Ordinary Day

Time practiced

10 minutes

Scales practiced

• One octave A, without slurs
• One octave D, without slurs
• One octave G, without slurs
• One octave A, with slurs
• One octave D, with slurs
• One octave G, with slurs

Arpeggios practiced

• One octave A
• One octave D
• One octave G

Techniques practiced

• Mindfulness of elbow position when doing string crossings
• Mindfulness of finger positions, trying to keep a relaxed finger curve and not straightening up my fingers every time I change notes
• Keeping my fingers in that relaxed curved position when changing strings
• A little bit of left hand rehearsal when working with the B part of Feller from Fortune
• More strategic placement of slurs to improve tune flow and ease the changing of bow directions

Tunes practiced

• Blarney Pilgrim
• Feller from Fortune

Commentary

Bit of a shaky practice, but I’m coming out of last week being stupid work-wise, and a weekend where I had to do additional day job work as well. So I wasn’t as on top of things in this practice as I’d like.

But this is a situation where it’s just helpful to take a step back and remind myself that it’s okay if I play something incorrectly, I just need to be a little more patient if I’m tired and/or stressed, and think my way carefully through what might have caused me to make a mistake. And at the same time, to not work the problem too hard. On the grounds that if I keep trying the same thing while I’m tired, if I keep playing it wrong that’d make me learn how to do it wrong rather than how to do it right.

In other words, don’t be too hard on myself if a practice goes badly. Don’t push it, me!

So even though my practice today was a bit of a mess, I got in my ten minutes. We’ll see what tomorrow brings!

Crossposted from annathepiper.org. Original post: https://www.annathepiper.org/2021/10/04/fiddle-practice-log-10-4-2021/

This is going up on the 28th, but it’s actually for the practice I did on the 27th.

Scales practiced

• One octave G
• One octave D
• One octave A
• One octave C

Techniques practiced

• Double stops on open strings, playing lower string, then upper, then both
• Also working on trying to sense when the bow is properly parked on both strings to do that double stop
• (Reminder to self: that angle change to hit both strings at once is not as big as you think it is)

Tunes practiced

Worked more on Feller from Fortune, and specifically the B part. Tried to work on learning it from memory, because I can hear it in my head, and I wanted to see if I could work on training my ear and my ability to reproduce notes.

But apparently this is a three stop process for me:

1. Can I reproduce the tune I hear in my head? Can I whistle it, hum it, or otherwise vocalize it from memory?
2. Can I parse what notes I’m hearing? Do I know, say, a B when I hear one?
3. Can I take each note out of memory and find it on the instrument? Particularly if they are tricky intervals between notes?

There’s a particular bit of the B part of this tune that dips pretty low on the melody, and it took me quite a bit of mental work to realize it was going all the way down to open D. And a lot of work in general just trying to pull up the memory of the Great Big Sea recording in my head, then whistling it slowly, and then trying to reproduce the same notes on the fiddle.

I do more or less understand how the A part works, but the B part still needs some work. And I want to get to the point of playing both of them in a nice flow together before I start trying to dress it up and make it sound cooler.

Crossposted from annathepiper.org. Original post: https://www.annathepiper.org/2021/09/28/fiddle-practice-log-9-27-2021/