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Violin lesson, practice goals...

February 27, 2006 at 8:10 AM

Got to uni at 8:15 today. My lesson is supposed to start at 8:45. I figured a half hour to warm up would be helpful. Unfortunately, EVERY practice room, and every other room was taken. I had no-where to warm up. Fortunately, one of my friends was practicing in the music auditorium on the organ so I went and listened to him for a while.

Lesson was good. We did a session on Meditation from Thais, which I taught myself. I'm going to play it for string class on friday. We also had a bit of a look through the Beethoven, and I also got fingerings for the Bach and the music for the Sarasate. My teacher is going to pick up a few bows for me to try out. I think this is a great idea, because he will have a better idea of quality than I do, so I'm sure he will pick out the best bow for me.

Sat down to do my practice goals for this week. I got this idea out of The inner game of music, and I think it's quite a smart idea. I haven't really been doing it long, but I can see that the longer I do it, the more used to doing it I get. I have already been shaping my goals and thinking about them when I'm writing them. So although "Increase knowledge of major repertoire for solo & chamber violin" doesn't sound very specific, I know that in order to increase that knowledge, I can do a number of things - listen to the major works, read scores of the major works, form chamber groups to increase my knowledge of the chamber works, play through bits of sonatas and concerti etc.

Well, time for me to get back to practice. My goal for this week is to be able to play through the exposition (if a little undertempo) of my beethoven sonata for my lesson next week, and of course, to perform Meditation from Thais at string class on friday.

I like to set goals for myself, too. I'm also trying to get my students to set goals for themselves and evaluate themselves. There are short term and long term goals, and both are important. The problem is knowing how to set your goals realistically. If your goals are unrealistically high, you will feel depressed because you can't reach your goals. If you set your goals too low, you won't have such a great feeling of accomplishment when you meet your goals. In fact, you won't grow much.
You just reminded me... I'm supposed to be taching myself the Meditation too!