And I am happy to say it paid off. Plesiosaurus was close to passing last week and made it this week. I even got to hear Laura's accompaniment on the piano. Unfortunately there is no recording this week.
After this good start I played Raggle Taggle Hippie. It has improved since last week, with a lighter grip on the bow. Now Laura tells me I have to play it faster. Much faster. Not as fast as Old Fiddler Man, but way faster than I am playing it now. Laura's advice is to speed up each phrase separately before playing the whole piece quickly. Did I say whole piece? Scratch that. I only know half of it. Laura wants me to start on the second half this week. It's not technically any harder than the first half, so I imagine it won't take as long again to learn.
At this point I asked Laura a question that has been bugging me for a little while now. I can't play the left-hand fingering for this music unless I am playing the violin. I can't name the notes that I am playing as I play them. I find it very hard to play a phrase from any point except the beginning. Is this a good sign or a bad sign? Apparently it's not a bad sign. As I understand things, it is not necessary to be able to recognise each note individually. it is more important to follow the contour of the music and pay attention to how the notes relate to each other rather than their absolute position on the staff. This will help with sight-reading too. Once I have a starting note I can get the rest of the notes relative to that one. Quite often too Laura will write fingering numbers and bowing directions on the music. Again it is not on every note, but only now and then, or when there is a tricky section. After talking about this I felt a lot better.
I also read some articles about intonation. One man in particular was upset that some violin teachers don't teach this "properly". Let me just say that I often know when I play a wrong note, and I know how to change my finger position (higher or lower) to make that note sharper or flatter. Laura helps me with this too, so I am happy that I am learning to play in tune, and more importantly, I am learning how to fix my own mistakes. I have found one of the best exercises for this is to play scales. Yes, perhaps it is boring, but they are great for helping to play in tune. There is no thought about what's next. It's a scale. You know what's next. That way you can focus on the sound you are making. If it's the wrong sound, you can fix it.
Then it was time to select a new tune. Laura's violin was broken so she had to demonstrate with Patience. I love the sounds Laura can coax from my violin, more so because I know that with practice and patience I will get those sounds myself. There was no Bach or Mendelssohn (I get the feeling I won't be able to say I was "classically trained") but there were some lovely Scottish or Irish tunes and a Russian tune that sounded way too happy to really be Russian. Don't kill me. I know there are some wonderfully happy pieces of Russian music of course. I figure I can learn them all eventually so settled for the first sheet which has Hornpipe (from Little Suite no. 3) by Peter Martin and Fiddler's Fancy by Sheila Nelson. They don't look like they are too hard to learn and will certainly be fun to play.
That's it for this week. Sirisha had an early lesson this week so I was on my own. Next week she will be back for what has become a regular double lesson before she goes on holiday.
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