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.