Day 3

Today's practice of playing on open strings confirms that to maintain maximum amplitude. I need to briefly let go of the string when changing the bow direction. If I continue to press down on the string when changing the bow, the string may stop vibrating for a fraction of a second.

For my first practice session today (which I consider to be working on violin basics), I plan to add vibrato to Pracht study number 1. I attempted this yesterday during my second practice session (which I consider to be my "repertoire" session), but I struggled with it. The study is quite simple and is considered to be at a beginner level. The problem was that I wanted to do it using the entire bow, and this was the first time I had tried to vibrate using the whole bow.

Before attempting to add vibrato, I first played the study without vibrato to get the pitch and bow distribution. I think the study is clearly focused on bow distribution - a half note played with the whole bow, two-quarter notes played at the bottom of the bow, one whole note played near the top of the bow, and two quarter notes played in the upper part of the bow.

I planned to vibrate during the half note, but my bow slowed down immediately when I tried this! If I tried to speed it up, my vibrato became fast and uneven. Therefore, my plan (which I already tried yesterday) is to start vibrating in the middle of the bow and gradually extend to a larger portion of the bow.

I know this is a coordination issue, and it will take a long time to train my brain to do this correctly. However, I enjoy identifying new challenges and finding solutions to overcome them. I will report back tomorrow on how this experiment goes.

Ok, I just wanted to give an update on my progress with vibrato. Things have been going better than expected, thanks to my mind trick of starting with a small vibrato in the middle of the bow for a short period of time and then gradually increasing the duration of the vibrato as I moved the bow to larger portions of the string. However, after playing the whole study with vibrato, I noticed that my tone and pitch went down (of course!) So, I went back to playing it without vibrato and focused more on maintaining a consistent tone. I also added a metronome to my practice, and wow, I'm not used to playing with one of those! I spent the rest of my first session trying to keep my tempo, pitch, and tone. I'll continue working on this tomorrow and see if adding vibrato causes any problems again.

In my second session, I practiced the beginning of the Seitz concerto No. 5. I played this part before, but now I was doing it seriously for the first time:). So, I spend the entire session on measures 15 to 22. I looked first for the quality of the tone and my right hand. I still can not do it with the whole bow, but that will be my focus for tomorrow's session. It is always good to focus on one particular task until you see progress; after that, you can decide what to do next:).

Next, I checked (with the Intonia application) if I had any systematic problems with my intonation. I always miss some notes slightly, but as long as I know this, it's Ok to miss a couple of notes (try to get it right next time :) ). The problem is when you do not notice that you missed it (I have this problem with sharps and flats almost all the time). When I was "satisfied" with my intonation (and, of course, you never are), I added dynamics and vibrato. As usual, things "went South" after I added the vibrato, but it looks like my morning session helped with a more even vibrato than the one I usually have. Finally, I decided to get another layer of complexity. I begin to record myself on video. Turning video on always has a "magic" effect on me and makes me nervous. Especially if I am thinking about sharing it, with all balls in the air, the quality was quickly deteriorating, and I realized I was already tired. The iron rule of practice is if quality goes down, you have to stop:). Nevertheless, I decided to include the last few minutes of an almost one-hour-long practice session.