Progress Summary

Over the past 3 years or so, I've blogged my progress on my violin journey variously. This is yet another effort.

I've been on basics forever, but it has been worth it. My practice discipline has waxed and waned, but still even in the worst cases has been steady and consistent. I practiced too much, then too little. I focused on technical things too much, then played my heart out for weeks and weeks--just playing.

So here hopefully is generally where I'm at. I went on a basics festival so long ago I do not feel like remembering when it began. Todd Ehle's videos got me back into several areas: basic tone production, string crossings and relaxing with the instrument. I further added new information on tone production by watching Simon Fischer talk about sounding point steering. There have been several other resource influences I may or may not touch on here. All of these have resulted in a lot of progress.

Most notably, with my tone production I'm able to feel from heel to tip, and I am getting some chops in bow distribution though I need to focus on this a lot more. The keyword here is feel. For example I was playing through some earlier Suzuki material just tonight, and I was feeling the bow doing it's work variously with pretty good form, rather than just going along blindly.

Basically, I do not think I understood tone production period previously, and was pretty much left up to my own devices because 'I just didn't get it really' when I was taking lessons--but that was my fault. I was pushing my teacher to show me advanced things in a crash course that has made my journey longer than necessary in some ways, but quite ok in my own way. I love violin enough to linger where I need to linger, and if the examples I see around me are an indicator my own approach is paying off a little.

Some of the things I've done to help my tone production along is to take Wohlfahrt exercises in a new direction. I play two notes at the heel, two to get to the tip, two at the tip, and two to get back to the heel. I also recently started memorizing scales in 3 octaves. But there's a lot more.

I spent considerable time working with Profv's string crossing exercises, and these are becoming more instinctive in real music including above, but string crossings never really end being a challenge from my understanding. And, because I started breaking my practice sessions up, I've been able to slow down and focus more instead of acting like I was at a track meet where I was competing in every event.

I've sort of de-emphasized my previous program working on a huge variety of bow strokes in lieu of getting the basics in place; and, find a need to create a new routine based on where I'm really at in basics rather than trying to worry about up-bow staccato for the moment. This need for a new routine is why I'm blogging again actually.

My new program will focus on:
dynamics
tone production
scales in 3 o.
string crossings.
playing well what I've already learned in Suzuki.
working with the exercises Drew Lecher emailed me.
working with the exercises from Strings Magazine.
adding some more Wohlfahrt variations now that I finally feel truly ready.
getting back into my Kreutzer program.
making a few vids for youtube.