Yes, I have been terribly slack with blogging lately and I apologise. Stuff has been happening that has taken time and motivation away from blogging. Mostly this has been the kitchen renovation. While it is now almost 100% complete it has been a struggle to get there.
My lessons have been continuing. I still find getting practice time to be somewhat difficult. Life and the universe do not bend themselves to my whim so I continue to try and do the best I can with what I get and be happy with that.
The first and second of these lessons were focussed around the B-flat major scale. It has two flats, and a low first finger position. There are two things I distinctly remember about learning the B-flat major scale. The first is that while Laura has been playing for far more years than I have, making her hands and fingers ever more suited to violin, she has had yoga instructors tell her she is hyper-flexible (not double jointed, which is bad for violinists) which means it is easier for her to get her fingers to go where she wants them to when she is playing. The Sage, however, is the opposite. He is hyper-unflexi. It might be due to having played less violin, or to having fingers that have been great for coding / typing in the years Laura has been playing violin, or just something that is what it is, I struggle to get my fingers to behave the way I want. Not impossible. Just hard to do, so I need to be patient and kind to myself. The second thing is that while my hand / fingers are hyper-unflexi they are rather suited to this scale. My fingers naturally sit more comfortably in the correct position for this scale than they do for other scales I have learned thus far.
I have also noticed it is better to have one finger down at a time rather than trying to have multiple fingers down at once, especially when they are close together. If I want two fingers down in that case then one has to sit up right behind the other. If they don't have to be down and close together it appears to be easier to have them down separately.
The third of these lessons dealt with shifting. I did a little of this with some musical exercises some time ago. The time has come to tackle this again, and to back up exercises with a very pretty piece called Midnight Melodies. Perhaps a little unexpectedly, with this lesson came a revelation. To keep a good hand/palm shape always pretend you are about to play a fourth (pinky) finger. When I kept this in mind, it was far easier for me to shift to third position and be able to keep the good palm shape and thus play the correct note in third position.
Third position requires the mathematical ability to add two. By that I mean that an open string in first position is equivalent to a second finger in third position. Also, I can remember that seeing a finger position of 1 on a note in first position and a finger position of 1 on a note two tones higher (so line to line or space to space) indicates a time to shift from first to third position (or third to first);
There are also some exercises to help with shifting, and I look forward to practicing those. I must confess to having played in third position for a few songs I have learned. The first in an improvisation to the ending of O Solo Mio. The second is for a Greek song I taught myself called I Mana Mou Me Derni (My Mother Beats Me). Domestic violence is not funny, but this song is mostly tongue-in-cheek so please don't take it too seriously.
One final note. There is a violinist trick to shifting, especially for people who have sweaty palms. A little talcum powder on the violin hand does wonders in helping the sliding motion. I don't tend to get sweaty palms so I'll probably not need it so much.
Playing in third position did make me think of Sirisha, who has been absent from classes since she became a first time mum. I hope her and Anand and little Keerthan are all doing well. I found a link to what I believe Laura was talking about - a baby wearing orchestra. Acoustic instruments have a tone that is soothing to infants. So I hope Sirisha and Anand are playing beautiful music for Keerthan =)
