Day 7
I had another realization today. I need to plan my practice (not just do the routine) to maximize efficiency. I now know which problems I must address from the piece practice, and I need to include them in my first (technical) practice. The problems from my practice yesterday are
Bow trembles on accents.
Bowing, slow down bow followed by a fast up bow.
Vibrato can do with a slow bow but not with a fast one.
Can not do vibrato after the accent (why)?
So, here is the plan for my technical practice.
On the open string:
Start with constant pressure and sound point 1. Move away from the bridge but keep the pressure (by increasing the speed). The main focus is on maintaining a constant tone.
Changing a sound point in one stroke from 4 to and back (keeping the constant tone)
Do slow down bow (moving bow closer to the bridge) and follow with a faster up bow (away from the bridge)
Do it with a metronome (2 beats down, one up, three beats down, one up, and so on)
Vibrato practice:
Regular vibrato. Focusing on relaxing the finger’s first knuckle, removing all unnecessary tension.
Gradually increase bow speed, but keep vibrato the same (same amplitude, same frequency).
Do accent and vibrato.
Continue the practice of the G major scale in three octaves.
Ok, first update. Small adjustment. Instead of doing a tone production exercise on the open string, I do it on D (A string). It is closer to my goal, and I need to be much more precise on the D string to avoid touching the adjacent strings. Another update, 1.b turns out to be surprisingly difficult. I had to break it into smaller steps. Beginning with sound point 2 and going to “2.5” and back, then to 3 and back, and so on.
What a tricky little exercise (1.c)! After 10 minutes (or so) of practice got better, but I need to be careful not to touch other strings. I noticed that at the tip, I was jerking my wrist up at the bow change and touching the E string. Have to keep it still. When moving away from the bridge on the up bow, my bow was moving towards the D string (not quite sure why; it does not happen if I keep the same sound point). My lege hand becomes slightly tired have to check that I am not overpressing with the third finger. Go to vibrato practice now.
Starting very slow (2.5 vibrations per second, according to “Intonia”), with good amplitude (wide vibrato), focusing on the tone, letting the first knuckle bend. Gradually speeding up to five vibrations per second, still looks good. And at six, it begins to break out! Less even, my tone suffers as well, and I need to focus more on my right arm now. It does not get better with further practice. It looks like five beats per second is my current limit (the goal is to do six with wide vibrato). Now let’s try other fingers (I was doing everything with the third so far).
Four beats per second, no problem on my second finger, but can I do it faster (with the same width)? I can maintain for 1-2 seconds with six beats per second, but not completely even.
Let’s go to the first one (this one is more difficult for me usually). I immediately notice I become tense. The main difficulty with the first finger is that it is more rigid and harder to make a wide vibrato. I had to start with three beats per second and focus on relaxation and a good tone. How fast can I go? With narrow, vibrato can go to six, but wide is still the goal for the future.
The weakest link (4th finger). The fourth finger is the opposite of the first one. Wide vibrato is not a problem (but a fast one is). Today I can do 5 per second. This is really good!
Finally, let’s try all fingers. Partial success. It has become wider, but it is not consistent enough yet. But this is a long-term project:).
In the evening practice wanted to check if my morning practice has improved my vibrato in Prat’s study. The first attempt was a complete failure (I immediately fell down to my previous pattern). But it began to improve after I allowed myself to relax and thought about good wide, even vibrato and good tone. Another important discovery is that you need to start right on the pitch and begin to vibrate only after that. Otherwise, it sounds out of tune. Vibrato goes below and slightly above the pitch (people who claimed that vibrato goes only below the pitch never checked out their own vibrato on Intonia:)) ). And the most essential thing for vibrato to sound good is its evenness (perfectly smooth, even wave in Intonia, exactly same width, exactly same height).