Category Practice Notes
Nail It or Fail It
I’m working on this concerto movement, the big finale movement of Seitz’s second concerto. It’s coming along well enough considering my skills, but there are things in there that I just cannot do well. Not taking into account some complicated bowing right out of the gate that makes me sound scratchy, there’s a section of […]
Just Do It
Teacher canceled our lesson last week, and travels over a long weekend meant no time to practice, so no lesson this week either. I got back on the violin yesterday after not playing since last Wednesday, almost a week away from the instrument – it seems the violin didn’t miss me much. After a quick […]
Looking Back and Staying Present
Lately, I’ve had a whole lot to work on in my practice sessions – in addition to my new pieces being quite complicated and just longer than past pieces, I’m trying to work on vibrato, shifting positions, and to do daily work on scales. Consequently, I spend less and less time on my older Book […]
The Turn of the Screw
Sometimes as I’m playing I become frustrated with my tone – the moments I’m talking about here aren’t due to not being warmed up or anything I can put my finger on – I just find I’m producing a scratchiness or an airiness, versus a rich ringing. Sometimes I’m inclined to blame the bow – […]
Practice Makes a 12 Year Old
Teacher needed to cancel this week’s lesson, which is OK because I didn’t get a lot of practice in over the past week. It’s also OK because I am still able to work on many details from the final piece in Book Three – the Bach Bourree. I worked on the piece in isolation for […]
Day of Rest and Beauty
I think of Mondays as my day of rest. I have a Sun/Mon weekend as a rule, so Michael and I spend Sundays together – Monday is my day to myself. I always play the violin, typically for a good while. Yesterday I played twice – once for an hour and a half in the […]
The Pros and Me
Last night Michael asked me, in the sweetest way possible, what it is that Teacher and (since we were listening to the Suzuki CD) folks like William Preucils do that I can’t do that makes their playing sound so good. My immediate reply, conjuring the unsupported-by-research figure of Malcolm Gladwell, was, “Thousands of hours of […]
Bach’s Cello Suite #3
The Bach Cello Suites are some of the most well-known and loved compositions for cello ever written. Though composed prior to 1720 (the provenance is not as great as most of Bach’s work), their popularity is a decidedly 20th century innovation – we owe their existence in the modern cello canon to Pablo Casals. While […]
Magnificent
My week away was magnificent, but devoid of music of any kind. I was in New York, and occasionally I thought about the palpable lack of music in my environment, mostly Chelsea and the lower west side. “Not even a street musician?” No, not even a street musician. The closest I got to music was […]
Scaling Up
I’ve been warming up with scales for a while now. I think one major benefit to the practice is becoming accustomed to hearing the correct pitch. Moving stepwise through the notes makes it easier to hear when I’m out of tune. It’s also a way to mark progress – as I slowly get better, the […]
Ryan Libel 