Category Lesson Notes
Shared Experience and Challenges
Well, this Gavotte is magnificently difficult. I talked to Teacher yesterday about other people’s view of the piece – perhaps I mentioned before that she says kids tend to hate it. She says she likes it (she does not necessarily love them all) but that many, many people get it “good enough” and then never […]
Pizzicato, Strumming, and Minors
Wednesday’s lesson was big – we made it all the way to the end of Gavotte by Mignon, including the final pizzicato notes and finishing it off with two strummed chords (arpeggio, a word for which I had previously learned a more limited definition). The piece is really something – as I continue to work […]
D.C. al Fine con Gavotte
I mentioned starting Ambroise Thomas’ Gavotte from Mignon a couple of weeks ago- I started in the middle of the piece with two lines that Teacher thinks are tricky. And they are indeed tricky – I worked with them for a week and realized the critical element in those two lines is being in tune […]
Hat Trick: Gavotte
Gavotte, by Gossec, is still one of my pieces – I play it all the time, almost daily, and I’m making incremental progress. The song is somewhat stark in the way it reveals the limitations of my playing at this stage of the game – I get to choose between speed and precision; I cannot […]
I’m Playing This?
When I got home from work last night I gushed to Michael about beginning Paganini in my morning lesson (I also gushed to co-workers all day long about beginning Paganini in my morning lesson). It occurred to me to think back to my start with Teacher and the Suzuki method, and to consider my expectations […]
Bowing and Grooves
This past two weeks has been quite busy for me at work, and my practicing has suffered. So of course in yesterday’s lesson I had to confess to Teacher – she’d know anyway. It’s not that I’ve made no progress, but another week will be helpful on my newest piece. I’ve now written two posts […]
Paganini Will Wait
Last week I posted about Paganini being next. He is – The Witch’s Dance is the next song in Book 2, and I am itching to get going with him. In Wednesday’s lesson Teacher asked me if I was ready to move on or if I wanted another week with The Two Grenadiers. I was […]
Mutes
I mentioned a mute to Teacher in my last lesson and she pulled a couple out of her case for me to try on. One was a practice mute – a piece of molded rubber that’s available on the cheap. It slips over the bridge, and when I played with it I was quite surprised […]
Paganini Is Next
In yesterday’s lesson I made it through the rest of Schumann’s The Two Grenadiers, and it’s a lot of fun. It’s the first piece I’ve learned that contains a key change – the song (and yes, it’s really a song) starts in D minor and changes to D major a little over halfway through. D […]
An Old and New Song
The Two Grenadiers, which I started in Wednesday’s lesson, is a song written by Robert Schumann in 1840. Schumann, whom I’ve mentioned before as the composer of another Suzuki tune I have in my repertoire, Happy Farmer, wrote many songs. And though sometimes I throw the word “song” around loosely – many of the compositions […]
Ryan Libel 