Final Practice Blog for semester 1 of 2012

I think that I greatly improved at the beginning, but then not so much after for these particular two excerpts. Overall, however, I think that my tone and intonation have improved. I've been trying to improve my tone (and my intonation, which sort of went bad along with my tone) ever since about half a year ago when my quality suddenly dropped and I started getting a ton of airiness--and not much sound. I personally feel that my critical listening has improved, and I am noticing a few more things I wouldn't normally have by listening to my recordings.

On a side note, I finally figured out how to use iMovie (sort of) :D

Practice Blog Number 3

My main goal to take me to an artist level performance is to hone my dynamics. It's something that pretty much every person that plays an instrument hears, to focus on dynamics more. I think that that is always true (no matter how annoying it gets when you hear it thousands of times). After all, it's basically what make the music come alive. I also still have some problems with phrasing.

Document Practice Method

The excerpt I worked on a little bit today was from Chorale and Shaker Dance II, from the measures 1-7. I recorded myself first playing it without any practice, then with about 15 minutes of practice. On my last post, it was noted that I had "blips' between the notes in my slurs, so I decided to focus on that. One way I tried to remedy this problem was to play the notes in different rhythms (like a dotted quarter note then a 16^th note and repeating) to get my fingers used to switching between notes (*I would usually do this for fast sections, but who knows? maybe it works for this too). I also played the notes in pairs, almost like....slow trilling (ish?) i guess to practice switching notes more cleanly. With this method, I have eliminated most of the little "blips" when playing the slur in the high range. I will continue to practice this part and attempt to fix intonation, dynamics, etc. and work on getting out all the blips.
 

Two Excerpts to Work On

This is an excerpt from Chorale and Shaker Dance II that I feel I have some trouble with. (Let me say right now though, sorry for the random background noise and super loud creak at the end! My house is really noisy...) I have issues with tempo, which always happens at the start of every piece I play, so that's a problem--I tried to follow the written dynamics(? I don't really know what to call it). The technicality of this part is not difficult. My intonation is rather iffy, being in the high range. I also feel like my phrasing isn't good, no matter where I breathe. These are some of the things I found wrong with this excerpt and made it stand out from other areas of the piece.

First of all, and I think most important, is my really bad ability to stay in time and count properly. This may just be because I was tired when I recorded this, but either way, I will need to fix that. I need to pay attention to articulation, like in measure 14 where the articulations have become practically nonexistent. Many of my errors are the same as the other excerpt and pretty much any other slow piece of music. For now I don't think I should focus on my tone as much, but it is also something I need to work on.

What I'd Like to Improve On

Over the next concert cycle, I'd mainly like to improve my tone, phrasing, and intonation. My tone is very inconsistent, with some days being warm and rich, and other days being "airy" and entirely unpleasant to listen to. My higher notes also usually have that sound of air, and sometimes, when I'm having a bad day and/or I'm tired, my notes just--cut off. This ties into my problems with phrasing. To put it simply, I just can't hold them out long enough. I have to increase my breath intake as well as my stability when holding out long notes. I guess I just don't have much stamina, so I'll work on increasing that. My intonation is rather, well, horrible... It used to be that i could be in tune (or nearly :P) on my first attempts to tune, but now it's like I am permanently out of tune. I can never seem to find the right pitch to blend with other tones. Maybe I'm just blaming it on my braces, but I'll have to see about getting a tuner to practice long tones and tuning with.

Sorry for this long paragraph!