Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Weeks 8 and 9

Well, I didn't write a blog last week because I was so busy and tired, but this week finally settled down some.  Because of the lower workload, this week has actually been great to my playing, and I feel like I'm finally back on track with practice.  I managed to get new reeds for the new mouthpiece (switched down from 3 1/2+ to 3 1/2 V12s), so they're in the process of being broken into.  Meanwhile I'm still playing on my old MP some times since I have to work way too hard with the old reeds on the new MP. 

On scales I did a lot of slower work to figure out finger positions and low movement.  I tried to speed up a bit towards the end of the week, but that was not my focus.  I'd say I spent about equal time on both A Major and F minor, so I should be able to do most of the exercises on both of them at around the same level.  As a side note, Vol. 1 of the Eugene book should be coming in this week, so that adds another option for technique work for me.

For the cavallini etude this week (Op. 4 #2) I feel like I could probably master it better in another week, but I probably got most of what I needed to from it.  With the new MP, I feel like I'm still using a bit of bite to do large register leaps that I used to not do with the old MP, but that's likely due to reeds being too hard/reeds not being broken into yet.  It's something to watch out for in any case. 

On the Debussy, hopefully I can redeem myself a bit after last week.  I did a lot of work with the metronome on the technical passages, so I shouldn't be too far off being able to play it fluently.  The hardest part is still the little chromatic run near the end, but that's getting there.  We'll see if I can play more in time than last week as well.

Hopefully I can work on learning my Symphonic band music this week a bit more since I got some less work, as well as the work for lessons.  I have to take advantage of this week since next week I get busy again with about a million recitals to attend/play on coming up.

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