Tone and Style

Nov. 7, 2008 at 5:07 AM

I had quite some time to think about this lesson blog, being stuck in traffic for over an hour coming back home. I was all set on rushing forward through the remaining Suites to meet my "Bach by 40" goal. But after practicing at home over the weekend and recording myself, I re-thought that approach. Listening to my practice recordings made me cringe in enough places that I decided it was time to stick with the Suite that I'm working on now, and work through some of these issues.

So I sent a warning e-mail to my teacher that I didn't t want to proceed with the 2nd Suite Minuet at this time, but stay with the 3rd and work on my technique, tone and style. When lessons began, he agreed it was a good idea. Our focus for the next several weeks at least will be developing a continuous vibrato, tackling 1st finger vibrato in 1st position, intonation of chords, bowing and dynamics.

With that in mind, we started the scale warm-up with a continuous vibrato, and tried to isolate what was going on with my 1st finger vibrato on the Cing. It's back to "guitar" exercises again to try to isolate the movements, and next week trying to develop an arm vibrato vs. the wrist vibrato I'm using now.

We spent quite a bit of time on the 3rd Suite Sarabande. My tempo was deemed good (thanks to the Body Beat!!!) and to my surprise, he suggested using rubato on this movement. I questioned him on this. I had been taught before that the Suites were dance movements and besides the preludes, rubato was pretty much a no-no. He said that the Suites were in the style of the dances but not truly intended to be danced with, so I could give a little bit more artistic license to the other movements as well. With that, he asked me to take a look at the first two measures and decide on a starting dynamic as long as it was not mezzo anything. I chose forte - which meant piano on the next measure. We worked on the bowing so that I was not accenting notes that should be emphasized. Then I played it through. Somewhere along the line, I got my bowing all backwards and ended up on the final chord of the movement in an up-bow. Out comes the magic pencil. I played it through again while he changed bowings. With each bowing change I played the measure again. It was a test of my memory of the piece since his hand was covering most of the music.

Then we moved on to the Courante. This is a piece that I never had lessons on before, but had played on my own several times and felt quite comfortable with it. Until he pointed out that I should be using a martele bowing at the tip. So, bowing exercises commenced with "Mississippi Hotdog". :::GROAN::: !!! I was forced to regress back to my childhood with all the children's songs for a few minutes. When my martele came back to me, we played the Courante through together. I got a thumbs up :)

Then for the last few minutes, we worked on the Prelude from the middle to the end. I *thought* I was playing ppp but he deemed it more mp to mf. So, I played it again, softer - at the tip with less bow. Not soft enough. After about 3 takes, my ppp was judged soft enough. I worked up to forte where the arpeggiated chords started and built up the tempo. The shift that I've been struggling with was much better this time around. But that is not what got the attention, it was how I was bowing that section. I needed to give more movement across the strings so it doesn't sound so "fiddle-like" with double-stops.

By then, lessons were over and I was sweating from the workout he had just put me through. Good thing it is autumn!

From Karen Allendoerfer
Posted via 18.4.1.146 on November 7, 2008 at 12:35 PM

It sounds like your teacher helps you with how to practice in your lesson so you go home with a good idea of what you should do during the week. I think this is an under-appreciated skill in a teacher.

One of the practice threads was discussing this as a good way to get kids to practice. Works for adults too!

From Neil Cameron
Posted via 146.214.103.215 on November 7, 2008 at 2:46 PM

What a great blog, Mendy! I think I actually learned something as well. :)

Neil

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