A 20-minute, 1-minute lesson

In the morning, we worked on the Canon. M was a little fidgety, but we practiced for about 30 minutes and she is doing well with the first 12 of 17 bars. (Note to self: Learn songs backwards! Learn songs backwards! She’s quite rusty on the last 5 bars.) Overall, she did pretty well.

In the evening, we practiced pretty late (7 pm), and I offered her the chance of a 1-minute lesson: If she played the Bach Tanz perfectly one time, we could be done.

She didn’t manage it, and I let her off the hook after about 20 minutes. She actually got worse as we went on, forgetting sections, forgetting to pay attention to her left hand, and forgetting to keep her right thumb glued to the A string. But she was quite cooperative, despite her subpar performance, and it made sense to quit when we did. I’ll have to keep bringing songs back until they become reliable.

It’s not a technical issue; her left hand looks pretty good (though she’s still reaching too far back with her 1 and 2 fingers). It’s purely a question of concentration and developing good attentional habits, such as watching her left hand.

On an unrelated note, we stopped at the library on the way home from school, and she got some Rainbow Fairy-series books. I let her pick them out, and when I came to see what she had, she said, “You’re going to like what I found!” She had found books about the music fairies! I love it when she seeks out music-related stuff to show me. Then she read Poppy the Piano Fairy to me in the car on the way home and while I made her dinner. She stumbled over some words (e.g., “anxious,” “immediately”), but she kept at it.

Canon and French Folk Song

Tuesday: It’s funny how the urgency of blogging disappears when things are going relatively well. We practiced in the morning and briefly in the evening, but I didn’t blog about today’s practice (I’m writing this post on Wednesday). I recall that things went okay — and it’s hard to recall details (though they returned somewhat as I wrote this).

I believe that we worked on the Canon in the morning and then on French Folk Song in the evening.

My goal with French Folk Song is to increase M’s concentration, so I asked her to toss out the low Ds. This is the second day in a row we’re doing this. She did much better than yesterday, but she still had some surprising lapses.

Specifically, her first time through, she missed some notes, then got very flustered, then lost her place in the song and skipped an entire 4-bar section. When I asked her about her playing when she finished, she didn’t recall this.

So to improve her listening and her mental image of the song, I sang it twice: first minus the section she dropped, then with the section she dropped. I asked her the difference. She couldn’t tell me! So I did it once or twice more, until something clicked and she identified the problem (the missing section).

She is obviously not always hearing the songs in her head as she plays. I need to do more exercises like toss-out to build this habit.

Another good day

This morning, we worked on Pachelbel’s Canon. M’s left hand looks particularly good. We spent about 20 minutes getting two measures in shape.

After dinner, we spent about another 20 minutes doing two things. First, I asked M to conduct while I sang Meadow Minuet. Next, I asked M to pick a review song and toss out a note; she picked Lightly Row.

The conducting actually didn’t quite work as planned. I wanted to get her thinking about the song’s structure, so I hoped to have her say each section letter (A, B, C, and D) on the first beat of the section. But she had a very hard time keeping her conducting pattern steady, so adding the letters wasn’t feasible. Still, we went through it four or five times, and I’m sure it helped imprint the song in her head.

On Lightly Row, it took a few repetitions for her to get the song right before we did the toss out. It then took two more repetitions to get the toss-out version right. By the end, though, she was really focusing on hearing and playing the song, so I thought it furthered my goal of helping M improve her ability to concentrate.

Two short lessons, plus songwriting

We practice in the morning for about a half an hour. We start with i-m-a tone exercises on the open E string. M is argumentative about being corrected, but her basic form is pretty good.

Next, we work on Pachelbel’s Canon. M’s playing and reading are both very good. She’s fidgety.

In the evening, we work on Pachelbel’s Canon for just 15 or 20 minutes. We start on a new section and spend all our time on the first measure.

The only problem we have — and we had it yesterday — is that M wants to forge ahead and play things quickly and sloppily. When I stop her from doing it, she reacts grumpily. She isn’t getting the message that by practicing badly, she’s making herself worse.

Of course, she’s just trying to exert some control. I need to keep finding ways to give her healthy control, because I can’t have her practicing mistakes or bad form.

After our evening lesson, M wrote  two “songs” on our new dry-erase staff paper that she left for me when I got home. (As I left, she was getting the paper, and told me, “I’m making a surprise for you!”)

Practice pays off in the end

As usual, this Saturday starts with group class. But, not as usual, I miss most of it because I forgot my wallet, so I drop M off at class and run home to get it. (Without the ID in my wallet, we can’t go to swimming.)

I get back toward the end, and her teacher asks for volunteers to play. I’m gratified that M volunteers eagerly — when I dropped her off, I instructed her to volunteer so that she could practice for her recital this afternoon. The teacher selects a shyer kid to play first, but then he picks Maura, who plays the Bach Tanz.

To my dismay, she botches the structure badly, playing AB 3 times, not 2 times, seeming visibly confused at the end of each section about what comes next, and forgetting when she was supposed to play tosto. On the plus side, she was obviously trying very hard to figure out what she should be playing. But just as obviously, she didn’t have an idea in her head as she was going along.

In the car to swimming and at lunch, we sang the song and talked about her story some more. I tried at one point singing just the four-bar intro, tapping the beat, and asking M to say “A,” “B,” “C,” or “D” on the first beat of each section — this would have required her to hear the song correctly in her head — but it didn’t quite work (she was coming in too early).

To my surprise, however, when she actually played at the recital, she nailed it. She was totally focused, and she remembered the entire structure, including the shifts to tosto in the repeated A and C sections.

Now if only dad had remembered to turn on the portable audio recorder in time! (I got video on my pocket camera, but the sound on it is terrible.)

Jekyll and Hyde

So our morning practice was just a continuation of yesterday: more tantrums and refusal to cooperate. Did she play the Tanz even once? Maybe, but after that, nothing — except crying and complaining — for a half hour.

On the plus side, I made more sensible, modified threats. I explained that we were going to have to make up the practice time, and if we didn’t make it up before her birthday party, she might have to make it up then and miss the party. This did not add any fuel to the fire (which was already going quite nicely, thank you).

As I contemplated what to do on my way to work, I realized my best option was to pick her up early from school and insist that we practice immediately. Normally, I pick M up an hour after her school gets out and take her straight to martial arts. She loves martial arts, and I figured that her desire to go would be a good motivator — because if we couldn’t finish our practice before the martial-arts class, as a natural consequence, she wouldn’t be able to go to that class.

My plan worked as I had hoped. We got home, immediately practiced, and M was very cooperative. We went to martial arts, picked up dinner, and then had another short practice after dinner.

For the short practice, as a combined carrot and stick, M agreed in advance to let me hold one of her toys hostage. Specifically, as we were on the way home from martial arts, she asked if we could stop at Radio Shack and get a hex bug she has been coveting. I said that we could, but on one condition: she would have to let me hold it hostage, and she would only get it after our evening lesson, and only if she cooperated. She agreed.

Now, she was also quite cheerful to begin with when I picked her up, in contrast to her obvious foul mood yesterday. So who knows how much my different strategies even affect her; maybe it’s just her mood, more than what I do, that determines whether she melts down or not.

Technique-wise, we worked on her left hand: keeping the 2nd (middle) finger parallel to the frets so that she’s reaching less with the pinky and any reaching needed is done backward, by the 1 finger, which can more easily reach back than the pinky can reach forward.

Finally some progress!

Well, it’s coming too late to do us any good for the Colorado institute, but M is finally making real progress on the Bach Tanz.

At this morning’s practice, I set a simple goal: One perfect, or close-to-perfect, rendition of the Tanz. I took a few tries, and M was less cooperative than I like, but she eventually got the structure entirely right and remembered most of the dynamics. Technically, her main problem seems to be playing too far behind the frets. This problem was exacerbated because she was looking at her drawing (see yesterday’s post) instead of her hand.

In the evening, I upped the goal but still kept it simple: Two perfect, or close-to-perfect, renditions. I ended up actually getting three good renditions out of five or six attempts. M seemed very aware of what she was doing (she could usually identify her errors after the fact).

On her last rendition, she really focused on what she was doing, and even added vibrato on the half notes. Of course, this extra touch distracted her from some other things, but her level of focus and quality of execution was probably the best it’s ever been.

Tomorrow I’ll go over her video with her. Her left hand fingers still drift behind the frets, and she’s not keeping the thumb on her right hand still. But these are very minor things.

Also, I was delighted by this “song” M wrote, all by herself, while I made dinner, which shows a real understanding of time signatures and note values:

Boom Boom song - April 13, 2011

Making progress with clear, simple goals

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.

Deja vu all over again

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.

Lowered expectations lead to greater success

Building off of yesterday, in the morning today, I asked for 3 perfect G scales from M and 1 perfect G scale with knocks. It took about 15 minutes, but she was generally cooperative and successful.

In the evening, I asked for 2 perfect G scales from M and 2 perfect G scales with knocks. We never did get the perfect G scale with knocks, so I gave up and substituted another ordinary G scale. M did more fidgety crap than I would like, but it was basically conflict-free.

I’d count today a success.