or maybe every 2 days...
Hmm, missed another day.
Violin: After participating in this competition on Sunday, a lot of interesting things have come to light, even though I haven't been practicing as much as I should lately. Most importantly I think, are the importance of two things, at least at this point - that if I am going to be performing a piece, there should be no moment in which I need to "think" about what comes next. It should happen completely thoughtlessly. That is not to say that I shouldn't have to think about what I'm playing. I need to be able to think about the music, and not the notes or fingerings and so on. This might seem obvious, but I have realized that while I practice, it is easy to fall into a false sense of security because of the lack of nervousness. The second thing is making sure my fingers are relaxed. I think I kind of started to think I had that problem under control, but seeing as how it is my most serious issue right now I shouldn't have been so confident. I will continue to slave away at that for the next x number of days. The nervousness of the competition also reinforced the necessity to examine every aspect of every movement. Not to make it sound overly complex, but all the movements of the bow must be trained to be relaxed, from bringing it to the string, to finishing a note, to balancing it while it is suspended, and all sorts of other things. I think practicing only one piece for hours and hours without a teacher (which I basically did for the past 4 weeks) is not a good idea. That may seem obvious as well, but now I had to learn the hard way. Not only is it important to continue receiving feedback, but it is important to play other things, even scales, so that you don't get to comfortable with a certain set of discomforts, if that makes any sense. So there's lots of stuff to work on.
Life: To my most assured detriment, I have recently become obsessed with the imminent launch of the PS3 and all the discussion that is going on about preorders and launch date availability and so on. It's pretty interesting stuff actually. It may even end up making me camp out in a parking lot for a whole day. In any case I need to get back to reading about Prokofiev...I left him stuck in Germany and I'm sure he is quite ready to get to Paris by now.
Practice Time: 2 hours
Violin: After participating in this competition on Sunday, a lot of interesting things have come to light, even though I haven't been practicing as much as I should lately. Most importantly I think, are the importance of two things, at least at this point - that if I am going to be performing a piece, there should be no moment in which I need to "think" about what comes next. It should happen completely thoughtlessly. That is not to say that I shouldn't have to think about what I'm playing. I need to be able to think about the music, and not the notes or fingerings and so on. This might seem obvious, but I have realized that while I practice, it is easy to fall into a false sense of security because of the lack of nervousness. The second thing is making sure my fingers are relaxed. I think I kind of started to think I had that problem under control, but seeing as how it is my most serious issue right now I shouldn't have been so confident. I will continue to slave away at that for the next x number of days. The nervousness of the competition also reinforced the necessity to examine every aspect of every movement. Not to make it sound overly complex, but all the movements of the bow must be trained to be relaxed, from bringing it to the string, to finishing a note, to balancing it while it is suspended, and all sorts of other things. I think practicing only one piece for hours and hours without a teacher (which I basically did for the past 4 weeks) is not a good idea. That may seem obvious as well, but now I had to learn the hard way. Not only is it important to continue receiving feedback, but it is important to play other things, even scales, so that you don't get to comfortable with a certain set of discomforts, if that makes any sense. So there's lots of stuff to work on.
Life: To my most assured detriment, I have recently become obsessed with the imminent launch of the PS3 and all the discussion that is going on about preorders and launch date availability and so on. It's pretty interesting stuff actually. It may even end up making me camp out in a parking lot for a whole day. In any case I need to get back to reading about Prokofiev...I left him stuck in Germany and I'm sure he is quite ready to get to Paris by now.
Practice Time: 2 hours
posted by beatrix at 12:20 AM
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