April 2005
So practice has been going fairly well. I've hooked up with my CEO at work is has been playing violin for 9-12 months now.We play about three times a week now for 15 to 45 minutes in a setting.
We work on some things like King of the Fairies and he shows me how he sounds some things out. I think he has naitive perfect pitch. We went to an online ear training site and he got 23 out of 25 or so catching perfect fifths etc..., even though he didn't know the terms.
It's amazing how he can play tunes that he puts in his head.
I'm having a hard time hooking up for my lessons, I've been doing them at lunch and meetings continually get in the way. I will miss my lesson again this week, but I am getting a fair bit of pratice at work.
Jason
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I finally got to move on to the next lesson. I am now working on Jingle Bells and My Dredyl. It feels good to have accomplished a little bit and move on to the next lessons.I learned quite a bit in the last lesson about bow hold and using the fore finger and pinky to counter balance the bow on the down and up strokes. That's the focus of my technique practice this week.
I've got a fairly hug callas on my left index finger now, about 1/4 of inch. Seemed cool at first, but is a little distressing now. :)
Jason
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Lesson this week...So I went to practice this week. It went pretty well. I got to face the metronome, but it didn't totally hose me like last time.
I got work on some finer points of the bow and tried to better my tone. I Also got to work on ear training a bit. I still feel like I'm lost in the woods a bit when comes to ear training.
I picked up a small key board to help me visualize the intervals between notes and I'm going to ask my wife to play a note while I guess what it is.
I brought my Bird's Eye Maple violin to the lesson as my Romanov was still in the shop. My music teacher was a bit unsettled by it, the grain of the wood reminded her of bugs. I did pick up the Romanov after the lesson.
I finally got to play a bit with guy at work with his "resonator guitar". He basicly followed the songs I played and inserted cords. At this point my repetoire consists of:
Mary Had a Little Lamb
Hot Cross Buns
Go Tell Aunt Rhodie
Ode to Joy
King of the Faires (only the 1st 4 measures)
It was fun though and gave me a better understanding of the concepts of Rhithym vs. Melody etc...
I put some new dominants on my Czech beater/travel violin. They seem to fall out of tune quite a bit. I'm not sure if its the strings or peg slippage at this point.
That's it for now.
Jason
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