Monday

Guess what today was?  DAY ONE.

That's right.  We're starting it all over again.  New music, new quartet, new coach, new concert looming on the horizon.  I'm playing Shostakovich #8 this week with Asya (and Alex, Matt, and Melanie).  We started with the second movement this morning.  We put it at quarter = 250 and played it aiming really to just get rid of any and all mistakes.  Asya said that we were building the skeleton of the piece today at a slow tempo so that we could make sure all the mistakes were all ironed out before we started bringing the tempo up and that the thing that really makes this piece hard is the fast tempo.  We also went over the third movement before lunch.  After lunch, Alex Tulchinsky came and he taught us about sound quality on the violin depending on how you position the bow and things.  An example is that he said you get the best sound quality when you keep your bow perpendicular to the string so that it's on top of the string at a constant angle instead of making a wonky angle and ... not getting as good of a sound?  Haha, I'm not really explaining it well, am I?  Well, it was some really good advice anyway.  He also went over using the weight of your arm to help produce sound which I already knew from taking from Asya. :P  Anyway, we worked more after lunch on the fourth and fifth movements.  We have individual practice tomorrow which will be really beneficial, I feel.