Day 21

I have two breakthroughs with my vibrato practice today! Surprisingly the first one happened at work. I took my first cheap Amazon violin to work and did the vibrato exercises during my lunch break:)). The left hand only (my colleagues in offices adjacent to mine would appreciate that:) ). Without interference from the bowing arm, my left hand (and the left shoulder!) were more relaxed, and I could help keep the violin with my right hand, taking the violin's weight from my neck. This resulted in a much more comfortable and uniform vibrato motion. Before going home (and when nobody was around:)) ) I quickly tried vibrato with the bow. And voila, I could do six beats per second with a decent amplitude (see the Intonia snapshot below:) )!

The second breakthrough came when I was home. I was thinking about what David Radzinski said in the live stream on tonebase. He noted that the vibrato motion was not simply along the string but also "vertical." I was not sure what he meant by this, but then I suddenly remembered advice from Beth (from violinlab.com) that vibrato motion is not simply "back and forth," but it is also "pulse and relax," and after that, I had an "enlightenment":). When you "pulse" your fingertip forward, you push into the string, and when you "relax" it backward, you release tension from the string, and it can rise slightly above the fingerboard. This is the vertical motion! And when the string is pushed down, the tension increases, and the pitch increases too (like when tuning). I recently learned that when you tune the violin, you should only use the point and the bow weight. Otherwise, you risk (if you overpress) tuning the violin incorrectly. So, pushing the string up and down quickly changes the pitch and adds width to your vibrato!.

As I planned yesterday, today I begin work seriously on Dancla's "Petite Fantasie - Bolero," First, I wanted to identify what technical problems I have in the first part. At the beginning of this piece, you have two shifts in measure four. Fortunately, it is both the same finger shifts. I can listen to the pitch and get the correct intonation on the way up(well, sometimes:)) ). But on the way down (it is a separate bow), I wanted to make it as silent as possible. Getting to the first position with correct intonation was (surprisingly) more difficult than going to the third. I could make it up and down on the same finger, but I was missing when I needed to get to a new finger and shift down! I have not done many shifting exercises yet, so I will include them in tomorrow's (technical) practice.

The second problem is, of course, that I need to play in the first and in third positions. And when I was getting the third position right, I began to miss the first one! But the rhythm was fine! It was before (especially counting slurred half and eight's notes). I guess my practice from Hanley's book helped me with that (and I have had problems with such rhythms before). I did not try to do it with the dynamics and (gosh!) vibrato yet. Just tone and intonation. Overall I feel much better about today's practice:).