practice violin every day

Here’s my problem. In High School, I thought that I was pretty good at the violin. I was in the advanced orchestra, and one of only a handful that could play the high notes on Copland’s “Hoedown” from “Rodeo”.

Then I started college, and went to see about auditioning for the orchestra. I saw the music that was being used for the auditions—and it was harder than any music I’d ever seen before, let alone played, let alone sightread for an audition. As you can imagine, it was quite a shock to my confidence.

So, for the first time in eight years years, I’ve spent the last few months without any music to practice, or anything to practice for. In just that short time, I’ve been getting worse and worse every time I try to play. I can’t let this go on; even if I’m never good enough for the University Orchestra, I refuse to give up on this instrument.

This semester, I’m going to take violin lessons. This might be a stupid move, to tell you the truth; I’m already taking voice lessons, guitar lessons, and piano lessons. Violin is the only instrument I play that I don’t need for my major, and the stress might just kill me.

But if I can just get to the point where I know what to do on my own… I’ve always been in an orchestra, and I don’t know how to manage without one. Maybe violin lessons are just the thing to help me figure out some sort of direction to head towards. So yeah, I’m going to try it. And I’m going to practice every day.

I have such good intentions. I have been pretty darned good with piano every day. Now I just need to to do violin as well. Even if it is five minutes. Especially necessary since I have a recital coming up in 2 weeks!

Well, I didn’t practice Friday… or Saturday… Or Monday.

I practiced for about an hour on Sunday, then again on Tuesday, and an hour this morning. I hope to practice again tonight – I really need it, especially since my lesson is tomorrow… And scholarship auditions are next week (ACK!).

For a total of 7h15 this week! That’s got to be a record since I started this school year! I have my lesson in about 15 minutes, so we’ll see if it all paid off…

I practiced last night! Finally, after taking two days off! It’s amazing how quickly I got used to practicing every day, in that two days without it seems like an eternity. Before I started this goal, it wouldn’t have seemed long at all. Anyways, it went ok, but I could tell I haven’t been practicing lately. My fingers just weren’t as cooperative.

I actually practiced Kreutzer 12 (instead of just playing through it) – the biggest problem was intonation on the highest parts of the arpeggios, where I have to reach a fourth between third and fourth fingers, etc.

I revived the Mozart A maj. concerto – mostly just played through it to see where I was at, since I’ll probably be using that for scholarship auditions this year. I also worked on the Bach prelude – it’s getting better! There are still some sections that I swear Bach wrote just to spite me (such as the section with the g-sharp on the g string arpeggiated with lots of weird sharps, 2nd page in my addition—that kills my LH), but overall I’m getting it.

Well, I didn’t practice yesterday, but I was kind of planning on that. I had classes until about 8pm last night, so there really wasn’t much time to practice, and by the time I could have I was to tired to accomplish anything anyways. I think I’ll try practicing mornings on Mondays—but I’m really not a morning person, so we’ll see.

I had my chair tryouts yesterday, too… and I think they went pretty well… I hope… My intonation wasn’t the greatest, but he stopped me before I got to the hardest part, so all in all I came off sounding better than I actually was. The only chair I really don’t want is concertmaster (too much responsibility) I’ll be happy with pretty much anything else.

Last night went sooo well! I actually feel like I’m making progress on the music, especially my orchestra stuff (which is good, since chair tryouts are today…). Even the Bach prelude and the kreutzer went pretty well, although my intonation still stinks :(

I practiced last night, but I was so tired I didn’t get much accomplished. I spent most of the first hour just practicing music for my chair try-outs. My arm got really sore because I was play up past 5th position almost the entire time, and I usually tend to tense up that high (naughty me… yet another thing to work on…) I did work for a bit on the prelude and played through the rondeau and the kreutzer, but again, I didn’t accomplish much.

I practiced for 1 1/2 hours last night. I worked a little bit on kreutzer 12 and the gavotte en rondeau, but spent most of my time on the prelude. Intonation was my biggest problem (stupid a-sharps… and d-sharps… and the naturals that Bach decided to throw in there unexpectedly ;))

The last 1/2 hour was spent mostly on reading through the original manuscript to see which slurs were actually Bach’s and which were added by the editor—that was fun! My teacher wanted me to change one bowing, but I think I’m not going to, because I like the other way better and it’s the way Bach originally wrote it. (Take that Mr. teacher-man!)

Well, I didn’t practice yesterday. I plead extenuating circumstances. (I had to take an English proficiency test last eve. that I didn’t even know that I needed to take until that day, so I couldn’t plan ahead and practice in the morning, either) But I did have my lesson, and it went very well. My teacher assigned me the prelude from the E maj. partita in addition to the gavotte en rondeau that I’d been working on. I also have kreutzer No. 12. No scales assigned yet, but he told me to bring my scale book next week (yay…).