I had my third violin lesson today. I will be honest. It's been rough. The first lesson was a lot of talking and deciding what to do. I made it through that one with just a little bit of nervousness. I learned I don't hold the violin high enough and my left elbow should be in and my right elbow should be up. I should be playing on the side of the bow instead of having it flat. The second lesson tried to break down everything I've been doing wrong for thirty years in the matter of an hour. I hold the bow wrong. My left hand is completely wrong. My vibrato, which was the only thing I really thought I was pretty good at, is completely wrong. I need to use the full length of the bow. By the end of the lesson, my brain had such a long checklist of "move this, do this, change this" just to get the violin in place that there wasn't enough brain power to actually read the music. Plus, all during the music, I am thinking about all of the things I'm doing incorrectly that I'm concentrating on fixing those things. By the time I get through the checklist, I'm back to the beginning and refixing the things I started with. I got back to my car and just cried. I cried all the way home. The first time I practiced after that, I spent an entire hour just trying to figure out how to correctly hold the bow. I have been discouraged every time I think about practicing now. I knew I wasn't an amazing player, but I didn't realize I was that bad. Now, every time I play I am thinking about all of the things I'm doing wrong. Slowly, some of it is getting there. I am better at curving my fingers on both the bow and the violin neck. I am trying to bring my playing hand farther over the neck so that there is space between my hand and the neck. I mostly remember to tilt the bow. Vibrato is still a lost cause. I honestly don't understand how to fix it. As a result, I've lost my confidence there and tend to just not do any vibrato. That used to be one of my favorite things to do. Don't get me wrong. I still think it was a good idea to do the lessons. It's just been rough. I am persevering though. Practice makes progress. That is what I always tell my students, and I am practicing what I preach. I should definitely be practicing more soon though. The OBS retreat is in a month and a half. Some of the music is pretty challenging. Plus, Steve has talked Shelly and I into doing the community orchestra he is starting in the fall. It's just the first eight weeks of the semester. I hope I survive.
Lessons are at 3:00 on Wednesdays, so I have a couple of hours between the end end of them and when I need to be at church for orchestra. Today, I decided to treat myself to my favorite summer treat - the limited time (summer months) orange cream milkshake at Arby's. I sat in a corner and almost finished reading Oliver Twist. After orchestra, I sat in the car to read the last two chapters so I could drop it off at the library. It definitely had a different ending than the musical on Sunday. In the musical, Fagin ends the show with a song of him thinking about changing his ways and then deciding, "Nah." In the book, Fagin is caught and hung! All of the criminals (and the dog!!!) die at the end except one. The rest of them all live happily ever after. I can understand why the play focuses on the first part of the book. It was the more interesting. I still enjoyed the book though.
Because it's a classic and written so long ago, there were times that it was difficult to understand the wording. It made me think, "Did people really talk like that in those times?" I know today, we have what's called tier-1 vocabulary vs tier-2 vocab. We have tier-1 which is vocabulary we use on an every day basis. Tier-2 is better vocab and what we tend to write into our stories. We're careful about not using the same words over and over, and bumping up boring vocabulary into more exact and interesting language. Therefore, when I read a book from a hundred years ago, how accurate is it to how they actually spoke? Shall we actually ever know? Nay. I think not.
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