All Octaves and no Play...

March 20, 2011 at 1:10 AM

So I've been practicing octaves quite a bit lately. As we've mentioned before, octaves are like pushups--you feel really good after you do them, but really crappy while you're doing them. Violin is one of those unfortunate things that makes you suffer to get any better, but there has to be a little fun, right?

So I revisited the theme. Yeah, I know. Since starting this project my definition of fun has slightly altered. If you remember:

Here's the theme I played a couple of weeks ago

Here's me this morning

OK, not perfect but some improvement, right? There's a little pause before that second shift, but at least the ending is much cleaner. I also don't pause as much throughout the second part. I'm happy for now. Before the final performance I will need to play it cleaner, and much, much faster. Luckily, there's time.

Don't tell Danielle, but I looked ahead to variation 2. It's a cool little tune. Here's my first go at it.

I'm actually missing quite a bit of the piece here. I don't play any of the, what we call, grace notes. A grace note is a super fast little note that doesn't even count numerically in the measure.

They seemed pretty difficult so I wimped out for this first performance. I'm really looking forward to playing this variation more in the near future.

Sigh. Now it's back to those octaves.

From Ray Randall
Posted on March 21, 2011 at 2:17 AM

Keep it up. I see a lot you're doing right which will pay big time down the road.

From John Cadd
Posted on March 21, 2011 at 4:30 PM

You are very brave to tackle any Paganini so early .There are so many things that willl come together for you as you practice.They will come though. Just believe in practice and it will work. If I was to choose one item for you it would be to relax the bow hand a bit.Otherwise the left hand fingers will loosen up when they remember the notes. They do seem to have a memory of their own. For each day pick a different line to work on and practice separately. Find a hitch that trips you up and repeat it six times.Just short bits. Once you cure one bit it will work wherever you see that bit again (for the rest of your life).

From Ryan Vaughn
Posted on March 23, 2011 at 5:03 PM

Thanks for the comments! And John, I'll give that technique a try. Ryan

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