Week Three: Learning Curve

     This week was harder than I anticipated it would be. After a very long seven days, I discovered that the progress I believed I was making, was in fact, not much progress at all.
However, we all have good days and bad ones. Positive and negative experiences are a natural part of life and in choosing to accept the bad experiences, we learn how to improve when moving forward. So, this is exactly what I have decided to do.

     I will begin on a positive note and share the highlight of my week, which was that I was able to practice five times! This is definitely an improvement from my previous practice habits since I was able to make space in my schedule to specifically focus on the violin. I feel good about finally putting in some time to work on my posture, songs and technique because it has been a goal of mine and has helped me to feel as though I've accomplished something.

     In these practice sessions I was able to work on my scales and on the Russian Dance Tune song, as well as Largo, but I found that playing this week was very difficult. After every practice session my arms were sore and my neck hurt from placing the violin. As well as this, I was struggling to produce a clear sound with the bow. A lot of my playing was scratchy and this both surprised and frustrated me because up until now I have not had problems producing a clear tone...other than on the E string. (Which I explained last week.) 
I tried using multiple techniques that Piotr had shown me to help improve my playing, but I felt like I was glued to one spot, no matter how hard I tried to push forward.

     It didn't help that my lesson was cancelled last weekend because of Thanksgiving, so I had not been able to talk to my teacher at all about the difficulties I was having. What was even worse was that when I went into my lesson yesterday morning, Piotr smiled at me and said "Alright! Amaze me!"

I couldn't help laughing a little as I explained to him that I had been struggling with my bow pressure and sound, and that everything was very difficult for me this past week.

Improperly Rosined Bow

I showed him what I had been working on and he then helped me to correct my positioning. As it turns out, the problem once again was the positioning of my left hand. In trying to correct my bow sound throughout the week, I was forgetting to adjust the position of my left hand. It was once again falling flat instead of remaining upright and curved. As you will be able to see in my video, there is an obvious difference in both sound and look when you correct your posture.  
After I was able to correct my positioning, which is now rather easy to do when I remember, Piotr helped my to work on the bow pressure. 

Properly Rosined Bow

     He helped me to angle the bow so that there was more traction between the hairs and the strings, creating a louder, clearer sound. To help explain the importance of the bow traction, he used the analogy of trying to drive a car with worn out tires. 
"When the tires are worn out, there is no traction. This makes it hard to break and to turn and to control your vehicle. It's the same with the bow. Once you have the right traction, you will be able to better control the sound." 
This has helped me a lot, and even since yesterday I feel much more comfortable and confident in my playing. As well as this, Piotr also taught me the importance of keeping the bow properly rosined so that it is easier to play. With the weather changing, I've learned that the bow requires more care than usual. 

     So as you may imagine, the biggest let down for me this week was learning that I had been practicing a lot, but practicing wrong. Interestingly my biggest win and loss this week contradicted each other. It has left me in a spot where it seems as though I have made no progress. But as I said earlier, when we choose to accept our mistakes and bad experiences, it allows us to grow.

     Moving forward I plan to continue where I left off last week. I will keep working on Russian Dance Tune and Largo while paying extremely close attention to both my bow traction and left hand positioning. Even though I did not learn a new song or technique to share this week, I do not feel discouraged or as though I have achieved nothing. I have learned new information about bow traction and hand positioning that will help me to build on what I have been working on, and I have been given this encouragement to help me propel forward:

"The first years of playing the violin are a violent storm. You are stuck in a boat and feel like you are going nowhere. But after the first year, you enter into this place where you can finally see the light and then start heading towards it." -Piotr