I wrote before about getting the book that provides second parts for some Book One and Two songs and working up Minuet One from Book One.  I’ve not said much to Teacher about it (in fact until Monday I hadn’t played it in a couple of months), but I had worked it up previously to the point I wanted to show it to her.  I’m not sure why I didn’t bring it up before, but last week I had the book out in my stack of music and we got to talking about it and we said we’d try it next time, so yesterday we did exactly that.

We didn’t have much time, so we only played it through once, but it was a lovely experience.  Michael happened to be working from home, and he emerged from the bedroom to applaud our performance, a surprising departure from the sounds of a typical violin lesson.  It was fun and it did sound great – another point of encouragement on my quest to play with others.  Teacher was complimentary, “Nice reading, Ryan!”  Of course I don’t compliment her in situations like this because that would be silly.

The rest of the lesson that preceded the duet was good too, a detailed working session – polishing the Becker Gavotte, trying to tease apart technique on vibrato, and working on third position.  I do have a concrete takeaway on vibrato I’m anxious to work on when I practice here in a bit.  It’s difficult to write about, but the main idea is that I need a little gap in between the fingerboard and where I tend to rest the “Y” area of my left hand, the web type area between the base of the thumb and the base of the index finger (in karate we more or less have a word that part of the body – Toho).

So, as usual, I’m having tons of fun and I have plenty more work to do.

Thanks for reading.

Ryan