It's warm...

It's been very warm this week - practice has happened in the evening's when  it has been marginally cooler.  I've been continuing with articulation exercises though not really seeing a huge increase in speed yet. I need to keep going though.  My study this week (Luft no 18)  is in F#minor and is also good articulation practice.  I need to focus on stamina, breathing and tuning for the rest of the week. 

Telemann Fantastia No 8: I've been working on articulation in the second movement nad trying to get accuracy and dynamics too.  The last movement is getting there.

Hindemith movement 1:  Still working on the basics - notes, rhythm, articulation.  I still need to work through the second half of this.  First half dynamics, phrasing is improving.

Mozart Oboe Quartet Movement 3:  Bits are OK, other bits are very ropey.  There is some ornamentation I'm struggling to get the rhythm to - it doesn't help that it comes very soon after a change from 6/8 to cut common time.  Articulation speed is also slowing me down - but that is something that I'm working on.

Extras: I'm working on the tricky bits for Gershwin.  I'll have another You tube run through next week to see if it's any better.

I had a play through Rendez vous and Causerie from French Suite yesterday.  Total time was 5 mins and 17 seconds which is slightly longer than my time slot for the play day so may need to only do one.  I've sent music to my accompanist - the first one is quite tricky so it maybe that I have to change my piece anyway.  Hopefully he can simplify it a bit to let me play it as it is a really fun piece.

I'm waiting for a piano exam date - 15th June would be my ideal date, so let's wait and see.

Run up to holidays

Well Summer seems to have arrived  - for this week anyway.  My lesson last night was rather warm, to say the least.  I thought it went OK though - Luft, Telemann Fantasia and a start on the Hindemith Sonata. I  need to add in my own articulation and some ornamentation for the Telemann. I'm also still working on the Mozart - so more than enough to keep me busy at the moment.

There seems to be a lot of things coming up over the next couple of months - leading into the summer holidays.  I am trying to take them one at a time.

This week was my final orchestra rehearsal till September.  We just had a bash through some things for fun.  I nice way to finish off the term.  I really appreciate the summer break from orchestra.  By the time the first September rehearsal comes round I will be raring to go again.

I am still waiting for a date for my piano exam, which could be any time from 11 June.

On 16 June I am doing a play day with a professional orchestra - those pieces need LOTS of practice!

On both 17th and 24th June I am playing piano in the morning sevice at church.

14th July I am playing in an Adult Learner's Concert - I think I am going to play a couple of movements from French Suite.  I'd like to be able to have a go at them with an accompanist - and it is Bastille Day so it feels appropriate.  I'll also be accompanying another performer though don't know who that will be, or what they will be playing yet.

18 July - last lesson before summer holidays

21 July I've been asked to play a couple of pieces at a Garden party in aid of a local charity.  Still trying to sort out accompanist for this - I may do the French Suite pieces again, or may give the first movement of the Mozart Quartet a go.  I may also do Italian Dance by Dring.  Depends very much on how things go with the accompanist and what they can manage.

Then it will be summer holidays and hopefully a chance to take things slightly easy.  Having said that, there has been talk of chamber music sessions with Orchestra colleagues...

juggling and fluttering

I feel like I am going through a particularly busy time at the moment trying to juggle work and lessons and life and rehearsals with two orchestras. I am hoping this is only for a short time as it is getting rather wearing.

I had a lesson last week which went well - we looked at the Luft Study no 11.  This had two weeks of practice due to half term so was in a reasonable state.  Now looking at Study No 12 which is actually completely different to all the others so far.  It is Adagio but has a large number of trills.  I think I'd rather go back to lots of semi quavers but I know that I need to pratice trills so it is definitely doing me good.   I am now working on the last piece from Richardson's French Suite and the Mozart is coming on quite nicely.  I need to get my trills sorted out in that one too! Telemann's Fantastia no 2 is also progressing.   I have another two weeks to practice again as teacher can't do this week's lesson.  So a few more days to make progress.

Last night we had sectional rehearsals for the Rite of Spring which seemed to go well.  We looked at the very beginning and the start and end of the second part.  I have a lot of rests at the beginning so I did have at least 30 minutes of counting rather than playing to start off with, which wasn't so great but part and parcel of rehearsals.  When I did get to play it was meant to be flutter tongued chromatics.  I haven't worked out how to do this yet.  I can roll my R's quite happily and flutter tongueing on the flute is reasonably straight forward.  But doing that with a double reed is quite a different matter.  I was trying to work out how I actually roll my R's to understand why it is difficult - I think I create a focussed high speed air flow and then allow the tongue to bounce off the stream of air pressure.  A little like doing a drum roll on a snare.  Trying to do that with a reed is so difficult because it is impossible to get that amount of air down it, and the reed then gets in the way of the toungue so that it doesn't rebound in the same way.  I need to do some more experiments but I think the embouchure needs to be different and less reed needs to be in the mouth.  Whether that will still then be in tune is a different matter.  for this piece i don't think it will matter.  The oboe is lost within the flutes and clarinets who are also doing the chromatic sections so I should be able to fake it a bit. 

Half term already?

Well despite my feelings of not really being fully prepared yesterday, my lesson went rather well.

The Luft study which I thought I hadn't done enough on, seemed to have worked its way into my fingers more than I thought.  I think the long practice on Monday, followed by a day off for my brain to sort it all out, was more effective than I expected.  Hurray!  I still have a couple of little things to look at - enusring ties are held on for full length and bouncing the staccato a bit more.  But I also have to look at the next one - which has some rather scarily large intervals to negotiate, good job it is half term next week so I have 2 weeks to work on it.

Telemann Fantasia no 6 - second and third movements.  Again, the third movement came together a bit better than in Monday's practice.  I still need to think about phrasing and dynamics here.  But will also start looking at No 2.

Richardson - Causerie, French Suite.  I need to slow this down a bit, and slightly lengthen the tenuto notes, as well as making sure I don't cut short the tied notes (again).  Another couple of weeks needed on this to polish the edges.

Reizenstein Concert pieces are finished off as far as lessons are concerned, so it is finally time to start looking at the first movement of the Mozart Oboe Quartet.  I bought this music quite a while ago and it has been waiting in the wings for too long.  I love this piece so I am quite excited about finally starting to learn how to play it!

I also now have in my possession the oboe 4 part for the Rite of Spring - but only temporarily.   I need to take it back to rehearsal on Monday and get the oboe 3 part.  The oboe 4 has some Cor Anglais sections so it needs to go another player.  However, I  should get some value from looking at this part - hopefully it will at least prepare me for the worst of the 3rd part on Monday.  I will have a look and a  listen over the weekend.

It is half term next week, which means no lesson.  It is  nice to have a week off lessons sometimes and feel I can plan my practice over more days.  It gives me more flexibility to manage my time - I just need to make sure I'm not tempted to take too many days off!

Identifying the phrase

Lesson again on Wednesday and this time I played much better. I am not sure whether it is because I am back into the routine of lessons again, because I ended up being nearly late so I went straight in instead of sitting in the car for 5 minutes or whether just acknowledging it and trying to understand it has made it go away.  For now at least.  Either way I felt relaxed enough to be able to play as I normally play in my practice room. So I felt like it was a good lesson.

The Luft study had improved a lot.  An extra week of practice to make the notes more fluent while being able to focus more specifically on breathing and stamina really helped me put the whole thing together.  I need to remember that strategy of practising getting through a whole section - from breath to breath - and then putting 2/3/ sections togetehr at a time.  I'm moving onto the next one this week, so the challenge is to identify breathing points early in the process and stick to them

I am charging through the French Suite - the Passepied came together pretty well last week, the notes aren't so difficult.  There are couple of points of rhythm and phrasing to check, moving on to the fourth piece this week.  I had a play through last night, it is the shortest piece in the work and doesn't appear too complicated.   But don't really "get" it yet.  It feels like a random collection of notes at the moment, I need to make it feel like music, with phrases and direction.

We spent some time in the lesson on Telemann Fantastia No 6.  This is another "phrasing" challenge....it feels like a theme is emerging, which I don't think is co-incidental.  My teacher has set me a challenge to understand exactly where each note is in its phrase and which direction it is moving in.  It is new to me to think about this level of detail of interpretation, and I find it difficult and that it is good.  It has made me think about the piece in a different way.  I'll be working on this over the weekend.

There was no time to look at the Reizenstein in the lesson so I will keep on with it for another week.  Last week I focussed mainly on getting the finger twisting bits more fluent, and there is still plenty more to do on that.  However last night I went straight to the middle section which has long slow, legato, fluent phrases - almost quite myseterious.  I know I need to fix the rhythm,  it does changes from 6/8 to duplets to crotchets and in parts I am aware that I am just approximating what is written. Last night I didn't get beyond the first phrase though - tone, tuning, smoothness issues were leaping out at me too much.  So I focussed on trying to make it beautiful and tryig to maintain the quality of sound through the note changes.  Too often there is a dip, or even a break, the note goes flat at the end and the phrase ends rather abruptly.  I found it quite helpful to treat it as a technical exercise and focus on improving one thing at a time. It reminded me that these are things I should be thinking about when I do my scales at the beginning of my practice.  I think there was some improvement by the end...but still a long way to go.

remembering to breathe

Lesson last night went well though I was still very aware of tension hindering my playing.  I think I relax as the lesson goes on, but I struggled playing my Luft study as my fingers wouldn't move quickly enough and it felt like an effort to get through.  I also ended up not breathing in the right places, or forgetting to breathe,then  find my fingers stop moving and so I collapse in a bit of a heap.  I think probably the key to the whole thing is getting my breathing and support right.   I have another week on this study, which is good as I think there is still quite a bit to do.

We looked at Richardson French Suite No 2 - the rhythm turned out to be more straight forward than I originally thought so this has gone pretty well this week. It needs a bit more attention to dynamics and I need to ensure that I don't play through the quaver rests.  I'll do the tidying up on my own and for next week I need to look at Number 3.

Reizenstein Concert Piece No 3 -  I need to make the notes more fluent and pick up more of the style.  Make it more quirky and energetic, make the middle section soud more drawn out.  It is in a fast 6/8 and teacher recommended counting some of it in 2 in a bar, some parts in 1 in a bar to try and contrast them, I don't know why that makes such a difference to how it sounds - but it really does.  I had a go at this piece when I got back last night and it feels like it is starting to click a bit.

Telemann Fantasias - we are starting with No 6 in D minor.

Need to relax more...

Thursday's Practice Time: 75 minutes

Scales and technical exercises:  Ran through harmonic minors , minor arpeggios.  Scale for this week is E major.  I’ll talk more about this section tomorrow.

Study:  A new study so initially sight read through to get a feel for it and see where the difficulties lie.  Like the other Luft studies, stamina and working out where on earth to take a breath are the biggest issues.  I tend to collapse in a heap somewhere in the middle, usually due to not managing to breath out enough stale air.  There are some awkward fingering corners but there have been worse and it all seems managable.  I focussed today on sorting out the trills in the first few lines – making sure I knew which fingers should be trilling and practising them slowly.  There's also interesting section of semi quavers with accented but untongued notes at the start of each group of 4.  These require a push from the abs/ diaphragm to stress them.  Watching in the mirror I seemed to be making a lot of physical effort without hearing much difference in the sound which suggested that something was going a bit wrong.  A bit more experimentation suggested that although I was pushing with my abs something else was happening with my shoulders and throat which was resisting that push so it made no difference except to upset my embouchure.  Focus of rest of study practice was doing this section slowly and being very conscious about pushing from the right place and relaxing my arms and shoulders.  There was some improvement by end of the pratice but this needs more investigation as there is definitely something amiss here.  I suspect this same resistance problem is limiting my dynamics at the top end and also preventing me fully exhaling my stale air before taking a breath.

Richardson: This is a new piece so my main focus, again, was on working through the whole piece to identify the problem areas.  First impression is that I like it (always goos).  There are some awkward sections from a fingering point of view, I need to think about how to play it musically – where are the phrases as they are generally uneven and not always initially obvious.  However teh  first hurdle for me is a rhythmic one.  It switches between 9/8 and 6/8 sections, I think I need to become more familiar with the individual sections before working out how to transition between them properly,   so I’ll focus on sorting out the 9/8 bits initially

Reizenstein: Did some work on the initial section, will focus more on this tomorrow

Binge: Had a play through this, I need to remember to build my phrases more rather than rounding off every 2 bars.  This is also a good piece for practising vibrato.  Vibrato does seem to be a bit of a mystery although some work has been done to identify exactly which muscles produce it and how it is controlled. Diaphragmatic “bumps” are meant to help you discover it and allow it to emerge in practice you don’t really use this muscle to produce it eventually.  I can feel a more natural vibrato emerging but I think I am trying to fight  it either by tensing up to stop it – probably linked to the issue above, or by trying to control it too much and imposing another vibrato on top of it using my diaphragm.  I think it is one of those things that you need to not think about too much.   Need to relax more and let it happen.

Orchestra: Ran through tricky bits in the Mahler to finish off, though in reality I think the trickiest bit of all will be counting the rests and making sure I come in at the right time.  There are lots of changes of tempo and time signature while counting large numbers of bars.  I am playing this with another local orchestra.  They needed a third oboist for the piece, my teacher is their principal oboist and asked me if I could do it.  Full day rehearsal for this on Sunday so will write more after that.

Overall felt like a good practice with a number of issues identified to work on over the next week.

Still nervous after all these years...

First oboe lesson since Christmas today.  I don't know why it is, but I still get slightly nervous playing  in music lessons and it is always the first lesson after a break that is the worst.  I don't remember it being like this when I was a child, and, to be honest, I had far more cause to be nervous then due to my tendency to wing it on the day rather than actually practice.  I know that I practice diligently now, I get on well with my teacher, she has never given me any reason to be nervous but I still find myself making stupid mistakes and playing as if I had never seen the instrument before.  Talking to other adult learners, this is not unusual, it is still frustrating though.  Having said all that, I still enjoyed my lesson - my vibrato is improving and I need to work on increasing my dynamic range.

Pieces to practice this week:
Luft Study No 7 (new study)
Richardson French Suite No 2 (new piece)
Reizenstein Concert Pieces No 3 (continued from last lesson)
Binge The Watermill (continued from last lesson still focussing on bringing out vibrato)

Music to buy: Telemann Fantasias