On Monday the ubiquitous wedding march Canon in D, by Johann Pachelbel, popped into my head.  I’m not really sure why – I do enjoy the tune, but it’s quite well-represented by others in the universe.  I’ve never considered it to be one of my favorites, personally speaking.  But it did occur to me that given the right arrangement I might be able to play it.

So I looked for music and bought some.  I enjoyed the online store where I found it – it allows you to look at a preview, and it even uses what must be some type of midi reader to produce the notes so you can hear it, too.  As you go to finalize the purchase the applet allows you to check the range of the piece before making it final – I hadn’t thought to do that and indeed, this one goes higher on the E string than I’ve ever been – I will have to figure that out. Another fun touch – when you print it out it puts your name into the copy – it’s for my use only, apparently.  Perhaps if I give it away and promise never to play it again they would be OK with that.

This arrangement for violin is fine – it starts with the theme, and then goes into three progressively more difficult variations.  I can play two of the three at present, and haven’t really made much headway on the third.  I do think I can do it – it will take some pretty dedicated work.  As with the other tunes I’ve downloaded I’m enjoying the lack of fingering notation in the music – it’s up to me to figure it out.  I’ve made some shifts as I’ve been playing it and learning that, say, fourth finger makes more sense in context than would an open string here and there.  Quite soon I imagine I will also begin to explore position shifting strategies for the piece, and I suspect I might find that third position will work better, but, since I don’t really know what I’m talking about I can’t be sure yet.

I’m quite interested in the changes that position shifting for real will bring into my playing. (I currently have a ½ down shift that, to my mind, doesn’t count for very much).  Once I learn to work with positions above first it will really open up a whole new world; it will be fun – and, I expect, hard – as I try to make that world sound decent.

Thanks for reading.

Ryan