Tag Archives: fast fingers

Day 149 – February 26th – Cloudy with light drizzle

Posted on by
Reply

I’m not sure the weather forecast got it quite right for today – cloudy with light drizzle turned into pea soup with lashings of rain by the time it arrived in Elmsted! It was a good day for solid pracitising, and I got in a good five and a half hours…with the help of as many cups of tea!

Like I said yesterday, I had quite clear plans for what needed practising in the Copland Duo, and think that I did quite a good job of sorting them out. It’s a pity that there’s only time in class tomorrow for the first movement, as I really like the piece and would like to prepare it ‘properly’ for something. The second movement (I had a quick play through this afternoon) is stunning. Oh well, another piece to add to my wish list.

Back to doing a full three hours of warm-ups and technique, I was surprised today just how much I got through in the time. I remember back at the beginning of December I was still taking half an hour to get through Reichert No. 2 from memory. Now I can fly through that and quite a few of the other exercises with no problems at all. No. 1 from Boehm’s Twelve Studies is finally there as well, after many painful practice sessions! Both my memory and my finger speed are certainly improving, though I do still get frustrated with myself in class if I can’t keep up with some of the others.

Day 103 – January 11th – Some more time

Posted on by
Reply

Last night my bed fell apart! The slating underneath came away in one corner so that my mattress wasn’t supported, which was something of a shock. I moved the mattress onto the floor for the night, but was rather nervous as to what my landlords would say when I reported it to them this morning. Luckily Carol and Andy were rather unsurprised – apparently when families rent the dairy in the summer children bounce a bit on the rather badly-made beds and it happens all the time. Rather a relief, and thanks to Andy I now have a perfectly solid bed to sleep on again tonight.

Trevor emailed us this afternoon to say that he has laryngitis and that class is postponed until either Tuesday or Wednesday. While I’m sorry he’s not well, a little part of me also jumped for joy at the thought of a few more days to work on my studies! Andersen no. 11 is proving to be a bit of a tricky one with lots of sneaky accidentals. While it needs to be beautifully phrased and take into account the numerous appoggiaturas, it is also really fast at crotchet = 116. I’m aiming for phrasing, expression and not cutting note endings above speed, though both would be ideal. Trevor really does love these studies, and I can see why – they are so musical and nuanced yet really demand good technique.

Something that I forgot to write about a few days ago is a book that I’ve finished reading – Cadence by Emma Ayres. I listened to her present the breakfast show on ABC Classic FM as a teenager, and she taught cello at my secondary school. The book, however, tells the story of both her studies on the viola and a cycle ride that she did from England to Hong Kong before she came to Australia. It’s a beautiful memoir, challenge and self-reflection laced with incredibly powerful descriptions of music. I found the read immersive (I read about 150 pages on the trip down from Grimsby) and inspiring, both from a musical and literary point of view. Wonderful stuff.

Day 97 – January 5th – Quartets

Posted on by
Reply

As always, class today had its ups and downs, though for once warm-up time was one of the ups! It seems that the mental practice as well as all the repetition of the various exercises is paying off, as I was able to play many of the exercises at speed without getting flustered or making too many mistakes. The two Reichert exercises felt almost easy – a wonderful sensation after spending so long getting annoyed with my inability to play them! The Boehm study wasn’t perfect, but I didn’t look at the music and got through it without loosing my place. Thought it might seem like small steps, I’m happy that the fast memory work finally seems to be getting somewhere.

Trevor had another set of devilish finger exercise for us today, this time Moyse’s Scales and Arpeggios: 480 Exercises on the Major and Minor Scales and Arpeggios of 3 and 4 tones. We read through the first three exercises, the first one in all the major keys. I have come across this book before: my teacher Sylvia gave it to me when I was about 17 and I diligently played through of the exercises according to the plan proposed on the first page. I remember them being challenging, even though I was probably doing them at a fraction of the speed that Trevor would like! One of the things that was pleasantly surprising during our read-through today, however, was how agile my pinkie finger has become. Though the sequences with low Cs, Dbs, Ds and Ebs weren’t always comfortable, I could playing them at the tempo without too many problems.

The rest of the class was ok, though tied myself in some knots with the Moyse melodic studies. I had spent so long trying to get the staccato in no. 3 nice and short that I wasn’t thinking enough about even rhythm. Then, when I played with even quavers, I wasn’t playing expressively enough. It really does all need to come together rather than one bit being good and then the other not. My long studies were generally good, with Andersen no. 10 being pronounced “quite musical and nicely phrased”, and Altes no. 15 coming across well despite the speed. No. 14 wasn’t as good – I was holding the ends of 3/4 bars when I should be cutting them, and started out too slowly. Trevor really does seem to want speed above all else in the Altes studies, which I need to keep in mind for next week’s selection. The Moyse articulation studies (Bach variations) were also a case of not everything coming together at once. I could play the rhythm in no. 5, but then was doing some funny things with phrasing as a result. When I fixed the phrasing, the rhythm wasn’t as precise. Nos. 6-8, all alternating slurring and tonguing, were quite good but all needed to be faster!

This evening we did a group dinner and then spent an hour sightreading flute quartets. Reica and Furstenau were on the menu and were a lot of fun. After all the sightreading that I’ve been practising, as well as the sheer volume of music that we have to learn for the course, the notes themselves were easy to play and I could focus on the interaction between various voices in the ensemble. It’s a pity that some of the others were tired – I would have gone on for a few more hours!

Day 95 – January 3rd – Fast fingers

Posted on by
Reply

Everyone was a bit slow to get going this morning, I think as a result of the fondue last night! It was wet and rainy for most of the day – perfect weather for good solid practice sessions.

Once again, I need to keep reminding myself to look at what I have improved on over the last three months. Though all the various Reichert and other warm-up exercises aren’t perfect, they’re definitely faster and more fluent that even just a few weeks ago. Though the minors with lots of sharps and flats continue to frustrate me in Taffanel and Gaubert-style scales, on the whole they’re faster as well. I’ve been trying to spend less time on each individual exercise and jump around a bit more, in the hope that it will encourage me to play from memory more spontaneously. So far it seems to be helping, and I’m playing things correctly the first time through rather than making silly slips.

My feeling of achievement today was that I managed to get through all the Moyse finger exercises at crotchet = 128. The experience wasn’t exactly comfortable, but all the notes were there and even. The Boehm study, which I’m trying to memorise with the aid of a lot of mental practice, is getting there. Eb, Ab, Db and F# are still a bit hit and miss, but the others are sounding alright. Now it just needs to be faster!

As for studies for this week…all of them need to go very fast. Andersen no. 10, which I’m playing again, has an awful lot of accidentals but needs to sounds easy with four in a bar. At the moment I can do that for all the bars with few or no accidentals, but then I’ll hit a wall of D, E and F double sharps and it will fall to pieces! Today I practiced only the hairy bars with the metronome set to where it just felt uncomfortable. Hopefully I can still maintain the same speeds tomorrow. As for the Altes studies, they’re less scary and more just an awful lot of notes to get under the fingers.

Day 64 – December 3rd – Doing it at speed

Posted on by
Reply

It continues to be rather cold in a very wintry sort of way. I put off my morning run because of the rain, but even when I did finally head out at 2:30pm it was brisk and chilly. Overall I quite like the cold – properly rugged up, I really enjoyed our walk this evening – but am not sure how much longer my morning runs are going to last!

One of the thing that Trevor has pointed out a few times now is that I need to relax and trust myself with the warm-up exercises. I think part of the problem is a fear of letting my fingers go onto autopilot, which applies equally to pieces where I have to play things at speed. Today there were moments where I surprised myself with the Reichert exercises – I could genuinely get through two or three keys at speed without dropping any notes. Then suddenly I would be back to thinking about what comes next, and so would fall apart. The only way I can see of resolving it is to keep pushing the threshold. If I can get through three keys without a slip today, then maybe tomorrow I can do four, and I can do them a bit faster. I’ve definitely improved at this since being here, and I can do things now that I couldn’t have two months ago, but it’s still an area that I’d like to feel better about.

Also on the topic of speed, I did my Moyse finger exercises at crotchet = 124 today, which is getting pretty brisk! Interestingly, it actually felt easier than crotchet =122 yesterday, and I’m not sure whether that’s because I’m nearing the end of a two week cycle, or whether I was a bit more focused today.

Tomorrow we’re playing Fukushima’s Mei in class, or at least I’m playing it. Some of the others haven’t practised it, and all seem to be assuming that I’ll go first, Trevor will talk about the piece, and then they won’t actually have to play. I’m rather dubious about this plan, as I have a feeling that no matter how well I play, Trevor will dig into me about my penchant for new music and declare that I’m no better at it than anything else. I have, however, taken the time to practise the piece, and really like it. Hopefully I’ve done enough work to have a constructive lesson, and will be able to return to it at some point in the future.