Who knows what it will be

Violin: Today was an interesting day. I started out planning on continuing the development of connections in my bow arm, but, as the few previous days have been, progress felt slow, and it was a while before I felt that I was playing comfortably. Also, the amount of concentration I have to exert to keep all the different parts in control began to be tiresome. I worked on integrating the shoulder, and tried to see if I could play any passages up to tempo. Unfortunately, when I tried this, there were immediately many problems. I couldn't retain the "connection" idea when I was playing quickly, and many little bumps that went unnoticed while playing slowly suddenly jumped out. It was rather depressing. However, near the end of my practicing, I made a possibly vital insight. I believe that the cause of my stiff knuckles is actually a result of a lot of tension in the muscles of my fingers. The fleshy parts of my digits I found to be places full of tightness that was relatively easily released. This produced a similar and possibly better effect than the one I had felt when establishing connection between my knuckles and elbow. And it made me think - what moves things are the muscles, and if something is stiff, it must be that muscles are not allowing it to move. I don't think you can having simply stiff knuckles. What is there to be stiff about them? My teacher was always telling me to keep my knuckles down, but I think that clouded the issue. The last hour or so of my practicing was devoted to testing this new hypothesis, and it was found to be extremely helpful. It was also a welcome change from constantly trying to focus on this vague and intangible idea of connectedness. Combining this relaxed fingers idea with arm weight made for some actually enjoyable practicing.

Life: I started reading about the life of Prokofiev in preparation for a possible research paper on one of his symphonies. It is always a little difficult reading about great musicians, for the obvious reasons. I am excited to begin analyzing his work, however, as it seems there is a dearth of scholarship relating directly to his symphonies. I find this unlikely, and I hope I can find some sort of analysis or theoretical studies, but I've found nothing yet. It's not like he's that good or anything...

Practice Time: 5 hours (5+ hrs. streak Day 2)