I’ve been making steady progress on the D Major Gavotte, but to hear me trot it out for Teacher yesterday you never would have known that.  In the middle of playing it she stopped me and asked about my posture, which was apparently quite off-kilter.  I realized when she brought it up that I was standing poorly due to my lower back, which was not feeling super-swift yesterday (I have fine and not-so fine days).  I tried to bring the posture back under control, but it was a bit of a strain.  So far today, the back is feeling better than yesterday, so hopefully when I go to play here in a bit it won’t be a problem.  I was grateful to her for pointing it out – sometimes we can’t see these things ourselves, and playing with poor posture will only cause me further problems down the road.

One positive from the lesson – I showed Teacher my progress on vibrato.  Of course she was quite complimentary, and physically helped me along by moving my hand and holding my thumb.  Loosening up is the key to taking my meager vibrato to the next level, it would seem.  She also told me to start to play with it more.  In the past week I’ve started scales with some vibrato, and I’ve written before about playing Judas Maccabaeus with it, but she’s trying to get me to start doing it more often and even spontaneously.  I don’t quite feel I’m ready for it, but I will try to be a good student.  I have to just do it and get over the fact that it negatively impacts my tone for the time being.

I need to take the long view.

Thanks for reading.

Ryan