September 20, 2005 at 4:33 AM

To prove that I still can post a rational entry: today I started out with a vibrato experiment. I decided to try the factors of slow/fast (S/F), narrow/wide (N/W), and arm/wrist (A/R) in different combinations to get more familiar with ways to vary vibrato and to see what my natural tendencies are. I drew a three-dimensional cube, something I hadn't attempted since eighth-grade geometry so it sadly took a couple tries to get it right. (I have bad spacial perception and no talent for any kind of visual art, so I have a great recital poster idea of drawing lots of ugly stick figures, and then writing, "I'm artistic, really! Please come!") Using my abbreviations, I ended up with varieties that looked like Myers-Briggs types: SWA, SNA, FWA, FNA, SWR, SNR, FWR, FWR. I should clarify that I have mainly an arm vibrato, and so there's not a huge difference between A and R--everything's all based in the arm for me, but adding some wrist motion helps with flexibility and color. So essentially i was studying speed and width. The vibratos that felt natural to me were SW and FW, with the most unnatural being SN. I also came up with some associations for what the vibratos sounded and felt like to me to make them less abstract:

SWR: too wobbly/self-indulgent/mostly unusable
FWR: Tchaikovsky
SNA: soft orchestral playing
FNR: Brahms
FNA: Mozart

In a nutshell my vibrato's too wide; it's a viola vibrato. Which means I have a lot of looseness in my joints which is great, but not always practical for staying on one pitch. Essentially I have to get from sounding too sentimental and too much like Tchaik (although I love Tchaikovsky and it's probably telling that that is more my natural temperament) and more like Brahms. Another thing that will probably be useful is to go through, say, the entire second movement, using a uniform kind of vibrato--then figuring out ways to vary and shade it in how I'll actually play the movement, and how to make transitions between the types.

After that exercise I worked on the first two (and sadly probably the easiest, though it's all difficult) pages of the Brahms third movement. As with the first movement, I have a hard time getting the opening to sound less like a student and more like I can actually say something musically intelligible and insightful. I did metronome work with the runs and those turned out to be easier to get back in the fingers than the double-stops, which were never really in my fingers to begin with. The octaves are sort of okay but again lack some direction. I think if I can bring this movement to a decent level that'll help me feel much more secure with the piece as a whole, which would be great: each major work I feel that I have even a slight chance of taming helps me realize more of my abilities.

September 20, 2005 at 4:33 AM

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