Week Eleven: Third Position and Key Signatures

There is not much for me to report this week, but I will do my best to summarize it nicely.  

     Much to my disappointment, I did not progress with Turkey in the Straw as much as I had hoped.

First Position

I was able to practice four times this week, including my lesson, but I am still not very confident about my playing.

     I'm finding it difficult to use a shorter bow and transfer back and forth between strings so many times during the fiddle tunes. This, along with trying to maintain a constant speed, has been very challenging. When I played the song for Piotr, however, he was impressed that I had made as much progress as I had in just one week. He suggested that moving forward, I try to relax in the song so that it becomes more fluid, and I hope to work on that next week.

Third Position

     Instead of playing St. Anne's Reel, we continued to work on my Christmas songs. I am happy to report that they are continuing to improve! Inspired, I attempted Jingle Bells this week as a new Christmas tune, but it was awful! Interestingly, I learned that the bad sound was not entirely my fault. Piotr told me that almost all pieces for the violin are written in keys with sharps. For example, G, D or even A, but my copy of Jingle Bells was written in F, which contains B flat. The finger positioning for this note is very different than the sharp notes that I am used to playing.

     As well as this, I also learned about third position this week. This position is used to play higher octaves and is kind of interesting. I've taken some pictures that show the difference between first position, which I am used to playing in, and third position. Piotr provided me with some exercises to get used to playing multiple octaves of my scales. This was the highlight of my week because it was cool to learn something entirely new.

 Moving forward I will continue to work on Turkey in the Straw, and practice playing in third position.