Comments

Buri, you've been missed around here. :)

I have been working on the 'side-to-side' finger movement for a couple of months now. It is my biggest sticking point, not having the necessary dexterity between the fingers. I also do a similar exercise off the violin using a pencil for the fingerboard.

Greetings,
Thanks for your kind words. I did take a summer vacation and I was fasting for six weeks so using a computer was a no no.
I cited the exercise to make a point and i do think the Agopian collection and sequencing of technical work is superb. However, side to side movement is really about gently developing the stretchy web between the base of the fingers. I suspect one of the simplest ways to work on this is more along the lines of a lot of work in thirds which are beautiful for shaping the hands as well as intonation. Then fingered octaves, worked form the upper finger stretching backwards. That might be of some use to you.
Cheers,
Buri So how do we try not to try - and how do we learn to accept where we are without drifting into complacency? For me, the most challenging part of this has been separating the concentration needed from a physical sensation of 'working hard'. Feeling the challenge without letting my body sympathize, and make it all that much more difficult. Understanding that a stretch doesn't necessarily have to feel like a stretch unless I tense my hand and make it that way.

I watched a lot of Olympics this summer and was struck by various athletes who didn't seem to be working at all. Usain Bolt stood out: running the 100m looked like the easiest thing in the world, until I looked at his competitors. A lot of it is trust in one's abilities, and a willingness to be led by sensation and not determination, which is not easy when you're trying to achieve certain results - those perfect 10's in archery, personal bests, winning races, or competitions, or auditions.

I've been meaning to ask about the Agopian book for a while. Who publishes it, and is there an ISBN or equivalent? I'd like to order it here in Germany (can't via Shar), and have the feeling I'll need more than just the title and author.

Thanks for the additional advice, Buri.

The lack of side-to-side movement was/is hampering my intonation and also the root cause of my hand not staying in place when playing flats or sharps.

It seems as a player progresses, the more you strive for beautiful tone and dynamics. Then it's a matter of dissecting what is holding you in place.

I need to go home and try this. It strikes me that it won't work if one has a hyper curved finger posture. Greetings,
Megan, the Agopian you can order from Shar. )No Time to Practice) I can`t see why there is a problem? Its in an odd section though. Maybe somethinglike Teaching Aids rather than the etudes section one would expect. A general search should bring it up though.
Cheers,
Buri Greetings,
>So how do we try not to try - and how do we learn to accept where we are without drifting into complacency? For me, the most challenging part of this has been separating the concentration needed from a physical sensation of 'working hard'. Feeling the challenge without letting my body sympathize, and make it all that much more difficult. Understanding that a stretch doesn't necessarily have to feel like a stretch unless I tense my hand and make it that way.

I think the bottom line is probably mental clarity/vizualisation. Unless one has a clear mental image of what one wants the body to do (with a lot of slow practice) then what does almost all of our practice consist of? I dare to suggets that it is looking at a page of black dots and saying to yourself `Go.` No more precise instrcution than this is given to our body (a sa computer to be programmed). Depending on our level of tehcnique the whole shebang may be more or less sccusseful but in either extreme we pretty much rpeat the procedure , either to consolidate or `deal with` the bad bits, which get better sort of by default over time.
However, the poor confused organism has done its bets for you by cobtracting this or that set of muscles that don`t need to be contracted, or used three times the muscular effort needed.
The main source of unnecssary contraciton is misuse of the head, neck back relationship, which is why a good Alexander Teacher is so helpful. The other aspect of AT which is crucial is the ability to mentally check what one is about to do unconscioulsy and becomes aware of all that is going on in the whole self. This is the responsibility of teachers to a large extent. It often seems that a student keeps trying and trying to repeat a passage well so they will not wait and think . So much so that I often want to rip the bow out of the Ss hand and ask them what mental prpearation for their rerun they have actually done.
The private pracitc emimics this `ecstasy of fumbling.`
Cheer,s
Buri

Trying is only emphasizing the thing we know already.

-FMA

Well I tried it. It was easy. I did it for a while but there was never a sensation of stretching. I suspect that this may have been nearly impossible back in my shoulder rest days.

I think that the trick here is "flattening" the finger when moving to the e and pulling it back to a more curved position for the d.

Greetings,
Megan, the Agopin is in the practice section of the books department at Shar. Can you not order from them i Germany?
Chees,
Buri "I think the bottom line is probably mental clarity/vizualisation. Unless one has a clear mental image of what one wants the body to do (with a lot of slow practice) then what does almost all of our practice consist of?"

Can we take this a step further, do you think? In practice, we are working on cultivating a physical response to a set of commands, working with the body itself. I'd like to suggest that the ultimate goal is the cultivation of a nearly instinctive response to sound and the conception of a given sound. "Klangvorstellung" is such a nice word in German, and my English translation above doesn't really do it justice.

My first teacher had a bit of a mantra that went: "if you hear the note (pitch, sound, etc.), the right action will happen itself". This applied to shifting, but also to contact point, bow speed, and colours in general. The point holds true, but is not always helpful for a developing technique. But what it emphasizes, and what the work I did with a later teacher reinforced, is that all this thinking about what to do with your hands is the long way to get there. It's necessary up to a point, but after that it just begins to get in the way.

Of course, this can only work with a well-trained awareness, physical, technical and musical, and a feeling of freedom in the body goes completely without saying. But I wonder if letting go of the physical "steering wheel", and trusting well-trained, well-conditioned instincts to function with sound and intent can also help to rid us of this constriction - of being stuck.

I'm aware I've moved here from practice to performing, but I'm only now really beginning to grasp how different these tasks are. Sounds stupid, but auditioning crystallizes many of these things in a very particular way.

Greetings,
I think by what you are saying you are actually defining the learning process itself. Something that is new has to be worked on consciouslt until it achives automaticity. The challenge for us is to get the most precisely organized and efficient automatic reflex. That is done with the mental work first. Otherwise the badly learned habit will always limit ones abiltiy to express music as freely as the organism will allow.
One childrens book that allows for this very strongly is Adventures in violin land. In a very subte way, it makes sure the child develops pitch and sound color cocnepts before anything is done on the insturment. Quite remarkable.
RE Agopian, I will try to remeber to punch in the number tomorrow. I did check the disributor which is SHAR. Unfortunately I don`t have email but if you don`t ind printing your mail addres shere......
Cheers,
Buri