Comments

Actually, I never found Double stops hard. What I did find hard was trills for some reason. But now I have gotten past that. Thank god :). Hard? Maybe not. The good news is that they sound pretty well in tune. I have often played notes slowly with an open string as a way to work on the intonation. But what I think I need to do this time around, especially on viola, is work more on tone. That was a neglected aspect of my former education on violin. I tended to want to play everything fast. When it was fast enough and reasonably well in tune, I considered it finished. This piece is not very hard technically, in that sense, but it seems like a good way to work on bow placement (that's going a little better, even with this bow. If I rosin it up really well beforehand, such that it makes a a lot of dust, it sounds better near the fingerboard) and phrasing, and balance between the two strings of the double stops.

Another problem that I've chronically had is kicking the ends of phrases where there is supposed to be a diminuendo. I'm doing that again and it's hard to stop. The double stops make it worse because I'm trying to make the note very precise and make sure I hear it correctly and before I know it, I've accented it inappropriately.

Karen, maybe it's time to start recording yourself so that you can play it back and hear what it sounds like "out in the room". Maybe that's a beginning point for answering your question.

Here's a link to a good computer recording program called Audacity.

Neil

Greetings,
double stops with an open string can be tricky. Aside form the obvious problem that the open string is just a heck of a lot brighter, if you are playign an f sharp in third p@ositon and an open d string, then the diffenrece ins tring length is huge. That means that the very short string will only take a very little weight and you have to transfer thye weight to the longer stirng. That is an extreme but even an octave d is a problem. For thesame reason ther eis a nee dot find a compromise soundpoint that satisfies what you need from both strings. A useful way of helping balance out double stops is to do a bariolage exercise on whole bows. That is pay the lowe rand then upper stringalternately as rapidly as you can for whole bow.This will be
faster in the mifdlde than at the heel (probably)
You may find this exercise helpful,
Cheers,
Buri