I've been out of town, so today was my first practice session in more than two weeks. It felt more like I'd been away for two months, but I'm glad I pushed through it. Gotta (re)start somewhere.
Today was about relearning:
Throughout this practice session, I was torn between giving myself a break on certain things that needed improvement (recognizing that nothing is going to sound particularly good after two weeks off), and cracking the whip (again, to avoid reinforcing bad or ineffective habits).
Even when you do narrow down to one thing to work on, at what point are you focusing on fundamentals, and at what point are you rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic?
I realized today that when the going gets tough, I have a tendency to focus on intonation. It was the first bullet point above because it's the first thing that came to my mind. For me, it's the easiest thing to fix. Again, does that mean I'm focusing on fundamentals? Can't be missing shifts--it's like missing free throws. Or does it mean I'm chickening out of working on the harder stuff?
Today was about relearning:
- To shift and play in tune (especially on the high notes/positions in Kreutzer #10). At one point I actually checked if my D and A were still in tune with each other because it sounded so crappy as I shifted while moving from one to the other. Yes, they were fine; the crappiness was me.
- To police the new bow hold. Having said that, although I worried a bit about reinforcing old habits, I actually didn't sweat this too much today.
- To make all the little physical adjustments I've worked on in the first movement of the Bach (a higher elbow for downward string crossings at a couple of points, some flexibility but not floppiness in the wrist at a couple of points, etc.) while hopefully paying attention to the big picture of the flow of the sound. I didn't appreciate how much progress I had made on this until I backslid.
- To call it a day, recognizing that this is not the day to attack the pseudo-double stops in the third movement of the Bach.
Throughout this practice session, I was torn between giving myself a break on certain things that needed improvement (recognizing that nothing is going to sound particularly good after two weeks off), and cracking the whip (again, to avoid reinforcing bad or ineffective habits).
Even when you do narrow down to one thing to work on, at what point are you focusing on fundamentals, and at what point are you rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic?
I realized today that when the going gets tough, I have a tendency to focus on intonation. It was the first bullet point above because it's the first thing that came to my mind. For me, it's the easiest thing to fix. Again, does that mean I'm focusing on fundamentals? Can't be missing shifts--it's like missing free throws. Or does it mean I'm chickening out of working on the harder stuff?
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