I’ve given myself one year to master the violin.


My first tour – the culmination of a year and a quarter







And for the performance:




master class performance



A momentous occasion

The other day Danielle interjected in every conversation we had with anyone:  “Oh, did we tell you?  Today was a momentous occasion!  It’s what we’ve been working on for the past year!”

I don’t know if I’d go that far, but I suppose it’s some sort of minor landmark:  I finally played with piano.  So there it is.  We ran through the whole thing like it’s supposed to be played (sort of – but I’m not going to play it in front of an orchestra.  I make it hard enough for a piano to keep pace with me).   Who is the pianist?  Do you remember Danielle’s student Anna who gave me a lesson last summer?  Well, she started her musical life as a two instrument person and transitioned to violin before she started studying with Danielle.

So Anna, Danielle and I got together one afternoon and ran through it.  The good news is that I actually got through it.  It wasn’t good or polished, or, well, good in any sense of the word, but I did limp through.  Danielle worked with me on a few places, I settled down, and then we played it again.  Good news and bad news:  I played great!  (that’s the good news).  I felt good, smooth, and in tempo.  I had a nasty habit of rushing the first time around (not to take credit away from Anna, but she was essentially site reading the piano part and couldn’t play it as fast as I had been rehearsing.  I should be able to keep whatever pace, but I never claimed to be an extremely sophisticated musician!).  Everything had been going great, except something happened that had happened several times before:  I say to myself while playing, “man, this is going great!  I can’t believe I’m playing like this…uh oh…”  Then I had a horrible memory slip and couldn’t pick up where I was.  I sort of should of kept playing, but I was really lost and stopped.  I know, I know, I should never stop, but I couldn’t help it.

After the stop, I had to go because we started to eat into Anna’s lesson time (that’s why I stopped, just being considerate heh, heh).  We did devise a little strategy for Anna when I get lost like that in the future:  she will stop playing her part and start playing mine.  This is actually a technique they use on little kids who get lost during their performances.  Hopefully it will work if it actually happens.  When I get lost though, I get lo-o-o-ost.

Here, of course, is where being able to visualize what’s going on comes in handy.  Danielle has stressed being able to visualize every part of the piece, what it sounds like, where your fingers go, what note is being played, etc.  It’s really hard.  When you get into the rhythm, especially on a piece you’ve played through many times before, it just sort of happens.  It’s natural.  That natural-ness is great, except if you get lost, then it’s all over.  It’s like a golfer.  “Feeling” your swing is important, but when something starts to go wrong it’s really important to “understand” your swing so you can fix it.  Right now, I for the most part feel the piece, but I really need to start to understand it.

Enough ado.  Here’s where we actually got all the way through the piece.  You’ll hear Danielle instructing the whole time because I rush, rush, rush:

It’s funny how obvious it is when I haven’t worked with the metronome in several days.  It’s gotten to the point that I actually like playing with it.  It makes me feel in control, like my playing is honed and tight.

Beware of the burnout










The whole magilla








Violin is not fun









So here is me playing with the metronome:


A straight three minutes

Because of Colburn’s spring break when Evin was back home in San Francisco and my spring break from Cal State Fullerton when Danielle and I went down to San Diego for a little while, I hadn’t had a lesson with Evin in a while.  Yesterday morning, we worked together and it was a bit of an eye opener.  I think I’ve really taken a step backwards in the last couple of weeks.  Of course, when getting better, it’s common to think you’re actually getting worse, but in this case, I think it’s true.  For a while there I was hitting the metronome hard and the slow work, and everything was slowly coming along.  I’ve been slacking with the hard stuff and have been doing mostly performance practice lately, trying to just get through the new stuff.  I sort of fell into that pit with Paganini where I just wanted to play enough to get something on video, but wasn’t actually getting better as a violinist.  Same thing here.  The good news:  I pretty much know the entire piece now!  The bad news:  I sound like crap when I play it.

My vision, of course, was to play with Evin and record it during our lesson and have a sparkling little gem to post on here today.  Not so much.  We did play, but I couldn’t get through it.  Since we haven’t played together for a while, I was nervous.  That sounds like a weak excuse, but it’s true.  I usually go into a practice room, text her where I am, and she comes and finds me.  Our lesson was at 11am and I texted her my location at 10:53.  As soon as I sent it, it was like I could feel her presence coming and I got a little scared.  It was like the water ripples from Jurassic Park.  (And Evin is not that intimidating by the way.  She’s very sweet.  The scary part is just playing in front of her when I know she’s so good.  It’s hard to explain)  When she showed up, I sucked it up for a while, but sort of got it together.  The title of this post refers to our best run, which was about a three minute segment of the piece.  I decided not to post it because the only redeeming thing about it is that I simply play for three minutes.  My rhythm is pretty bad, as I hold most of the ties too long.  It was very apparent I haven’t been working with the metronome (something I started to correct this morning, which was also depressing.  Parts I could whip through with the metronome a couple of weeks ago I really had a difficult time with today.  You just can’t let up with these things).  Worse than the rhythm, though, was the intonation, which was atrocious.  Really bad.  When listening, even I cringe.  My sound is surprisingly decent, but it is the only thing I’ve really been working on.

Hmm.  So I need slow work to improve my intonation and metronome work to improve my rhythm?  This is nothing new.  Hopefully I’ll actually DO what I should be doing.