Something...anything...please

Violin: Well after that practicing marathon last week I tripped over some video games and spent two days recovering. Hence the lack of a post yesterday. But today I got in a few hours, so here's the deal. I've extended the new idea about relaxed muscles, i.e. paying attention to both the ones that expand and the ones that contract to my upper and low arm, with miraculous results. I finally feel like I have a little bit of control at the frog, something which seemed nearly an impossible feat a few months ago. Combining this with direction and arm weight as usual makes things comfortable and have a big sound. Or at least, relatively big compared to before. That is, my old teacher would be like holy crap. On the downside, doing all those things at once is a pain in the ass. I feel like going back to Wholfhart (which I did last year, with limited results) just so I can work this new stuff out on nice basic material. Putting it right into the Mozart is kind of tricky. But it is coming. My left hand has had to catch up, as it were, by remembering to keep my wrist straight, and to think about the up part of the vibrato instead of just the down part. And keeping all the fingers loose is essential. I hope when my teacher returns next week after being gone for an entire month that he doesn't politely inform me that I've practiced myself into corner. I don't think I have. I think things are getting better.

Life: Well, as mentioned, I sucked at life for the duration of yesterday and today. Video games and socializing and sleeping and doing dishes and cross-dressing. Well, I did do some research for my upcoming Prokofiev paper, and found some really interesting stuff about Soviet music and culture and discussions of Prokofiev's music. I'm getting the impression that his music seems unusually absent from many theoretical works by western writers. I can't tell whether this is because his music just isn't as highly regarded as Stravinsky or Scriabin or Milhaud or whoever else or whether it is just because there wasn't as much appreciation for it until recently. As soon as I found some russian books, they were full of Prokofiev. I suppose more light will be shed on this issue as time goes on. In other news, I have to practice more.

Practice Time: 1.5 hours + 1 hour rehearsal