July 2009
July 16, 2009 06:43
i have 5 days off of work coming up w/ absolutely no obligations, aside from those i gave myself to a) workout as much as possible (i am taking up running, so i'm currently working on building my endurance) and b) practice violin as often as possible.
i feel as if i have been struggling during my practices in terms of technique. my teacher provides a lot of great insight and is able to help me with things like intonation and posture while i'm there for my lesson. however, i start to over-obsess when i practice about sounding perfect all the time and i think it makes me sound WORSE because i get to the point where i can't simply relax and play. i know i can overcome it but it definitely is a challenge for me at this current time. anyone have any tips on how to relax and "let go" during practice (aside from just doing it hahaha)?
also i've been wanting to read a good book for violin students regarding theory and/or technique. any suggestions? i've browsed a bit on amazon but have no idea what the best choices are.
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July 10, 2009 06:34
i'm officially into my second full month of lessons. the first month was great, simple, but gave me enough confidence to want to continue forward. according to my teacher, she's happy that my sight reading of music is up to par and she can see that i'm able to pick up songs quickly (we are currently using suzuki book 1 along with exercises she has added in herself), so going forward she's going to get very picky about my sound and technique. this is excellent, as i want to continuously improve, but it's proving to be a tough change for me to have so much to focus on at once (yes i have heard and known that violin requires multi-focusing as such, but to actually put it into practice 100% is a bit different)...i'm a perfectionist by nature, so to know that i DO have a lot to work on in terms of actually sounding good and having a nice technique is something i've had to embrace and not consider a failure/shortcoming on my behalf. my practicing has taken on a whole new feeling because i don't fly through each practice with ease, it's become frustrating at times. typically at this point in learning something new, i would just quit to avoid failure. but last night i decided violin is too important to just quit because i'm frustrated (not that i'm even close to considering quitting, BUT i know how i am and i don't want the frustration to reach that point)...so i sort of had an entirely different frame of mind when i sat down to practice. i even moved my chair and music stand w/in my room so that i have no visual or spatial distractions. i really slowed down my pace when working on my a major and d major scales, and did them with my eyes closed (my biggest thing is to get away from staring at the neck of the violin, my teacher really doesn't want me to look @ my fingertapes anymore and i have a feeling she's going to have me get rid of them soon anyway now that i'm almost through all the notes in first position)...i thought the results would be horrendous. instead, i found myself 100% more focused than ever, and doing scales with my eyes shut honestly did help. after running through scales a few times in this manner, i went back to the two newest songs i learned ("may song" and "long, long ago" from suzuki book 1) and i swear this time the scales helped. really helped. before i ran through them quickly, simply as a warmup required by my teacher, not even connecting how they'd help with the actual music. this time, i was able to really HIT the notes when i played the songs i just learned on monday. yes this is a beginner's epiphany (= wow, scales do really help!) but i suppose worth documenting since i'm sitting here blogging about it!
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