June 2010

Violin - best not talked about?

June 11, 2010 04:34

So, here's the situation. You have an hour's lesson once a week. You practise at least an hour every day. You are enthused and passionate about your instrument, repertoire, scales and music in general. But who do you talk to about it?

I have friends who love to cook - so do I. I can talk for hours about the best way to make bread, real bread with pre-ferments, sour dough, fresh yeast, dried yeast, instant yeast, stoneground flour, bleached, unbleached, organic, whatever.

I know people who get great joy from gardening. I can do that. How we laugh as we regale each other with tales of shovels and spades, compost, cuttings, crops and cabbage root fly.

Then there are those with children - don't have any myself but I can share and participate in stories of little Freddie's first words, steps, pictures, day at school.

Dogs - love them. Got two German Shepherds myself. How amusing and heart-rending the tales of life long devotion, fun and frolics provided by our canine companions in their all too short lives.

But the violin. Try lobbing that into the verbal ping-pong of a conversation and it kills it stone dead. I was very pleased last week to have started "to get" spicatto. Even my own mother was somewhat nonplussed at my enthusiastic announcement, moving swiftly on to her own pet subject of her bees!

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Dedication, perseverance and self-denial...

June 7, 2010 13:48

I have decided that these words shall be my motto.

I had a lesson today. That'll have been my 8th since restarting after my 30 year break. And I think it's beginning to work. It's important to make a note of how far one has progressed because improvement happens both in steps and in incremental ways. Also, when you can do something, it's hard to remember, really remember in a visceral way, what it was like to not be able to do it.

Nothing is perfect. If it was I would not need a teacher.

Yesterday I had an epiphany re spicatto bowing and wrist action. Well that only took me 8 weeks to get!

First to third position shifting. Most of the time OK. Today in the lesson, surprisingly not. When I get stressed I do sweat a bit. To start with, I must have been a bit tense - though I was not consciously aware of it and my left hand was just a teeny bit sweaty and would not slide up the neck in a predictable manner.

The accompanied play through of Rieding's Allegro from the Grade 4 book went from start to finish without my once falling off. (There were a couple of dodgy moments but I kept my balance and made it to the end!)

So, it's decided - we'll be studying for the Grade 5 exam.

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