Lesson 22 - Bowing standing up

As the cold season draws near, the body needs a considereably longer period of warm up exercises before it is that quite ready to perform. We started the lesson with really slow scales ~ 8, 12 and 16 ticks per bow of D# major and A minor 2 octaves. I find that I struggle with concentration levels when I play this slow but really, the exercise is to encourage you to concentrate even more to get a nice even sound and overall relaxed approach at both fingering and bowing; more so with the forward stretches present in these scales.

We also focused more on the upper half of the bow and getting more weight distributed there for a better sound. This has been something I am actively focusing on as my muscle memory is still green on that approach and no amount of weight is yielding me satisfactory results apart from lifting either the left or right foot to establish my balance.

Deryn suggests I try bowing standing up, half squat and crouching just to allow the freedom of movement and seeing how it feels to reestablish the proper bowing angle when seated. I wonder if having terrible eyesight contributes to this balance issue. Deryn also suggests practising Bunting's Bowing exercises just on the upper half of the bow to encourage muscle memory.

We moved on to upper first position on Chapter 22 from last week's lesson and played through a few of the shorter exercises. I hadn't the opportunity to look through the longer passages at all due in part to focusing all my practise time to the Sammartini study but also because it totally slipped my mind to. I stopped scribbling the dates of the lesson on the individual exercises and this somehow makes me forget. And there I thought I solved the problem of vandalising the music scores with inane amateur scribblings. Perhaps one should just come to terms with this concept or possibly apparoach it in a different way; that learning is a chaotic and messy process which should be embraced wholly to gain anything from it. Well, scribbles here I come.

On the plus side, I now have more pieces to play which is always fun.

Finally, we proceeded to my vain attempt at Sammartini's Mouvement d'une Serenade. Despite trying my very best at paying close attention to the noted bowing on the score, there were still rather questionable bowings utilised throughout the piece. It seems my bowing hand had other plans despite my brain's best effort at sight reading. Still, this explains the anomalies I experienced during practise and all those retakes I had to do to make the piece playable. Deryn assures me that I shouldn't be too hard on myself as I project a good sound from just a week of practise and that I could undo all the bad habits as easily as I took them up.

Update: It seems the main reason why I've been absent-minded (more usual than normal) was because I have been ill for the past week and a half. So much so, I almost cancelled class! I guess it's no surprise why I even forgot about that in the first place. Braaain no worky.