How depressing it all is

Violin: These past few days or weeks have started to show me why my progress in violin seems so slow sometimes. It is because of this pattern I fall into of practicing only 1-3 hours a day, and on some days skipping it all together. It's just horrible. First of all, you always feel bad cause you aren't working enough, and then when you do finally get to it, it sucks because you haven't been working hard. And you don't really get any better. I'm still trying hard to find a working mechanism for the right hand, and sometimes it feels like I haven't made any progress at all. Sometimes I find a configuration that seems to work, but it quickly disappears and is very difficult to find again. The balance and consistency idea seems to still yield the best results when I can remember to focus on it and attain it. However, it is still such a different way to think about my right hand than I usually do that I don't even realize I'm not working on it most of the time. I really need to ramp up the workin hours, I think is the moral of the story.

Life: When I get down about how much I suck, it also triggers this feeling of repulsion at all the things I think about and get excited about that don't have to do with violin. Other stuff is just wasting my time, and makes me forget about the reality of my life. I do not dread the idea of pouring myself into violin, but for many reasons, I find it very hard to do. I am too content with myself when I'm not practicing. I tell myself I'll be fine, and I believe it. It is a terrible subconscious habit. What ever happened to the 5 hour streak?

Practice Time: 3 hours

Except on holidays

Violin: The word that has been coming to mind recently as I continue to work on my bow hold is balance. I feel like now that I am able to relax my hand, things still don't feel right until I find a way to balance the bow in my hand and balance my hand with my arm. I think the consistency idea from before is related to this balance thing, since I get the same feeling when attain each one. I think when I was trying to be consistent, my hand wasn't loose enough to be ready for it. Today I felt that I could quickly achieve relaxation, but kept losing the balance, or ability to be consistent. When it feels right, it is as if I have "total" control over the bow, like it is part of my arm or something, so that the interface between hand and bow almost completely disappears. This is a hard feeling to keep up. But the sound and control it makes available to me are worth every second I spend working on it. I also noticed today that I have become lazy with my fourth finger, and that it was often coming down in a very uncomfortable way that did not allow any relaxed vibrato. I was able to improve the situation by feeling the motion from my hand and arm, and feeling weight transfer up through the fingers. As I improved my bow hand and arm, I started to feel like I was capable of playing something in a musically satisfying way, but had trouble finding the "right" way to play it. It occurred to me to try to think of images or ideas to connect the music to, in the same way many teachers have encouraged me and other students to do (especially in chamber music settings). I think this method may soon actually yield results for me as I learn how to control the bow enough to allow my ears to be the judge.

Life: As you can see, I didn't post at all over thanksgiving break. I had too many people to see, and too many things to do to get it even an ounce of practicing. It was sad, but the food was great, mostly. I have to say, I am never completely satisfied with meals unless they are cooked by my parents or their relatives (or purchased at a restaurant). It's all what you were raised on I guess. And also there are just a lot of mediocre cooks out there, who try to whip shit out for thanksgiving weekend feasts, but don't have the chops cause they eat tv dinners every other day of the year. I should start learning to use the "oh I really need to practice" line to get myself out of unappealing social situations. Plus it makes you look really serious. Like that'll ever happen! HA!

Practice Time: 3 hours

Some day I'll have the answer

Violin: While continuing to refine my right hand, and work on consistency, I made a few good insights. The most important one seems to be an improvement on the thumb. I was confused about the whole aspect of bending my thumb; when I would try to bend it, like my teacher used to say I had to, it wouldn't feel comfortable, but if I didn't bend it, the situation wasn't any better. Today I found that I had to bend it ever so slightly to achieve a position of comfort. When I found the right amount, it felt natural, and I could feel a connection between my thumb and first finger. This discovery made me remember something my old teacher said once, which was that his thumb barely bent at all, just enough to allow the knuckles to relax, and I think that's what I'm getting at now. I have to keep remembering to pull with my arm, and more work needs to focus on the up bows. They are still very untamed, and will instinctively do all sorts of strange and unfortunate things. Mostly, I raise my arm up too much and pull my hand away from the bow in a way that makes it very hard to recover when switching direction to down. I noticed that it is important to release the small amount of bend that I had on the down bow when coming up, and to keep the knuckles down. I've also noticed myself sometimes starting to grip with the ring and pinky fingers, but this problem is quickly resolved when noticed. I think it comes from still feeling like I need to hold on tight for dear life when things get hairy...when in fact I need to relax even more.

Life: I think I spent too much time in front of a computer screen today, because I had a headache by the end of it. I watched an episode from the original series of Star Trek for the first time today, it was quite entertaining. I was inspired to download it after reading that a South Park episode I watched recently had drawn extensively from this particular Star Trek episode. Luckily that was about the most exciting thing that happened to me today. I don't know what I would do if I actually had to interact with someone or something...

Practice Time: 3 hours

Or at least I can pretend to

Violin: I think that the five hours a day thing works a little differently than I suggested. It seems like about every five hours, you noticeably improve, but that doesn't mean that you don't improve if the five hour block is stretched over two or three days. So as I've been practicing consistently less than five hours a day recently, I've been getting better, but at a much slower rate than I could be. Upon writing that, I had that recurring "duh" response. Oh well. The last few days have really convinced me that figuring out a smooth and relaxed mechanism in my right hand is totally key. I have gotten really sensitive to the times when my hand goes into a messed up state (which is nearly all the time) and am getting a lot better at quickly locating the source of the problem. One big problem I had before was that whenever I would collapse my fingers, my hand would suddenly feel very uncomfortable, and so I would soon still my knuckles back up. I guess my old teacher never figured out why I did this, but I think the reason has to do with my thumb and inner hand. I always thought that the tension I felt from flattening my knuckles came from my the top of my hand, but I was wrong. It comes from the bottom, right around where the thumb meets the hand. My preliminary solution to this was bending the thumb a lot, but that proved to be ultimately a dead end. Eventually I was able to find an orientation for my thumb and fingers that allowed the hand to collapse comfortably. It felt great! When I curved my first finger a little, I was able to pull with my arm and feel like I was connecting directly to the bow and thus to the string. I also consistently noted that when I was able to really remove all thumb tension, my sound improved dramatically. It was really amazing actually. So I think with these new insights I can keep working on being more consistent.

Life: Went to see the new Bond movie. It was totally awesome. I have to agree with everybody when they say it is one of the best. There could have been more cool gadgets, but it's probably good they played those down, since it sometimes takes away a certain amount of seriousness from the atmosphere. Also I had this terrible desire today to have a girlfriend or something. I wish I didn't have impulses like that because eventually they build up and I end up doing something I regret. I wish I could be completely happy just by myself, but I guess that's not the way it is supposed to be. I just hope I can hold off until I can get involved with someone who is actually attractive.

Practice Time: 2 hours

Like how life is a bitch

Violin: After listening really closely to some recordings of Rabin and Dylan and some other stuff, I got even more displeased with my sound than I was before and decided to try other things. I tried listening really intently on the sound, trying to hear the overtones (which I still find to be impossible) and listening for anything I hadn't heard before. I tried all different kinds of vibrato and different bow holds, and it seems to me that there are basically three things that have been the bane of my existence - my first finger, middle finger, and thumb of my right hand. Maybe you could even take out the middle finger. This area seems to be where all of my remaining serious issues with comfort remain. There is some basic mechanism of movement, some coordinated motion that my fingers just aren't aware of, and must be discovered. I sometimes feel like my actual anatomy must be just fucked up and makes it impossible for me to bend my fingers in the right way, but I don't think that's true. I think I just need to keep working hard on finding something that works. Everything I have been doing up til now seems to be a constant illusion of achieved comfort, and not the real thing. Specific advances I made in this regard today include an alteration of the curvature of my first finger, which seems to aid in collapsing the knuckles, and a realization that the thumb is incredibly important in maintaining balance. Hopefully tomorrow will bring further improvements.

Life: Well tomorrow is the official launch day for the PS3, I'm not going to have one. I would have had to camp out for 2 days in what might possibly be the worst weather we have had all year. I am amazed at the people who are out there and have been for hour after cold and rainy hour. All this hysteria actually made me realize that I just need to get a real job, so I went and applied for a few. Making money slowly and legally is a lot easier, albeit less interesting, than get-rich-quick schemes of which I have been obsessed with for the past 5 years. You have to be lucky and have no life otherwise and/or be crazy to be successful without having a normal job. What a bummer.

Practice Time: 3 hours?

At least I hope I do

Violin: I noticed today that even though I say I'm working on consistency, much of my practicing is still pretty much the same as what I always do, which just consists of playing things and trying to feel more comfortable. Actually finding a comfortable way to play a passage or a bow stroke, and then repeating that same exact movement over and over again is what I would like to be doing, but is very tedious. But that is probably due to the fact that I haven't done it very much at all. So I am going to continue trying to work on what I want to work on. Lord. An idea that helped me today was thinking about the thumb and fingers working together when I want relax or collapse my hand. Before, I would try to relax one or the other, without much success. I have to integrate the whole thing. Also, feeling like the hand always remained in the middle of the bow, vertically speaking, was helpful in maintaining balance. Damn, violin is a bitch.

Life: Although I have told myself this many times before, I always seem to forget its validity - drinking is bad. It just makes me feel like crap sooner or later. I went to get pizza for dinner and had a measly two beers, and then afterwards I went to practice and felt slightly nauseous and lightheaded. Not to mention tired. Drugs really have an effect on your system if you have been sober for a while. I can't really believe the diet I used to have, while still going to school. Well the result was that I had to cut my practice time short. Oh well.

Practice Time: 3 hours

So does my computer

Violin: In accordance with yesterday's conclusion regarding the type of progress that is made depending on the numbers of hours I have practiced in a given day, I have merely continued to refine the consistency idea. I have succeeded in quickly being able to locate key spots in my right hand and fingers that require readjustment and relaxation when things start to feel awkward. I've been working on integrating another concept many teacher's have talked about before, that one should always feel "gravity" in the arm, letting it fall naturally and feeling as if the arm is simply hanging from the shoulder. I can only start to feel this when I managed to relax my hand. Otherwise, if my hand is tight, it is impossible to make my arm truly relaxed. Go ahead, try it. I thought a lot today about using the consistency idea to help my left hand, but so far the progress has been slow. I think there is something to be found in this vein, but my left hand as it is is fairly comfortable and so tapping into the times when it is unbalanced requires an much finer degree of sensibility than is necessary in working on my right hand. Maybe one day my hands will be running neck and neck.

Life: After talking to a few people about how retarded girls are and that they do completely bass ackwards things like ignore you just to get your attention, I have decided (yet again) that they are a waste of time and energy. That could really be the final word in the matter if they weren't so freakin hot sometimes. It pisses me off, it really does. It's like, I want to feel a certain way, but my body with its stupid hormones and neurotransmitters and who knows what refuses to let the primordial urges die. Damn it! Well it will just require constant reminders and a good amount of will power. Life would be so much easier if I was ugly. Ha. haha. lol.

Practice Time: 2.75 hours

Occasionally I regret it

Violin: As I thought about what I would write tonight, and the fact that I haven't posted in like a week, I came to what I see as a very interesting, albeit "duh" inspiring, insight. After suffering through about 5 days of practicing 2 hours at most, and comparing my progress and posts to that of few a weeks ago when I was doing 5 hours a day, I realized a major difference which wasn't initially clear to me. Every day that I practice less than about 3 or 4 hours, I feel like the most I have to say in this plog is that I need to keep working on the same kind of thing that I was working on the day before. And though I would say similar things when I was practicing 4-5 hours, it wouldn't actually happen, i.e. I would "discover" something new, or make substantial changes in my focus nearly every day. And as I doubt I have recently discovered the be all end all of violin playing, I must conclude that my old teacher was right yet again when he told me more than 6 years ago that "almida is right, the magic number is 5." I mostly just took his statement on faith, as I did with almost everything he told me during the 4 years I studied with him. And so this most recent development continues this semester's process of discovering all of my teacher's comments for myself. So as you might expect, most of what I have to say about practicing today consists of "reaffirming" what I have been working on for the past few days. Basically I have been trying to make myself more consistent. I am trying to make every bow feel exactly the same, and every left hand movement completely reproducible. It is very difficult. Trying to bow consistently has brought my left hand tension very much into focus. I think this consistency thing has a lot to do with understanding the students in my old studio. For instance, this korean girl who was always very technically proficient but musically lacking was probably practicing extremely consistently. Therefore, she didn't have to practice a lot, and furthermore, practicing was boring because she was doing the same thing over and over again. Of course this is a total assumption. But I think I have much to gain from it. I focus too much on making "music." What bullshit. ha

Life: So what have I been doing with all my time if I haven't been practicing?!? Well not much, unfortunately. The biggest thing(s) to note are 1. I drove my car into a ditch, forgot that I have a AAA membership, and thus ending up paying $85 to some towing company. Made me want to shoot myself. 2. I went to hang out with this girl at this cafe and listen to jazz, and when I got there she pretended she didn't know me. All the other pertinent details suggest a total bogusing on the part of this chick. I don't want to chalk it up to just, oh I'm completely uninteresting and undesirable, because that would be highly depressing. So I don't know what to think. I'm going to ignore her and see how likes it. So there.

Practice Time: 2 hours

Hopefully not the hard way

Violin: As I continued to work on the idea of making my bowing very consistent, it became clear to me how difficult it is to do. I think this happens with every new thing I try to do - the first few days are really frustrating. It takes so much concentration to do whatever it is I'm trying to do, that I can only keep it going for a few notes, before I easily fall back into something not as good. Today that happened a lot. By the end of the day, I started to feel that if I wasn't practicing with the consistency going, it wasn't worth practicing. I've never felt that way before about something. I think this has larger implications. I think it basically touches down on the sentiments expressed by my old teacher when he said that my bottom line was just too low. What I expect from every note I play needs to be much higher. Every bow, every finger, has to be carefully calculated. I am not afraid of losing my musicality doing this. It is necessary. I let way to much stuff get swept under the rug, and then when I go to perform, I slip on the rug and all the shit comes flying out. Or something. Well hopefully tomorrow will be easier.

Life: Found out today that the first thing I ordered from this shopping deals website works really poorly...at least that's what other people say who have already received it. Go figure. Well super cheap deals are cheap for a reason, and hopefully I learn this through a five or six dollar lesson and not a $400 one. Gotta keep your head up.

Practice Time: 3 hours

and lots of good it does me.

Violin: Well I continue to "relax" and "take a break" after that competition, only getting in a couple hours here and there. But I've stumbled across a new idea which seems to be helping a lot. I was trying to figure out why it seems like I can't train my right hand and arm in the same way I can train my left. I was thinking about how I look at learning notes as a straightforward process, i.e. you work through the piece and keep telling your fingers to go in the same order and to the same place and eventually they get more accurate and more free from thought. And then it occurred to me that I don't think about the bow in the same way. I think about it as the thing that makes the music, and therefore can't be trained to do exactly the same thing every time. And, of course, while this is true, I think it is where some of my problems lie. So I began practicing with the idea in mind of trying to find a way to bow that I could replicate exactly the same way every time. Needless to say, it was very difficult. But when I started to find something, I felt a whole new level of ease come into my playing. It seemed that in order to repeat a bow stroke in the same way, I had to be in total control of all parts of my arm. So I gained insight into what it feels like to be in control enough to be consistent. I think this is very important, and will continue working on it.

Life: Well, much of my time recently has been spent obsessively watching the forums and pages of this shopping deals website I found. I think I must be part Jew. I've been ordering all this stuff (with money I don't really have) and it's been very strange. The tension is building as the PS3 launch date approaches. Unfortunately I have orchestra the day before it comes out, the day you have to camp and wait in line. So I may have to feign sickness. Is that immoral? Who cares.

Practice Time: 2 hours

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