New things to think about

The holidays are over, practising has settled back into a routine and I had my first lesson of 2013 last night.   I have some new pieces to look at and some new things to think about imrpoving.

This week I have a new Ferling study to look at - no 42.  The keys get worse as the book progresses and this one has lots of flats to get my head around.  I am also starting the Derek Bourgeouis Fantasy Pieces.  I don't know if these are technically studies or just unaccompanied pieces but I don't suppose it really matters.  I haven't had chance to try the first one out yet but the performance notes indicate that a very smooth legato is required and carefully graded dynamics so I think it could be quite tricky.

We spent most of last night's lesson on the Arnold Sonatina. I  need to make the first movement more quirky and spirited.  Make sure that I don't slow down through the cantabile sections - or at least make sure that I pick the speed up again when required.  We also looked at the beginning of the second movment which will challenge my tone and stamina.  This is a great piece for working on vibrato and thinking about how to vary the speed of vibrato to add interest and colour.

I still need to work on the Vivaldi though we didn't look at that last night.

Key points to think about over the next few weeks -
  - keeping the quality of the tone consistent throughout register.  This was picked up in my previous Ferling slow study where my top A's tended to be more pronounced than the notes around them and disrupted the line of the phrase.
 - I need to breath more quietly and also make sure I don't nod my head forward when I breath in.  I wasn't aware that I was doing this so need to do more work in front of the mirror (or maybe get round to filming myself again) to train myself out of this. 

Orchestra practice starts up again tonight and I have an all day Shostokovich 4 rehearsal on Sunday so it is shaping up to be a busy week!

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.