technical rainbow

June 3, 2007 at 12:08 AM

Practicing technique can be a humbling experience. Practicing technique can be a frustrating experience. Practicing technique can make you want to rip your hair out or damage things. Technique can. Well, technique is the foundation and facilitator to communicate musical ideas clearly. Without technique you can still be a musical performer and passionate about the music but with technique, you have a whole new palette of colors to chose from when you play. My "assignment" for these next couple of months is to focus on technique. University will bring some new demands of me both musically and technically so I want to be as best prepared as possible. I'm still struggling with my vibrato and getting consistent with keeping it relaxed and controlled among other technical issues but I guess it keeps things interesting and challenging. I just have to remember that the more I work on it and persist to improve, the more brilliant my musical rainbow will shine and sparkle in the damp sunlight.

From Yixi Zhang
Posted on June 3, 2007 at 1:54 AM

I’m all too familiar with the feeling: be prepared for the university, be prepared for the grad school, for law school, for new jobs, what have you. This is perfectly natural for those of us have high expectations of ourselves. And I suspect that there’s the anticipation and anxiety start to build up. If we are anxious, then working hard may not help to reduce that, for one thing, you’ll rightly to have a nagging feeling that you are either over prepared or we prepared for the wrong thing under such circumstance. This feeling is often justified.

I think a balanced approach to preparation is wiser. That is, in addition to working on technical issues, think about some non-music related issues, such as organizational or time management issues and try to learn a few more tricks so that when the pressure in school builds up, you can handle it in more methodic manner and stay calmer. Meditative activities are always extremely beneficial during such time of one’s life. Or simply the things you really want to do and may not have the time for it once you start university. You will be doing a lot of music for a long period of time soon, I think you’ll be better prepared for that if you step outside of the violin for a bit and try to be absorbed into something entirely different for even just a few weeks and then come back with completely fresh ears and mind. If you can achieve that before school starts, I’ll say you are way ahead of many others.

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technical rainbow

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