I’m plugging away at Paganini – The Witch’s Dance is fun and challenging.  I have only worked with teacher on the piece in one lesson, however, and while we played it through and I understood the broad-strokes, the devil is always in the details (that reminds me; I need to write about Paganini and the Devil.  Soon!).

The song, as I mentioned in a prior post, has all sorts of accidentals – departures in a sharp or flat direction from notes in the base key, which is D major.  Mostly I know what to do, but doing it is difficult.  Going from concept to application is the normal path of my learning, of course.  Generally I am trying to do something I know to be the correct answer – sometimes it takes a while to make it happen, but I know what I’m trying to do at least.

Contrast that with a single triplet in The Witch’s Dance’s final measures.  I just don’t know what the notes are supposed to be.  Before my next practice session I’m going to do some research to figure it out.  Puzzling it out will help me learn – the issue is mapping the key of the piece on to the violin strings.  Suzuki does not focus on note names and such – they come along for the ride, and this is one of the first times I’m engaging with that part of the “Method.”  I’m not sure what he’d say.

Except one thing I know he’d say is “Listen.”  So I did that – as I tried to figure it out last night I cued up the tune on iTunes and listened to it several times.  I can hear it, I can hum it, I just can’t play it.

I’ll get there.

Thanks for reading.

Ryan