these? We'll see if doing this helps to keep me motivated.

My music background is playing piano and guitar, casually and self taught for years past. Piano I do well enough to make myself happy, and guitar well enough to actually play with others and sometimes make them happy too.:)

So in September this past year I decided to take up violin. I'm not sure why really. Partly because I like listening to it, partly because it's so portable, so intense. And I have a certain amount of ego too...which the violin immediately began to punish.

I went out and rented an instrument from Sam Ash, an East German factory model that sounds good enough for me to use while I find out if I stick with this. At this point it's definitely NOT the instrument that limits my performance. Like Lance said about bikes.

So along with the fiddle I got some beginner method books, looked at the pictures of how to hold the thing, tuned up, took a deep breath, and tried to find the notes for a G major scale. Ever notice that the violin has no frets?? It makes that harder. Much harder. As I sawed away, birds fell stone dead out of the peaceful Autumn sky. My children laughed, convulsively. My wife looked abused somehow. The cat hid. Conflicts broke out in small countries on the far side of the world. Somewhere, a tear rolled down the Dalai Lama's cheek.

But I am persistent. After a week I started to sound better. The bow didn't bounce quite so high anymore. I discovered rosin. The birds stayed away but stopped keeling over. My cat came from out beneath the couch and began to sing along and gaze smolderingly at me. My wife stopped leaving lawyer brochures around.

Still not too good however. Usually when I try to learn something new, I get up the learning curve pretty quickly. The curve on this instrument is awfully steep. My progress was mostly limited to causing less agony to others. After a few weeks I could walk trippingly through simple pieces like Silent Night but still had tone like a degenerate swingset. Bach's fugue in G minor was out aside from the first 3 or 4 bars.

So I went and found a teacher. Liz is great, she put me into Suzuki book 1 but let me skip Twinkle, Twinkle for, she said, her own sanity. We've been together since...what? Mid October. I'm working my way through the first book still and she's helped tremendously with my tone, timing, expression. None of these are any good yet but they're better, and she bought into my goal of playing in one of the community orchestras in the area.

I wanted to tell my tale but mostly I intend this to be a practice journal, so here's what I did today.

~40 minutes divided between:

2 octave Gmaj scales, 1 octave D and A major scales with mm=60. Full and half bowing.

Perpetual motion with mm=60. Refining this piece, emphasis on clean note changes.

Allegretto with mm=50, emphasis on dynamics and expressiveness.

Etude (suz 12) without metronome to learn the piece, then at mm=40. Trouble with the note changes in measures 7 - 9.

goal for today was to use metronome for everything, that's been a challenge for me.

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More entries: January 2008 •

December 2007

12/16/07

December 14, 2007 18:52

12/12/07

Starting Violin, or how my cat learned to stop worrying and just hide

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