Moved to a New State, Still Fiddlin'

Dear Readers,
I have moved to a new state!!! I'm about to start graduate school, which is definitely really exciting. But I've already discovered that I still need hobbies, otherwise I'll be drowning in my own field.

So, that means that I'm back to actually playing the violin. (I took some time off because of packing & injuries, etc.) I love music, but I'm still adjusting to the whole living in an apartment thing. If you know anything about me, you know that I'm really, really self-conscious about playing unless I've practiced a million times. Now, I've discovered that all my neighbors can hear me practicing. I know because I hear them talking on the phone in the middle of the night!!!! Any suggestions for practicing in an apartment or proper apartment etiquette?????

new skill!!

So I've figured out a new skill. My teacher showed it to me a couple lessons ago, but I couldn't get a hang of it until now.

It turns out that the bow hold is very important on the violin. Consider that until your bow moves across the strings, the violin makes no sound (unless you pluck the strings.) Furthermore, how loud or soft the violin sounds depends on your bowing. And technical sounds, like staccato or legato, also depend on the bow. Therefore, bow = important.

To develop finger muscles which can help with all the aforementioned critical tasks of the bow, my teacher suggested that I walk my right hand up and down the bow. Easier said than done. I think I've finally gotten down a good enough bow hold plus strong enough fingers to actually make it work. I practiced walking up and down the bow a few times today. Hopefully, it'll pay off in the long run!

A confession

Even though I'm doing much better over all, it seems that I've had a few exhausted days. Every activity feels laborious, and I've even resorted to going to bed at 8:00 p.m. All that goes to tell you that I've neglected this blog not out of lack of things to write about but out of lack of energy. In fact, I have a few exciting things that I want to write about, so stay tuned!

In the mean time, on the violin front, I have still been practicing. Never fear. I have read my own columns! I have decided that a little bit of practice is better than none, especially if I'm focusing on the project at hand. So the Froggie is still goin' a-fiddlin'. :)

Forming a Habit

As I was practicing today, I kept thinking about habits. What are habits? Being stuck in a rut is a big fear of mine, and often I conceptualize habits as ruts. After all, Oxford English dictionary defines habit as "a settled or regular tendency or practice, especially one that is hard to give up." Then, a rut is a "long deep track made by the repeated passage of the wheels of vehicles." So naturally habits lead to ruts, right?

That might be one way to conceptualize things, but that frame leads to the negative. Habits can be good as well. Habits such as brushing your teeth every night or making the bed or arriving at meetings on time are laudable. Holding the violin bow correctly & playing the violin in tune are definitely desired habits!

But one can only form habits, good or bad, through repeated activity. It only counts as a habit if you do it the same way every time, which implies that you do the same thing multiple times, usually a lot of times. That means that the only way (not the best way, but the only way) to form the habit of playing violin correctly is to practice frequently!

I'm forming a March resolution: to practice violin almost every day in order to form good violin performing habits. Aside from the days I'm out of town, I'm going to practice (if even only a little.) According to the dictionary, it seems to be my only hope. Fortunately, it's executable!

Practicing with a plan

Growing up, my piano teacher always urged us to have a plan when we practiced. Every day we practiced, we should write down what we hoped to accomplish in that practice time. He insisted, but did we listen? Of course not. We knew better. Even when I was practicing three hours a day(!), I never had a practice plan, or at least, not one written down.

As an adult, however, my attitude has changed a lot. For a wide variety of reasons, I feel that if I put effort or time into something, it needs to count. So if I'm going to spend time practicing the violin, I need to making tangible progress in each of those minutes (or at least most of them).

My teacher gave me some suggestions at my lesson yesterday. Here's how my notes read:
1) Twinkle: straight bow
2) A scale: straight bow
3) Lightly row: left hand fingers above fingerboard, first row of knuckles even with fingerboard

Today's practice definitely had all those suggestions in mind, but I spent most of my time focusing on intonation. When playing a scale, it is best to actually play the notes in the scale and not some pitches that do not correspond to notes at all. That is much easier said than done. Then, I practiced learning Lightly Row, focusing on playing pitches that were actually notes. That song is tricky! And I don't quite have it done to be able to play it with the accompaniment.

Lastly, I played Twinkle with the accompaniment CD. That violinist plays it really quickly, and I don't have a good enough bow hold to make it through very well. So I'm putting bow hold (with a focus on the pinky) on my list of techniques to master (or improve on) before my next lesson.

A Slow Day

Today was just a slow day in general. So violin practice was pretty slow as well.

I practiced in front of the bathroom mirror so that I could monitor the bow. It turns out that it needed some supervision because this frog was fiddlin' all over the highway!

Plus, I practiced playing with a slow version of the accompaniment. That definitely gave me a chance to pay more attention to technique.

That's all for now!

Dropping the Violin Mid-Fiddle?

I had a craving for some yummy dessert today, so I started making these ginger-lemon bars. Mmmm. While they're baking and then cooling, I figured I might as well clock in some violin practicing time. :)

So I said yesterday that my left hand was afraid of dropping the violin? Well, it turns out that its inkling had some semblance of truth because the violin slipped mid-practice a couple of times. I turned to the handy internet for some advice and discovered some useful diagrams and hints on holding the violin. One reasonable suggestion was to practice holding the violin while walking around. That sounded like a good idea, so I'm incorporating that into my practice time.

That's all for today, folks!

Thoughts from Practicing Today

I've had two violin lessons so far, and already I'm realizing how much more there is to know. I think I've mastered the basic bow hold. At least, I'm not dropping the bow in the middle of the song. But I still haven't gotten the left hand position correct, or anywhere near correct. My main problem is that my hand is convinced that if it doesn't hold onto the violin for dear life, the violin will fall to the ground. So I can con the hand into thinking that it doesn't need to grab the violin, but then it has some weirdly ethereal hold that doesn't work too well either.

I've already played piano for a long time, so one would think that I know most of the basic musical techniques. Apparently, there's a pretty basic one that I don't know at all -- being accompanied! I started using the accompaniment tracks that I found online and discovered that it's really difficult to follow an accompaniment. If someone else is playing what I'm supposed to be playing, I can definitely follow that. But what if they're playing something else? Now I have to listen for the rhythm and hear to see if what I'm playing is in tune with what they're playing. That's really tricky. But it does force me to listen to intonation and not just rely on those handy tapes on my violin.

Moral: As Froggie goes a fiddlin', she learns important musical techniques along the way, some specific and some general.