Day 11

Unfortunately, my morning practice was interrupted today by… Amazon Hub/locker service. It was supposed to be open at 11 am, but nobody was there! I was trying to reach Amazon customer service (probably one of the best-hidden services on the internet) and talk with half a dozen different agents (the parcel to pick up was New Year presents). Nobody can give me any reasonable answers, but … Hub eventually was open two hours later!

Anyway, back to my practice. Eventually, I could play the Vamos “Daily sixteen,” and I started with the second “warm up” exercise. The first position in this exercise is supposed to be the easiest to play, but for me, the low second finger is one of the most significant technical difficulties! But it looks like this exercise helps me to solve it. The challenge is to keep your hand still and only use your fingers (bending them only at the third top joint). And for me, extension from first to fourth followed by low second (keeping all fingers on the string) is a big challenge. Fortunately, my standard way of troubleshooting almost all my problems worked again. I relaxed my hand completely (barely touching the neck with the thumb) and then began adjusting the arm and wrist angles (relative to the neck) to reach the fingerboard as effortlessly as possible. Finally, I found a position that was relatively comfortable and naturally looking where I could keep all of my fingers on the fingerboard almost effortlessly. It took me around 30 minutes to find this position! But after I settled my left arm, the rest of the exercise (including the seventh position this time!) was a breath.

Another unexpected benefit. Because of my hand relaxation, the vibrato becomes much easier to practice! Next, I practiced the vibrato transition from down bow to up bow (trying to make a graph in Intonia, one smooth continuous wave through the bow change), and it improved. I still had to divide the transition on the top (no vibrato, vibrato approaching the tip transitioning to the down bow with vibrato, no vibrato to relax the hand) and through the bottom. Played Pratt’s study after this again, and it is better, but not yet where I want it to be.

At the end of practice, I researched my problem with a low finger again and concluded it comes from the tension in my arm and shoulder when I need to bend my (left) elbow too much inward to get closer to the fingerboard. Troubleshooting this problem again, discovered that if I move my chin rest one inch to the left and adjust my shoulder rest, I can change the angle of the violin and keep my elbow in a more natural position releasing the tension! As an additional benefit, I can now easily reach the tip of the bow with the tip of the bow keeping the bow perpendicular to the strings! The only thing is that I should be careful not to reach too far and get bow over the tip:)). And also, because the violin is now at a different angle to my body, I need to retrain my right arm to keep the bow perpendicular to the strings, but overall I am pleased with my setup adjustments.