More improvisation and singing

Friday: Another good day with low expectations.

Morning:

  • We started with improvisation. I played a D/G/A/D progression while M noodled on a D scale
  • M did a few free strokes with three fingers. Her hand tends to twist, and I tried to help her keep it steady.
  • M did some A (1/2 fingers on 2nd fret, 2/3 strings) to E (1 finger on 1st fret, 3rd string) chord shifts, played arpeggiated with i-m-a. We need to work on finger placement.

In the afternoon, M was grumbling about practicing, so we discussed what might be fun to work on. She again picked improvisation and the Canon.

  • We began with D scales, played with a metronome.
  • Next, she improvised over a chord progression. At my suggestion, she played quite a bit up the neck on the 1st string.
  • We finished by working on the Canon.
    • We went through once, playing and singing at the same time. This was a nice exercise, and M kept her singing going even when she missed several notes, picking right back up at the right place.
    • M did a good job listening to herself. When I asked her, after a repetition, where she made mistakes, she was always able to point to the music and identify the problem. We narrowed our focus more and more to work just on the problem areas.

Dodged a bullet

Thursday: Things looked shaky this morning. When it was practice time, M was draping herself across her stool and refusing to cooperate. I kept my annoyance in check and asked her what we could do that would be fun. Eventually she agreed that improvisation might be fun, so that got us started.

After we did some improvisation (M soloed on the D scale over a D/G/A/D progression), we worked on the Lightly Row duet. M had some problems keeping track of the song and screwed up the last section (she played the first section again, not the last section).

In the evening, we returned to Lightly Row, but this time I asked M to sing and play at the same time. This helped her identify the problem areas.

Overall, she did well today. The morning could have become a meltdown, but somehow I steered us in the right direction.

Taking it easy

Wednesday: I aimed low today, to keep the good feeling M and I both had after yesterday’s recital.

In the morning, rather than do anything on the instrument, I watched the video of M’s recital with her. We looked at the music as she played. We discussed good things (concentrating, playing through mistakes, playing the entire song, doing the tosto shifts) and the less-good things (an extra rest in between sections, a few missed notes, playing too quietly on tosto sections, and playing the C-D sections an extra time). She seemed proud of herself, and for good reason.

In the evening, we practiced a little before and a little after dinner. Sometimes that’s a problem, but today it wasn’t at all.

We started with rhythm sight reading of a the Dona Nobis Pacem duet in Read This First. M used rhythm sticks while I clapped. We did one part together for a while, then we did separate parts. Overall it went well, though we had a hard time staying with the metronome. It helped if we listened silently to the metronome for 12 or more beats before beginning to count.

On the guitar, we practiced the Canon. We began by singing, then by reading note names aloud. After playing it through once with a fair number of errors, we worked only on the last 5 bars. We played short sections slowly until we were able to play the whole thing through almost error-free twice. M really focused on what she was doing and was cheerful.

More recording and listening

Sunday: I remain downhearted about the state of M’s engagement with the guitar, but we ended the day better than we started it.

It’s a weekend, so we didn’t practice in the morning. After lunch, as Sara and I were in the kitchen discussing what to do next, M called from the other room, “I don’t want to practice.”

I suppose this is normal. But something about her tone, in light of the past few days, socked me in the stomach. As it happens, that was fine schedule-wise, so she kept on playing for a while. I decided that we’d need to practice at 2, from about 2 to 3.

We got off to a (perhaps needlessly) rocky start. M wanted to earn two more Squinky hostages, and I suggested she bring in to our practice room the tea set she was playing with when I started tuning. She gave me two teacups, one for each of the two Squinkies she could earn.

When I finished tuning, M was standing in front of me with ahead band dangling below her chin, like a chin strap, instead of on top of her head. I said, “That’s not going to work. You’ll have to either put it on or take it off.” She said something like, “It’s not in the way.” I responded, “You can put it on, or take it off.” We went back and forth a few times, her looking at me belligerently, and me getting more (and inordinately) pissed off. When I had enough, I took one of the two teacups and put it back saying, “Okay, you lost your chance at one Squinky.”

Predictably, this provoked crying. After a few moments, I said something like, “Look, if you can calm down and start cooperating, maybe you can earn it back. But you were not cooperating with me. You need to work on calming yourself down, and the headband has to be on or off.”

She did a nice job calming down, and we proceeded with my plan for our lesson.

Our focus is the Bach Tanz, which she butchered at her private lesson yesterday. So we started by going over her story. First, we looked at the whole picture and talked about the song sections. Then, we sang the melody and followed along with the picture. The first time through, M jumped from the C picture to the D picture in the middle of the C section — that is, she prematurely thought that the C section was over. She noticed the mistake when the song kept going. We discussed the problem and sang it again, with the picture, this time correctly.

Next, M played through once. She almost skipped the first repeat — that is, she almost played A-B-C, not A-B-A — but she caught herself, played through her mistake, and got back on track. When she was done, we listened to her recording along with the sheet music. She noticed her major mistake and some minor ones (e.g., lots of string noise when shifting positions), and she had a good, open attitude about our approach.

We did this three more times — play & record, then review together with the sheet music. Each time, she got a little bit better, and she did not make any major structural mistakes at any point.

My single biggest goal right now is to get M to take ownership of her playing — to care about it. And today, at least, it seemed to happen, at least a little bit.

Two Squinkies earned

Monday: We had short morning and evening practices, and both went pretty well, so M earned two of her hostage Squinkies. We worked on 4 things total, 2 in each session:

  • The Bach Tanz with Noteflight, focusing on left-hand position
  • The “guide finger” exercise from A chord to E chord
  • Free stroke exercises
  • A little bit of With Steady Hands

M asked about practicing Brother John with singing one part and playing another. I demonstrated two measures and showed how hard it was, but we didn’t have time to get started on it.

Conflict; computer games

Tuesday: Our 20 minutes in the morning didn’t go so well—I stuck with the plus/minus tactic, and handed out a lot of pluses. We worked on May Song, trying to fix a new note mistake.

In the evening, I had M play an ear-training game at Theta Music Trainer: paddle pitch, which is a little like pong, but you have to type the number of the pitch you hear. She got much better at it over the course of a few minutes, and I was very pleased that she did not get discouraged even when she made lots of mistakes.

We then practiced for 10 minutes or so after dinner. She was more cooperative, and I was less demanding. We did:

  • The Bach Tanz. She played with Noteflight. She again screwed up the structure badly a few times, and she quit playing the first time she did so. I’m still not crazy about her left-hand position in this song. But she stuck with it and improved over 3 or 4 repetitions.
  • The last line of the Canon in D, twice. The first time through, she made only one note mistake in the next-to-last measure. The second and last time through, she played it note perfect.

On an unrelated note, I learned today that her group teacher’s son, who’s an excellent 14-year-old guitarist, started on violin and (briefly) piano before switching to the guitar. I think I’ll try to talk to her group teacher about how you decide whether to switch instruments.

A new anti-dawdling tactic

Monday: I decided to try a new approach to minimizing the dawdling (and the nagging it inspires). It goes like this:

  • I announce the base time for practicing — today, 15 minutes in the am, and 10 minutes in the pm.
  • Every time M does something I ask immediately, I shave 1 minute off practice. So, for instance, I say, “Get your guitar and bow.” She does a good job. I say, “Great, that’s minus one.”
  • Every time M dawdles or acts uncooperative, I add 1 minute of practice. So, for instance, I say, “Get into ready position for With Steady Hands.” She looks aroud. I say, “Plus one.”

The morning was better than the evening, though I thought each session went fairly well. M started crying during each practice at what she perceived as unfair plus-1s, but each time she cried became an occasion for her to learn to calm herself down.

In the morning, we practiced for about 20 minutes. She had -4 (good) and +2 (bad), which you’d think would have meant a 13-minute practice, but it was hard to keep track of time. We did only two things:

  • M played the bass notes (As) for With Steady Hands while I played melody. She didn’t pay great attention.
  • I played the bass notes while M played the melody with a crescendo. Toward the 4th or 5th repetition, she did pretty well.

In the evening we practiced for 14 minutes. (I kept a stopwatch running except during relatively long, peaceful, chatty interruptions.) She had -5 (good) and +9 (bad), which added 4 minutes on net to my 10-minute base. She got into a few negative cascades that caused negatives to pile up. But she did a good job calming herself down, and we ended on a nice note. We did 2 things:

  • M played the Bach Tanz with Noteflight. The first time through, she played A-B-C (not A-B-A etc.), then she stopped in frustration and sat out the whole song, looking grumpily at me. I sat there and just said, “plus 1” at the end. She got upset, but I explained that she should have played through her mistake. The second time through (and I immediately gave her -1 for starting right away, which balanced the +1 I had just given her), she did a much better job. She missed some notes, but she remembered the structure, including the tosto shifts.
  • M played the B1 melody of With Steady Hands with a crescendo while I played the bass notes. This was rough—M was fussing with her clothes and was not paying attention to where she was placing her hands. But she did a great job on her 5th repetition, and I surprised her by ending then. (She had asked me earlier when we would be done and I refused to answer, telling her it was time to practice, not to talk about when we’d be done.)

Am I a heartless bastard? Bastard, maybe. Heartless? No.

We’ll have to see if this tactic keeps working and how it will be compatible with longer practices. But for now, I’d rather have better, shorter practices than worse, longer ones.

I will eat your bunny ears

Easter Sunday: I was absorbed all day in house projects, so we didn’t practice until after dinner. A mistake.

What we did:

  • Played a few A1 sections from With Steady Hands in a few ways: M playing it all; me playing bass and M playing melody; M playing bass and me playing melody.
  • Sang the A1 section a few times with a nice crescendo/decrescendo.
  • Played the last section of the Canon a few times, with me playing the previous section at the same time. We went through the middle two bars a few extra times.

On the plus side, M had a couple repetitions of the Canon that she played with complete focus and excellent left-hand position.

On the negative side technically, M’s right hand looks pretty bad on With Steady Hands, and she doesn’t play with much dynamic contrast. Her thumb, in particular, is pretty awkward — hence my asking her to play just the bass notes.

On the negative side behaviorally, she continues with her passive-aggressive resistance. At one point, I said, “You know, I’m thinking of getting the chocolate bunny ears [an Easter treat we all planned to share], and each time you don’t do something I ask you to, I might take a bite of them.” She started crying at this, and I explained that I was trying to figure out some way to get her to cooperate and do what she’s asked, when she’s asked. She calmed down and her behavior improved slightly, but ultimately, I told her that she’d be skipping her treat tonight if she didn’t do as asked, when asked.

The passive-aggressive resistance today was a continuation of her behavior in her private lesson yesterday. Her studio teacher deals with it by making cheerful threats related to whatever game they’re playing (“You’d better get ready or I’ll get an extra roll of the dice! etc.). I’m not sure how different that is.

What is music?

Saturday: We begin with group class, then skip swimming for a birthday party, then have our private lesson. In the afternoon, M plays the Bach Tanz for her former nanny.

Group class

Group class starts with rest position, and M volunteers the answer to Alan’s question, “Why is rest position important?” (Because you need to wait while someone else is playing.”). But when they play 2 G scales, M is not ready either time. As they play several scales, Alan asks the kids (while they are playing) to ask themselves:

  • Am I comfortable?
  • Are my feet flat?
  • Are my shoulders square?
  • Are my fingers hanging from the neck.

They do a G scale with knocking. Next, Alan points out a left-hand technical issue: kids are waggling their hands as they play, in and out. The left hand needs to be steady.

Alan points out that sound and touch are more important senses than vision because you can’t really see what your hand is doing from “the back of the auditorium.”

They play Rigadoon plunky and play a plunky D scale. He’s giving the kids less to think about, and forcing them to relax their hands, so they can improve their fingering.

Next, he takes a break to talk about musicality. I don’t much care for the opening bid — he talks about “appreciating” playing as meaning “putting a price on it.”

Then he does a demonstration with a necklace that works better. First he has a solid-colored necklace with beads that ascend and descend in size. Next, he has a bowl of beads, and a set of the same beads arranged in a necklace. He invites the kids to discuss what makes them pleasing: color (related to tone color), size (related to volume), closeness (related to articulation). I’m not sure how much gets through, but I liked the idea.

Then the kids played hide and seek with an Easter egg and were supposed to direct the seeker by playing staccato (far) and legato (close). The kids couldn’t do it, possibly because they didn’t understand what they were supposed to do. (M volunteered and pretty much played everything legato.)

Private lesson

M’s studio teacher spent most of her time on Suzuki material, only working on the Canon (which we practiced all week) at the end.

My notes about M’s playing:

  • May Song was freakishly rusty. M didn’t watch her hand at all.
  • With Steady Hands was as bad as I would have expected. She played E in the bass a lot and it wasn’t even clear she knew it was a mistake.

M’s behavior left a lot to be desired. She was so sloppy with the guitar when she wasn’t playing that, once, I gestured to her teacher to deal with it, and a second time, I interrupted to tell M to please hold the guitar more carefully.  M also was extremely slow to follow her teacher’s directions. They played a game of rolling dice and moving a game piece, and the teacher regularly said, “If you don’t get ready, I’ll get double rolls” (or something similar). It drove me nuts.

Technically, M needs to work on her right thumb stroke. Assignment:

  • Play 2 bars of With Steady Hands 10 times, doing a crescendo/decrescendo.
  • Practice thumb strokes only, with no buzz (i.e., using flesh just before nail).

On the way out, we took a look at a plaque for the 10-performance club. Suzuki students who play a piece 10 times get their names on the plaque. I’m trying to get M excited about doing this with the Bach Tanz.

Recital for nanny

M agreed to play the Bach Tanz for her former nanny who came over for a visit.

I was glad that she played, but she made a hash of it. Her eyes and her mind were wandering all over the place. I wonder if I’ll be able to productively review a video of it with her.