I think my positive attitude from Thursday's practice carried into Friday's lesson. The current double stop exercise went pretty well. That was one that I really dug into the night before. I reminded myself that 1) it's piano, so there's no need to go crashing and crunching through it, and 2) it thus lends itself to being played with the bow away from the bridge--which in turn makes it easier to play on two strings at a time since the strings are closer to each other farther from the bridge. When I played it today, I played through it with only a few stops between measures to reset my fingers. That sounds like faint (self-)praise, but this exercise is a bit of a booger. I don't know the source, but it has some precious finger-twisting moments.
When I finished, Ms. L said, "I bet you're missing Kreutzer now." Heh heh. Actually, I'm not. A lot of Kreutzer stuff deals with tricky bowing, and I will take tricky left hand work over tricky bowing any day. In fact, I've been practicing this exercise with separate bows rather than doing the slurs. Up next: adding in the slurs.
The Bach still had some of the same issues I've been contending with (uneven tempo, some jerky shifts, a few areas of iffy intonation), but it had some decent moments too. At least we were able to work on some actual playing (using less bow in a few places, shaping a few phrases) rather than forearm/wrist exercises! Using less bow in some places made a big difference--I'd been thinking "bow speed" and just covered too much ground. Ms. L said the mantra with the Bach now should be, "Don't force it." I think I'm on track to have a fairly good sense of accomplishment when I set it aside.
Sunday, October 28, 2012
Thursday, October 25, 2012
Escape
Much better attitude today. There is so much going on now in my real life that practicing today felt like a total escape. Who cares about dissecting what went well and what didn't? I am playing a few things better than I was earlier this week, and I am much more relaxed than I was an hour ago.
Monday, October 22, 2012
Loosen Up
I am a little bit grumpy about the third movement of the Bach right now. I can play through it all, but not at a consistent tempo.
Leading up to my last lesson, I was working with the metronome on it to at least get a sense of what would be a realistic tempo for me to maintain for the whole thing. Maybe 84? That feels quite slow for the first half page or so, but for about five lines at the bottom of the first page and top of the second page--I'm too grumpy and lazy to count measures or check where that is on a video of the piece--maintaining that tempo feels like accelerating!
I stuck with it all week, though, slowing down to where it was comfortable in selected trouble areas and then trying to work the speed back up. I didn't feel like I made much progress, though, and my playing in my last lesson reflected that.
Once again, though, the issue seemed to be tension in my left hand. Ms. L. had me put down my violin and just do wrist/forearm stretches for a little while. She then asked me to play the movement again, and said, "Whatever you were focusing on before when you were playing it--tempo or whatever--think about something different this time."
I decided to focus just on keeping my sternum out--i.e., standing up straight. Not tempo. Just a backdoor way to facilitate a faster tempo, heh heh. But no worries about actual tempo. That worked for about two thirds of a page. But my internal monologue would not shut off: "Shift fast! Little crescendo! Fast bow speed! Away from the bridge! Don't worry about the sixteenths! Land on the beat! Now!" And as soon as that started, my hand tensed up.
Maybe I need to practice without music again. Getting away from all my notations and just focusing on sound might help things, and I should probably put the metronome away for a while. Just chill and smooth things out.
Leading up to my last lesson, I was working with the metronome on it to at least get a sense of what would be a realistic tempo for me to maintain for the whole thing. Maybe 84? That feels quite slow for the first half page or so, but for about five lines at the bottom of the first page and top of the second page--I'm too grumpy and lazy to count measures or check where that is on a video of the piece--maintaining that tempo feels like accelerating!
I stuck with it all week, though, slowing down to where it was comfortable in selected trouble areas and then trying to work the speed back up. I didn't feel like I made much progress, though, and my playing in my last lesson reflected that.
Once again, though, the issue seemed to be tension in my left hand. Ms. L. had me put down my violin and just do wrist/forearm stretches for a little while. She then asked me to play the movement again, and said, "Whatever you were focusing on before when you were playing it--tempo or whatever--think about something different this time."
I decided to focus just on keeping my sternum out--i.e., standing up straight. Not tempo. Just a backdoor way to facilitate a faster tempo, heh heh. But no worries about actual tempo. That worked for about two thirds of a page. But my internal monologue would not shut off: "Shift fast! Little crescendo! Fast bow speed! Away from the bridge! Don't worry about the sixteenths! Land on the beat! Now!" And as soon as that started, my hand tensed up.
Maybe I need to practice without music again. Getting away from all my notations and just focusing on sound might help things, and I should probably put the metronome away for a while. Just chill and smooth things out.
Thursday, October 11, 2012
New Practice Space
Pardon the blurry picture--I haven't unpacked [read: found] my real camera yet, so I took this with my poor cell phone camera. I will be putting up a mirror, but other than that, this is it!!!
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| Photo by TR, 10 October 2012 |
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