Bastards, the university is stealing my dime.... literally! The payment did go through for my tuition,so all is well there. BUT, I see this thingy for a credit of 10 cents and beside it, it says 'do not pay" grr... Oh well, i suppose I can manage without the dime.
So ya, first actual day back to school was good for the most part. It was nice and fun and exciting to see everyone again, the building was so full of people and energy. Unfortunately, this meant no practice rooms, although I did sneak one for a little while. Oh ya, first class was cancelled, which is ok, but a little urking on account of it being so bloody early in the morning.
I had my first lesson back after break. It started out well. I played the Scriabin for the first time. it went relatively well. actually ya, it was good. David strongly suggested that I need to listen to lots of Scriabin stuff.... to get some style clues.... the recordings I've heard are dramatically different from what I play.. and from what i see on the page... I honestly dont' have any idea how it got translated as such, but hopefully listening to other things will give me a clue.
two and a hlaf minutes of music... didnt translate into a long portion of the lesson... unfortunately. My rendition of Mozart's rondo alla turka from his A major sonata, was criticised as being incredibly sloppy, so we went over ways to make sure it is reliably clean. These are things that I have been learning all along, and I thought I was making use of them on this piece... but apparently not. This has to be the worst feeling ever: when you go to a lesson and you are proud of something, and then to be told that it's crapola. It's good though, I need to learn to better handle criticism. Also, if I'm playing badly, I need to be reminded... it's far to easy to fall into old habits of playing just for the enjoyment of music.... I could sit for hours sightreading stuff, or half ass playing things, but that doesn't improve my technique.. or playing.
Luckily, its not that I just suck.... well too much.... rather David was able to (as a Dr. (tee hee hee))diagnose the problem; I was using the correct methods... but at bad tempos or whatnot... not thinking about them enough. I was using rhythmic practicing too fast..not giving it the opportunity to be absorbed into my fingers.
What I think of as a rather good change... I practiced tonight what we talked aobut in my lesson. normally after a bad lesson, I get grumpy and take the night and some of the next day off... I was still grumpy as all hell, but that was also hunger.. I ended up practicing, and feeling good about what I can accomplish, despite the less than inspiring time earlier.
After the Mozart, I played my new Brahms for him, he said "this will be fine", which was a huge vote of confidence considering what had come before. We also covered how to approach the third page, which I've been kind of lost... The super slow method has not been rewarding, but he reassured me that it will work. when it works out to about 30BPM.... thats fricking slow!!! There are a lot of notes on that page and its awkward... nevertheless, it is the most beautiful part of my recital program, and I'm using it for competitions too, YUMMY thats all I can say aobut it!
Alas, it's getting much later than I wanted to be up tonight, so I bid you all adieu!