Category: Home-lesson recaps

We practiced after dinner, and it went pretty well. We did:

• A couple of D scales.
• 21 good repetitions of the first 2 bars of the Bach Tanz
• 4 sections of the Bach Tanz, out of order (D, C, B, A, I think).

M was a little uncooperative, but her resistance was cheerful (e.g., making jokes), not tearful. And I had one good threat in my pocket: If she caused our lesson to drag on by not cooperating, we would not have time for dessert. I probably only had to mention this twice.

Also, she has begun to respond well when I say “Do X — right now.” I’ve started saying this recently because she often dawdles every time she’s asked to do something.

But I’m giving the wrong impression.  Though I did periodically give “right now” instructions, and more than once told her — gently exasperated — to quit fooling around, conflict was a small part of the lesson. For the most part, both M and I were cheerful, and it ended on a good note.

Working on the 21 two-bar repetitions turned out to be a great exercise. We took it in chunks that gradually got bigger. First, she did one repetition, and the first was nearly perfect. We discussed it a little, then she did a second; she made a mistake, so that one didn’t count. We went on like that, one at a time, until she had done a few. The only technical problem she had was a drifting left pinky, and she was able to notice it and work on it herself.

Then I started asking her to do two right in a row for them to count, and to stay in position after the first one while I counted off another two measures. After doing that, I asked for three in a row, and then for five. When we got to five, she nailed them. She didn’t nail the next five in a row, but she was aware of what she was doing, so I was satisfied.

Overall, by taking this approach, I was able to remind M to focus, and she was gradually able to experience longer and longer periods of focus.

The Bach Tanz sections were variable — she blew the first A section because she didn’t pay enough attention, but then got it right. She blew the C section because her right hand wandered all over, but after a couple of slower repetitions, she got that too. And she nailed both the D and A sections the first time through.

Maybe I can keep her away from the violin after all.

Thursday: We had some extra time this morning, so I decided we’d do our entire lesson in the morning. We stayed with this Twinkle accompaniment, and I just wanted to get through four measures. It was like pulling teeth. Each time M played a measure or two, she’d drop her hands, get out of position, roll her eyes, and grumble.  In a half hour, we didn’t get through even two measures perfectly more than once or twice. So frustrating!

I kept reminding M that by not cooperating, she was dragging things out, and we might have to practice in the evening. And she kept playing carelessly. This is the same type of garbage that she was doing with the Suzuki repertoire when we were trying to get through more. I thought I’d get less of it by using this new music.

When we got home after school, we practiced again. But I started by trying to give her some control and also illustrate my point about focused practice: I had her time me, using the stopwatch, as I played through the four-bar section 5 times perfectly. It actually took me 7 tries, and with some talking, it lasted 3 minutes. I told her that was how long her practice could last if she really focused.

She did a better job paying attention than she did this morning. Also, at one point, she made a “joke”: I said, “Now I want you to play that section a little faster,” and she played a few bars of the Bach Tanz quickly. “That was a joke because I played faster, but I played something different,” she explained.

We also had a nice moment where she got really upset and frustrated about being able to string together two measures, saying she couldn’t do it, and then managing to do it after we simplified and simplified down to just the few notes that were giving her problems.

She never did get through all four bars, but she did do some focused, attentive playing. Now if only she would try to do more of it.

I still felt pretty bad today, but I was able to get up with enough time to do a short (15-minute) before-school lesson. M was very cooperative.

Our evening lesson was not so great. She kept wanting to do stupid things and call them April Fool’s jokes. I tried to be patient.

Before jumping into the Bach Tanz, I asked her to play Meadow Minuet. She did a nice job on the first 3 sections; she almost forgot to play the last one and made a few note mistakes in it. But it was pretty good given how many days we laid off it.

The Bach Tanz was a little disappointing. We started by practicing the transition from tosto/end of A section to natural/beginning of B section. It took a while, but she eventually got it. I then had her run through the whole song. The notes were fairly accurate, and she remembered to play a tosto repeated A section, but she mostly forgot her vibrato and forgot to play a tosto repeated C section. In fact, she almost forgot to repeat the CD sections.

This is a common pattern (seen in Meadow Minuet earlier): She lets her mind wander and gives up on the song before it is over.

I asked her to play the Tanz again, and it got worse: She went from the initial AB sections right into CD, totally skipping the repeat.

Rightly or wrongly, I decided that nothing good would come of continuing, so I told her we’d practice in the morning. We practiced for about a half an hour in total.

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.

M and I practiced before dinner. It’s a good thing, too, because by the time dinner rolled around, I thought I was going to throw up at any minute. The bug M had a few days ago reached the parents’ digestive tracts.

Unfortunately, that meant I was too sick to blog today, and I’m writing this on Friday. I didn’t take good notes, so all I can remember is that we practiced about an hour, mostly (perhaps exclusively) on the Bach Tanz, and M was pretty cooperative.

When M’s too tired, she melts down; when she’s too antsy, she acts up. Today, she was just the right amount of tired: She cooperated excellently. (And we didn’t even do any inter-song activity, which increased our efficiency and sparked no protest.)

It probably helped that I set low expectations. We need to record a video of the Bach Tanz to send in to the Colorado Suzuki Institute as an audition for a solo recital, and we have to do it at this Saturday’s lesson. That gives us 3 days to get this song into shape. The only way we’ll get there is to focus on it, so I decided to have an all-Bach-Tanz lesson today.

We started by shadow practicing the D section (left hand only). Then we played various sections out of order: D, C, B, A. M played with great rhythm and very few errors.

When we moved on to putting sections together and introducing musical ideas, it got a little tougher. We’ve agreed on playing: A-mf, B-mf, A-piano/tosto, B-forte, and similarly for C-D-C-D. And I suggested that M introduce some vibrato on the half notes.

When M strung A-B-A-B together the first time, she forgot the vibrato and tosto, but she actually overdid the dynamics: her piano section was almost inaudible. I reminded her of the stage-whisper approach to playing piano.

She tried again, and this time when she did the tosto shift, she missed notes on both side of it. This was the first time she missed any significant number of notes, so we isolated the problem notes: the shift from natural to tosto (pretty easy, since you stay on the 2nd string), and the shift back (harder, because your right hand moves from playing the 2nd string to 3rd string). We repeated them several times, and M even did a few decent repetitions on her own initiative. Overall, we practiced for about 40 minutes.

I also introduced the idea of adding two additional practice events to our routine: (1) shadow practicing right before bed, and (2) practicing for 10 or 15 minutes in the morning. She was more-or-less agreeable to both, and we did manage to shadow practice the D section right before bed without incident.

We’ll have to see how the morning goes. Right now, I’m feeling good.

M was very tired today (she fell asleep at rest time in school, which never happens). But she cooperated pretty well during a relatively short lesson.

We started by again shadow practicing the D section. She made some mistakes at first, but got the hang of it.

When we played the D section, her note accuracy was much improved, but I noticed a new rhythm problem: she was playing the first measure, which should be a 1/2 note plus two 1/8 notes, as three 1/4 notes. So we had to work on that. This occasioned some resistance, but it wasn’t serious.

Next, we played the C section. This was much worse than it has been, probably because I didn’t start her off with the ball under her hand. Without the ball, her hand — and more specifically, her thumb — was flying all over the place, which caused her to play the wrong string with the right hand on a lot of notes. I gave her the ball back, which helped some, but I basically decided to move on rather than staying on this problem. It should be easy enough to take care of.

Finally, we worked on the Canon briefly, because M likes to read music and I wanted to end with a treat. We played the easy 1/2-note section a few times, followed by the third section, which sounded terrific. We then briefly tried to go through the new second section, and that sounded pretty good for how new it is.

A pretty good day.

Today was M’s birthday party, so we practiced in the morning, at around 10.

I wanted a simple start, and I wanted to work on M’s tone, which was terrible yesterday, so I asked her to start by playing an A in second position on the 3rd string. Even this simple task created conflict: M was getting a buzzing tone, and I was trying to figure out whether it was her fault or her guitar’s. So after she played a few As and stopped, I said, “Keep playing.” Instead of playing more As, she started playing Gs and G#s with terrible form. I lost it a little bit, and berated her for playing garbage notes with garbage form. (Note: Unlike Amy Chua, I did not accuse my child of being garbage; just of playing garbage.) It’s a recurring behavior of hers that I keep trying and failing to stamp out.

Then she cooperated with me by playing As at various dynamic levels, and I was able to determine that in fact the buzzing was not her fault — the action on her guitar is low, and she’s using normal strings (which have low tension on such a small guitar), so the strings tend to buzz when she plays moderately loud.

We moved on to the Bach Tanz and focused on the C-D sections (the second half). Right up front, I asked her to sing the D section, which she had gotten wrong yesterday, and she again got it wrong (I had hoped she might get it right, because I replaced her bedtime CD with one that has the Bach Tanz first, ten times in a row).

I then played the correct notes for her, and we sang it a few times. That seemed to help. As for playing, we worked mostly on the C section, and she managed to play it beautifully several times. There’s only one problem note in the section (a D in the second measure, I think); I had her circle it on the music so we can work on it. This song is coming along nicely, and I told her so.

Next we practiced the open A scale (i.e., an A scale using open B and open C) to work our way into Meadow Minuet. She’s developed the habit of not playing open E and B in that song, and I thought it would help to get the scale under her fingers. As we played, we sang the note names, specifically singing “Open B” and “Open E” when we came to them. It took a while to get this right.

She then played the Meadow Minuet melody while I played the bass, then we traded. She still doesn’t have the bass line solidly in her head, so we need to work on this more.

Apart from the conflict at the start of our lesson, it was a pretty good day. But that conflict is what lingers with me.