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Clarke - Page 4

May 15, 2008 at 4:55 AM

Lesson night once again. Having had no lessons last week (orchestra was "on-tour"), I struggled with the vibrato exercises he gave me, and had fits with basis. So at the beginning of lessons I got the "I was thinking about you"... and out comes Fischer's Basics - for when I confuse the heck out of myself between lessons. :)

Started on some shifting excercises - pronounces much better than before, but still sometimes too fast. Then onto scales with bowing focus. Then the dreaded Kreutzer & vibrato mix. He soothed my nerves by confirming that the etude was assigned as a method for starting to develop a continuous vibrato, then asked me to show him what I accomplished thus far. OK, he called my C-string vibrato a "granny" vibrato, but was still happy that it finally happened, adn that I was vibrating, or at least trying to vibrate every note. We then went into a little continuous vibrato exercise with different fingers. We finished off with the etudes with a stacc. bowing assignment.

True to his plan (and some joking about the page-a-week plan), he got me started on the dreaded "Page 4" of the Clarke Sonata. It starts simply enough, but then gets into these crazy 32 note runs. One of which is a contortionist act with the left hand. I'll have to work on that - alot. Then we back-tracked to page 2 & 3 to work on a few techniques. I learned some new terms that I didn't know before (for tempo changes), and an admonishment to not make the beat 3/8 (bad habit).

The Orchestra's season is coming to an end in a few weeks. This means sporatic lessons over the summer. I hope that I've kept up a good enough of a lesson blog to go back to for some self-guidance over the summer.

From Terez Mertes
Posted on May 15, 2008 at 1:21 PM

>OK, he called my C-string vibrato a "granny" vibrato

Funny, that! Evokes great images in my mind (although I'm not sure what HIS image was.)

From Karen Allendoerfer
Posted on May 15, 2008 at 1:44 PM

I love hearing about your vibrato progress. It's very inspiring!

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