I struggle with rhythm.  If there’s one thing Teacher has to continually correct me on (aside from bow hold and left hand position), it’s making notes long enough.  I don’t know why, but I always err in the direction of shortening notes.  More often than not my mistake is playing an eighth rather than the quarter note the music calls for.

I’m not quite sure how it happens, either.  Teacher has given me the last two songs in a different manner than in the past – previously, she played the song, then we played measure by measure together, stringing together phrases, until I basically had an appreciation for how to play the song.  Then Teacher would go away and I would practice for the next week.  These past couple of tunes she has played through for me then left me to puzzle through them myself over the course of the week.  It’s the only way I’ll ever get any good at reading music, of course!

But regardless of method, when she comes back a week later I’ve inevitably enshrined incorrect rhythm into my memorization of the song somewhere.  It then takes me a while to correct it, depending on how “well” I’ve memorized my incorrect version.

I’m happy to report that this new song is a variation on Long Long Ago, fun and challenging, but every single note in it is an eighth note.  There can be no shortening of quarter notes because there are none.  Rhythm: I got this one.

Thanks for reading.

Ryan