“String hopping” is something I’ve done since the beginning – going from, say, the third finger position on one string to the third finger position on an adjacent string by lifting and putting it down again.  That technique came up in one of the very first songs in Book One and has been a part of my technical repertoire for a while.  But as we dig into this Boccherini minuet, for the first time I’m supposed to place one finger on two strings at once, leaving it there while I play both of those notes and then play other notes around those two notes as well – at its heart it’s just a technique for more efficient fingering.

For readers who know something about bowed instruments, I’m not talking about double stopping really – I’m not bowing across both strings.  You can do that with one finger on two strings or multiple fingers –  the key with double stops is there is more than one string being bowed simultaneously.  Teacher does assure me that double stops are coming.

Now, I accidentally touch the strings all the time, with fingers and the bow and what not – so this intentionally touching multiple strings business will take some time for me to get used to  – I’ve been training the exact opposite!

I also was able to correct something that had lodged incorrectly in my brain about trills – I really had something quite backwards.  Trills rapidly alternate between the base note shown on the staff and one note above the base note – I was distracted by some other notation that was adjacent to this particular trill in this particular piece – Teacher tells me those are instead Appoggiatura; they are unrelated to the trill concept.

During Wednesday’s lesson we made it through to about the mid-point of the minuet – Teacher asked if I wanted to go further but I said no – that’s enough.  And, indeed, I’m sure it will be.

Thanks for reading.

Ryan