Mail!

It's been twenty years since I ordered something from Shar, and back then, I certainly didn't order it online. My first Shar package of my new era of violin playing arrived yesterday with new strings and another goodie or two:

It's fun to get real mail, and reassuring that I have a set of spare strings that does not date to the Clinton administration.

Full-Body Counting

After banging my head against the wall with that one part of the Berlioz for a while, I asked Ms. L at my lesson today to help me. Quite reasonably and logically, she had me play it slower and count it in four. I still struggled--at one point she observed, "I can see you counting with your entire body"--but we made progress. Counting in four is a much more realistic way for me to practice this than counting in two, and I am a little more optimistic that I will be able to get this into my head and my fingers. Then maybe I can stop the full-body counting.

Subdividing the Crap Out of the Beat

The Berlioz continues to be my nemesis. I can play most of the notes at close to the right speed, which is more than I could have said last week. However, I still need to figure out when to play them. 

Right here, at the arco, ...

...I never come in right. Then the next three measures or so are a loss. I flail. There are some chords after that where I manage to jump back on the horse, but those three measures are painful. 

Counting this is hard. If you're keeping score at home, counting/playing sixteenth notes when the conductor is giving you two beats per measure means that you're mentally dividing each beat into eight parts. It's not "one-and two-and" (i.e., dividing each beat by two), it's not "one-e-and-a two-e-and-a" (i.e., dividing each beat by four), it's faster than I can babble. 

At 72 beats per minute, which is the marked tempo and about how fast we're going, there are 576 sixteenth notes per minute. So: each sixteenth note gets 0.1 seconds and change. I somehow have to imprint this rhythm into my brain so that I can "rest" for 0.10416667 seconds and get started right on that measure.

When I practice alone, I can play that arco measure and the two after it without a problem. But in order to correctly make that entrance, I have to go from the pizz. to the arco in my head several times before I play that stretch. I have to subdivide the crap out of each beat. My phone rests on my stand with the relevant spot in the video cued up (4:20 or so, just before the pizz.) so I can listen along several times. I do all of this and it still takes three or four tries to get into the arco measure correctly--when practicing alone. Again, in rehearsal, it's a total loss right now.

Maybe my next step for rehearsal should be to try to correctly land on the quarter note that's the "and" of each beat in the arco measure. I can just try to give the impression that I am using a microscopic amount of bow on the sixteenths. Uh huh.

I really want to get this together and pull my weight--to at least make Berlioz my frenemy.