The Gift

Music is a gift. Try to offer it whole heartedly. The audience will celebrate the music with an applause.

Bowing Index Finger

Working at improving my bowing arm.

Some problematic issues..
- my shoulder gets tense and nervous.
- my wrist likes to sit high like a crane.
- I seem to lose flexibility and fluidity.

I've found an interesting bowing exercise that seems to help keep everything relaxed.

When practicing a study. Simply life the index finger off the bow whenever playing an upbow!? This seems to help the other fingers relax and keep the wrist in check.

It's interesting to focus on when some fingers are not required.

I think the high wrist problem occurs because I try to retain the same 'index + 2nd finger' pressure that I have when I'm playing at the tip as when I'm playing at the nut. To resolve that, when playing at the nut keep the index finger off the bow, this results in the 4th finger activating and the wrist supporting the 4th finger etc etc.

A Gig at Government House

Had a great time performing with friends at government house to celebrate the launch of the Australian Poetry Library website. Great fun!

Deliberate Practice

So what is deliberate, or mindful practice? Deliberate practice is a systematic and highly structured activity, which is, for lack of a better word, scientific. Instead of mindless trial and error, it is an active and thoughtful process of experimentation with clear goals and hypotheses. Violinist Paul Kantor once said that the practice room should be like a laboratory, where one can freely tinker with different ideas, both musical and technical, to see what combination of ingredients produces the result you are looking for.

Few musicians take the time to stop, analyze what went wrong, why it happened, and how they can correct the error permanently.

Mindless Practice

Have you ever listened to someone practice? Have you ever listened to yourself practice, for that matter? Tape yourself practicing for an hour, take a walk through the practice room area at school and eavesdrop on your fellow students, or ask your students to pretend they are at home and watch them practice during a lesson. What do you notice?

You’ll notice that the majority of folks practice rather mindlessly, either engaging in mere repetition (“practice this passage 10 times” or “practice this piece for 30 minutes”) or practicing on autopilot (that’s when we play through the piece until we hear something we don’t like, stop, repeat the passage again until it sounds better, and resume playing through the piece until we hear the next thing we aren’t satisfied with, at which point we begin this whole process over again).

Bullet Proof Musician

Violinist Nathan Milstein is said to have once asked his teacher Leopold Auer how many hours a day he should be practicing. “If you practice with your fingers, no amount is enough,” was Auer’s response. “If you practice with your head, two hours is plenty.”

http://www.bulletproofmusician.com/how-many-hours-a-day-should-you-practice/