While other people knew it all along
Was out of town for the past 3 days.
Violin:
Today I think I started to grasp the reasons behind my constantly uncomfortable bow arm. After finding that hand and arm relaxation were nearly incompatible in my current setup, I realized today that if I concentrate on moving my arm in a comfortable way, a way that eliminates awkwardness, my hand inexplicably squeezes and tightens and feels horrible. I think, in the past, in an effort to keep my hand from doing that, I contorted my arm into positions that were highly disconnected and unbalanced. Unfortunately I got used to those feelings and thus was unaware of the problems. Good teachers have always told me that it was my hand that was the source of the problems, and I think I now understand why they said that. So today I practiced bowing with a relaxed arm, and forcing the hand to go with it. This induced a lot of weird things in the hand, which I then began to work out. I found there was some sort of tension in the "knuckle" of my thumb, and that I often squeezed with my ring and pinky fingers as I approached the frog or tip. I began to have a sense of joining the fingers with the arm, so that everything was connected, but this was hard to keep up. But this new method of relaxing the arm and then moving down into the fingers I think will yield excellent results, as compared to what I think I used to do, which was relax the fingers and then try to figure out the arm.
Life:
Not much to say. I've been listening to all of the Mahler symphonies for the first time, and am loving it. They are such amazing pieces and give me inspiration for striving to become an orchestral musician. I think few things must be more glorious or more exhaustingly satisfying than performing one of those pieces with a great orchestra and an even better conductor. Though perhaps some people feel that sitting in a chair in an office is better. I don't know. Playing video games is pretty fun too.
Practice Time: 3.5 hours
Violin:
Today I think I started to grasp the reasons behind my constantly uncomfortable bow arm. After finding that hand and arm relaxation were nearly incompatible in my current setup, I realized today that if I concentrate on moving my arm in a comfortable way, a way that eliminates awkwardness, my hand inexplicably squeezes and tightens and feels horrible. I think, in the past, in an effort to keep my hand from doing that, I contorted my arm into positions that were highly disconnected and unbalanced. Unfortunately I got used to those feelings and thus was unaware of the problems. Good teachers have always told me that it was my hand that was the source of the problems, and I think I now understand why they said that. So today I practiced bowing with a relaxed arm, and forcing the hand to go with it. This induced a lot of weird things in the hand, which I then began to work out. I found there was some sort of tension in the "knuckle" of my thumb, and that I often squeezed with my ring and pinky fingers as I approached the frog or tip. I began to have a sense of joining the fingers with the arm, so that everything was connected, but this was hard to keep up. But this new method of relaxing the arm and then moving down into the fingers I think will yield excellent results, as compared to what I think I used to do, which was relax the fingers and then try to figure out the arm.
Life:
Not much to say. I've been listening to all of the Mahler symphonies for the first time, and am loving it. They are such amazing pieces and give me inspiration for striving to become an orchestral musician. I think few things must be more glorious or more exhaustingly satisfying than performing one of those pieces with a great orchestra and an even better conductor. Though perhaps some people feel that sitting in a chair in an office is better. I don't know. Playing video games is pretty fun too.
Practice Time: 3.5 hours
posted by beatrix at 11:08 PM
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