shadowspar

I have to hand it to my teacher; she manages to make every lesson productive even if life has prevented me from having gotten any practice time in the past week.

I'm actually starting to be able to play music in some semblance of proper time when sight-reading a new piece. Exciting! Also having the fledgling beginnings of being able to read ahead in the piece while playing, which is also Very Good News.

Still being gently reminded to grab hold of every tune and play it LIKE A BOSS. Music sounds better when played confidently, even with the occasional missed or slightly out of tune note! ^_^;

Haven't posted anything about how the viola lessons have been progressing for some time now. Will try to find time to rectify that soon; big news coming up. ^_^;

In the meantime, and since I haven't posted it yet, here's one of my favourite pieces of classical music. If you're not familiar with it -- it starts out soft, but you might not want to turn up your speakers too loud. ^_^ Even with the obvious musical joke in this piece aside, I really think it's a beautiful and flowing piece of music.

Geez I suck.

No, not really. However, I do need some more focused practice time...time to start a piece and work all the way through it and get everything right, by knocking it off in stages: right notes & intonation, right rhythm, right bowing.

What else...been learning treble/bass clefs on my own. Viola first position actually sections things up fairly nicely, with the top two strings (D/A) divvying up the treble clef, the bottom string (C) mostly filling the bass, and notes from the second lowest string (G) landing more or less in the middle. Finally figured out that line notes have an odd number of fingers and space notes have an even number; can't believe that took me so long. Played the head of the jazz tune "C Jam Blues" out of the Real Book on Sunday, which is kind of neat but not a huge musical accomplishment -- there's almost nothing to it; it's even simpler than "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star".

Next week: Camptown Races, in concert!

Huh, forgot to post this last week.

While I had the viola out of the case for a bit of screwing around, I got zero focussed practice last week on account of a meltdown at work and spending a bunch more time with the kids to take some of the stress of other events off of other family members.

Despite this lack of practice, my slurs have apparently improved, and my note reading & intonation on the G-string is not bad. Need more work on divvying up the bow for slurs, giving full bows for each un-slurred note, and keeping the bow from drifting up or down the strings.

I good news, I now have a key for my instructor's studio, so I can practice during the day at times when it's not being used for other lessons. Being able to duck out at lunchtime and break out the viola is something I'm really looking forward to. =D =D =D

• I'm increasingly happy with my intonation. It's still a looong way from perfect, but at least things tend to be in the right ballpark, and I'm getting better pulling sour notes back into tune while still continuing to play.
• Slurs on the same string? No problem! Slurs that involve crossing strings? Not so much! I've got some exercises to do that will help me practice.
• More bow, more bow, ever more bow. Especially with (eg) a two-note slur, each note should get half the bow. Playing all the way from the frog to the tip while keeping the bow from sliding either up towards the fingerboard or down towards the bridge is still a challenge. I have exercises for this too. =)
• I'll be gone to Drupalcon next week, so no lesson, and the following week is March break, so no lesson then either! It'll be three weeks 'til the next one. Fortunately lack of material hasn't been a problem -- it's lack of practice time that's been the limiting factor -- but Anya gave me a bunch more to work on just in case. I could totally stand to spend a few weeks getting the basics squared well away and cementing the mental link between notes on the staff and fingers on the fingerboard.
• Chris recommended some easy jazz standards to take a stab at, which I really appreciate. As much as I like playing tunes like Frère Jacques and Twinkle Twinkle Little Star (and they're prime real estate, given that I have two small children) it's nice to have something a bit more grown-up to try as well. They all seem to reach up to E₅, though. From first position on viola, that's your fourth finger on the A string, and I haven't quite gotten that far yet. Between that and reading viola on the treble clef, I've got a bit of work to do before I can get through them, but I'm really excited to take that challenge on. =)

Decent lesson today despite not having had much of a chance to practice last week -- spouse and one child elected to get sick over the weekend, so taking care of them trumped viola practice. (The nerve!)

Continuing to work on basic coordination stuff (lh fingers always above the fingerboard -- don't let the third and fourth fingers sneak underneath; don't pull fingers far away from the fingerboard even when they come off the strings), cleanliness of bowing / purity of tone (good contact, adequate pressure, using enough bow), and timing (resisting the urge to cut half notes short; using large swaths of bow and bowing more quickly for quarter notes and more slowly for half notes).

My intonation is still far from perfect, but is definitely getting better. It's still shocking that every now and again, I can put my fingers down on the fingerboard without even looking at them and have notes come out in tune! It's pretty wild.

My supervisor keeps musing about possibly taking up the violin. I'm trying to encourage this, since two of our staff have children who play violin and cello, respectively, and that would give us a string quartet. Maybe we could serenade the patrons from the mezzanine of the library; I'm sure that would go over well. =)

Made a neat spontaneous discovery tonight: first position on viola + being able to correctly place your first three fingers on the A & D strings == Twinkle Twinkle Little Star in D major! Wooooo! =)

Inasmuch as I've always thought it'd be neat to play a musical instrument, for the longest time I considered it to be out of reach -- something that only "cool kids" did. I was a computer geek, so being good with technology was my lot in life, and making music wasn't. I toyed with the idea of picking up an instrument for years, and of course never did.