I had told M yesterday that we would practice twice today, once before school and once after, because we need a lot of practice to get ready for Saturday.
But then my stomach bug hit, and I could barely get out of bed in the morning. When I did get up, it was time to take M to school. But bless her heart, she remembered what I had said about practicing in the morning, and she just assumed we were practicing (she asked me if she could play with something while I tuned). Though we didn’t have time to practice, I was gratified that she was prepared to go along with it.
I was a little out of it in the evening when we practiced (I spent most of the day in bed, after going in to work for the morning). Mostly we worked on isolated bits of the Bach Tanz and on adding some musical expression — vibrato on the half notes, tosto/piano on one repeated section.
She played it through a couple of times. The first time she played unaccompanied, and she made a lot of mistakes that she went back and corrected. To counteract this habit, the next time, I sang along and had her play through her mistakes. She made quite a few, but she also played through them. It’s hard to say what shape this will be in for Saturday.
Just for fun, I asked her to play With Steady Hands. It sounded surprisingly good, and she got the form right too!
I shared with her one thing I noticed about the Bach Tanz: That song works best if your thumb rests on the A string rather than following the other fingers around. And it immediately precedes With Steady Hands, in which your thumb actually plays the A string. So resting your thumb on the A string in the Bach Tanz is really preparation for using it in With Steady Hands. Neat!
As her inter-piece reward, I let her hang on my earring a charm from a charm bracelet she got. This delighted her.