November 22, 2004 at 10:27 AM

Great weekend of practice. I never dreamed to be picking things up so quickly.

The violinmasterclass.com site has been so helpful in giving me good basic excercises to practice. I enjoyed trying the beginner detaché lessons and the shifting through a scale on one string excercises at the weekend.

It's very handy having all my old flute music to hand. I had to dig out some of my old study books for some simple things to try. Was really helpful trying simple phrases playing legato, although I did run out of bow a few times. Lack of experience so far means that will have to be worked on.

My intonation has been remarkable, amazing how quickly your fingers learn the intervals. I think this is because I played the Guitar and Cello previously, it's kind of an innate sense of how the pitches shift. Vibrato is so, so hard though, I limit my self to playing a few minutes just very slow, high "wobble" :) vibrato on each string with each finger ( I am sure my neighbours are impressed ).

Next lesson on Wednesday.. I think he might be a little surprised teehee....

The Donsk