Violin lesson #82

This week was a good week musically. Wednesday I went to a show with Mzaza. They were fantastic as usual. And on the week-end I won two tickets to Laura's ensemble's show.

Sirisha and I now have 5pm lessons and that seems to be sutiting everyone. Today we started off with more Paploma practice. This is where I had to channel my inner Greek. Huh? Wait... I *am* Greek. What Laura meant was to play enthusiastically and loudly and with fire. And when we did we sounded really good. The piece is coming along nicely. Just where we will ever perform it I don't exactly know. And although we still have some work to do on this song part of me wonders about the next duet.

No scales, no studies, no pieces for me this week. Unless you count the new piece. And with it comes the steep learning curve. It is a jumpy jive piece and will sound great... eventually. There are a few different techniques to learn in this one and learn them I will. There is the reverse heartbeat: a loud down stroke and quieter up stroke. There is the four staccatos. This is similar to an exercise I currently have so it will be good to put it into practice. And a jumping note: a quick down stroke followed by an up stroke and a re-take.

Sirisha played very well. She was playing Minuet, which is one of my pieces, and she sounds great. I'm going to take some things I learned from her playing and Laura coaching and apply them to my practice. Then Sirisha played her lullaby piece. It's almost done. It sounds so pretty, especially with the piano.

Laura's biggest advice to us today was to keep going if we make a mistake because at the end of the night, nobody cares. The one wrong note you play, or think you play, will go unnoticed by nearly all of your listeners and none will care enough to remember. Just after she said that she pulled up Sirisha for a wrong note. Too funny.

The only down side of the lesson might be getting the train home. If I don't get the quarter after six train I have to wait for the quarter to seven train. Unless I remember to park at Coopers Plains in which case I can get the six thirty train.