May 2004

May 29, 2004 19:45

Ow... relearning how to hold the bow is not easy. I was taught the make a circle method, where you make a circle with your thumb and middle finger and pinch the bow right at the stick in between the frog and the leather. This leads to stiff fingers and a non-relaxed bow hand. Of course this was how I had been holding the bow until last week when my teacher noticed that my thumb was not on the leather. So at my last lesson we tried to flatten my hand, and put the stick of the bow, leather at the fleshy part of the middle finger near the palm and put the thumb opposite the middle finger on the leather. I'm never sure that I have it exactly right and everything feels awkward. It is sure hard to tell if my hand is relaxed or not, and the bow feels out of control. No doubt I'm doing something wrong, but at least I'm conscious of what I should be doing. My hand is tired and there is a slight twinge on the nerve at my wrist on the thumb side, so I know I'm doing something wrong. My teacher said to not move my wrist at all and only the elbow joint, so how can my wrist be having some numb nerve twinge? Oh well, I never had carpal tunnel syndrome from my 25 years in front of the computer, sure wouldn't want to start now.

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May 26, 2004 13:00

Just thinking about the guys I know who have like 10 violins, 20 bows, and are always looking for a better sound. I don't know if it's a male thing, or a technical thing, but it sure keeps violin shops in business. Me, I kind of just fell for my violin and then sold a mutual fund to get it. It's also kind of funny how one music teacher who is a woman told me that she likes a particular violin because it has a male sound, and the other teacher who is a man, likes the sweet sounding violin because it sounds like a girl. My violin is not sweet, but kind of brash and muscular, and I guess it's because it is a boy violin, and reminds me of my husband. Ha ha, and I play the bow pretty hard on it, my teacher was telling me not to smash into the strings so much.

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May 21, 2004 22:04

I had my violin lesson today and learned that I was not holding my bow in the right location. Usually I hold my bow with the thumb in the notch between the frog and the leather. Today, my teacher was sitting on the floor step looking up at my bow hand and said, "Clare, where are you holding the bow?" My thumb should be on the leather, as well as my middle finger. This changes the balance point and makes it easier to not have a stiff pinkie. Okay, now I have to consciously remember each time I pickup the bow.

I did pretty good on my Dont etude #2, except that I played martele instead of detache. The fingerings are tricky but it is like a puzzle and much fun. My teacher mentioned that his accompanist wants to play the Kreisler Praeludium/Allegro, or rather watch him play it since the piano only has chords. So we worked on that a little bit, mostly he did all of the fingerings and I watched. He is so relaxed when he plays even the toughest passages.

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May 19, 2004 22:21

Anyone out there name their violin and bow? My violin is named Jonah because like Jonah who spent time in the whale, I felt like my years of not playing violin were spent inside some giant cave. My bow is named Hannah because after I got my violin I spent a lot of time searching for a bow and praying for the right one. I know it sounds strange but somehow these names just came to me.

I also have Bible verses for them.

Jonah 2:9 Salvation is of the LORD.

1 Samuel 2:1 My heart rejoiceth in the LORD. [Hannah's prayer]

I know of another violinist who named her violin Solomon. And I read on a board that someone's violin is named Juliet and her bow is named Romeo. That's cute.

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May 18, 2004 14:17

Over these past 4 months I've had to just about relearn everything I did on the violin. Thankfully, my teacher did it one step at a time. The first thing he did was cut out my foot-tapping and head-bobbing. That just looked too ludicrous, like violin aerobics. Then he focused on my bow hold, teaching me the Russian hold that is deeper into the hand than what I was used to. After that, he had me put the weight of my hand onto the strings, instead of skimming the strings as I was doing before. He adjusted my elbow position, told me to stop hunching my shoulders, ... Then it was the speed of the bowing, to vary it with the faster speed at the attack of the note. All this time, I was thinking, that my left hand was okay at least. But not so. It turns out that I was all wrong there also. My fingers were not facing forward but sideways, my elbow was bent too much to the front, my wrist was not straight, I was not reaching back with my index finger, but rather stretching forward with my fingers, resulting in sliding stretching of my fourth finger. My hand was not relaxed, my thumb is gripping to hard, so that the muscle on my hand closest to my thumb would be sore after playing exercises. My fingers were not ready over the strings when not in use, but tucked into my palm.... Now he's teaching me tricks with double-stopping, where your finger can be between the strings on a fifth, not pressed completed on both strings. But I'm happy that he is finding all these flaws and correcting them, because my playing has improved greatly from when I was just fiddling around last year. I am thankful that I have a good competent teacher who is not hesitant to point out any errors and insists that I get it right. I have an acquaintance who has fired five teachers because he does not like it when they criticize him. But I told my teacher on day one that I welcome criticism and correction. In fact, that's what I'm paying for, not an admiration society. It's the only way to improve and not deceive yourself.

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May 17, 2004 14:10

They just introduce blogs at work to capture project decisions and design on a tiki-wiki server. So now that I get the concept, I want to write about something interesting, the violin, of course!

A little introduction. I'm an amateur violin returnee. This means I'm basically a quitter who fell off the wagon. Nice start, eh? I read about how all of you are such serious violinists and am envious of your drive and determination. But... the important thing is that I'm back. I played violin from age 6 to age 18. Then I went to college, got busy, ... and gave my violin to my sister, where it is now collecting dust and humidity in a closet in Pittsburgh. 9 months ago at church a lady brought in her violin and asked me to play a few bars to a hymn. I had not touched the violin in over 25 years, but when I started playing, that was it. I felt led, compelled, obsessed that I had to get back to my former playing level. I went to my mom's house, pulled out all my old music, Mendelssohn, Mozart, Bruch, Zigeunerweisen, stared at the scribbles and markings of my teacher(s) and thought, impossible! How can I ever play those notes?

And today, after 4 months of lessons I still cannot play those pieces, but I'm happy that I'm progressing and playing pieces that I played when I was 10. Maybe I can compress the years, recovering 3 years for every one year. But it is eerie playing pieces and studies that you cannot even remember until you start playing it, and then it all seems so familiar, and you are fingering them and bowing naturally what your former teacher wrote rather than what your current teacher marked. And the memories it brings back of my teachers, one of whom is gone from this world already, it's like going back in a time machine.

Hope you like my introduction. More on my recent recital later, and my other violin stories.

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More entries: June 2004 •