Day 1A Abstractions

My few days off in April turned into more than three weeks, and that turned into a more leisure practice approach for awhile, though still very considerably focused. Most of the remarks for these abstractions already live at violinist.com , God luv'm. Anyway, rehashing just a little, the past many weeks have been phenomenally productive--last night just bringing these many things together almost made me feel uncomfortable. I've felt this way actually several times with this instrument. This sort of performance level surrealism is fairly common with achievement sometimes.

Though my original goals was to get through Suzuki III this Summer, I find actually it's still achievable, maybe moreso than before. Since about the middle of May I've been focusing on posture, more or less, and a few weeks ago I really turned up the heat. I'd played without a shoulder rest lightly before, but I decided to ditch it, after reading Raphael Klayman's site. His site has a very simple yet effective paper on holding the instrument without a rest; and, the result was amazingly phenomenal--for good reason I think.

Even though I'm pretty laid back, posture on violin has been a nemesis. Mainly my tuck was the main focal point that improved two hundred percent, but this has been a Perlman dance of lightness. Other points truly addressed for the moment have been: left wrist, bow hold, various contact points with the instrument-meaning releasing all pressures, vibrato--somewhat nearing significantly, and again tuck. But, I've added shifting to my challenges which I should work on soon while I'm on this relearning festival.

Even though I'm finding some awkward moments here and there, honestly the increase in resonance is phenomenal, as is vibrato and overall sound. So this is basically where I'm at, though I'm so excited I feel I could write for days on what has happened in my program recently.

So Tonight:
Furthered straight wrist work, allowing overall concavity to be magnified--because I cannot walk and chew bubble gum--I'll turn it back down in the near future. I was trending convex, though not really badly, enough I think to effect sound; and, definitely vibrato. So this went real well.

Along with straight wrist, started more focused time keeping that 2sweet2b true tuck nicely pointing right, augmenting actually everything--of course vibrato. I also was more or less successful at keeping the chin light and so forth. Played pretty intently--thumb feels fine.

Started my first original folk arrangement, using at least three songs: "Scarborough Fair", "Poor Wayfaring Stranger", and a English folk melody sounding thing I put together in em... It's going to be powerful...... powerful. Tonight with improved resonance and vib., it's already haunting. And this, is sort of why I wanted to play violin-whew!.

Uh, let's see: One other challenge was created by ditching the chin rest and other things: The changed angle took some of my colle/martele type stuff temporarily. No big deal--and my improving bow control and note forming was set back a little, which is basically part of the colle/martele thing. Again, no big deal.

My day was ok. It's been a music and cooking for the folks day. I checked out "Time for Three", rock'n double Bach'n. Oh sheesh-I still grin... And one of the people on V.com, Rachel Barton Pine, is on the Billboard Classical chart now. I was extremely proud.. And I started getting my mind ready to go checkout Hilary Hahn next week--did I say surreal earlier. And maybe I should add again, that my basics started to click, I put rosin on the stick, and jammed, both with and beyond, the metronome's tick. And have a good day.