In-Depth Post #3

Since my last post, I had another meeting with my mentor and we discussed some plans moving forward.

Progress update

In the past two weeks, I’ve mostly been playing some songs from books that my mentor had as well as picking some out from the Suzuki book. In general, I am getting more used to playing for longer periods of time (my arm used to get sore after playing for a while) and developing my muscle memory to the point where I can play somewhat decently without really looking at my fingers on the strings. However, I still have trouble with faster pieces that require me to position my fingers more quickly. I think I am going to hold off on getting tape for my violin for now because I feel that my muscle memory is developing quickly and I will probably be able to play accurately soon.

Here’s a recording of The Irish Washerwoman, a jig that I’ve been working on.

First of all, the most noticeable mistake (other than finger positioning mistakes) is accidentally hitting other strings or unclean transitions between strings, especially open ones. There’s not really an easy solution to this problem and hopefully I will be able to play better soon. My mentor also mentioned that more advanced players tend to avoid open strings whenever it is convenient (by using the fourth finger on a lower string), since they tend to produce a distinctly different sound, ringing out a lot more than non-open notes. Also, vibrato is not possible on an open string. If you have a keen eye, you may have noticed that I used my fourth finger at 0:08 instead of switching to the E string. My fourth finger is by far my weakest finger, and my muscle memory is far from perfect on that finger right now. I will continue to work on this for the next couple weeks.

For the next post, I also want to add little slurs (connected notes with smooth transitions) on the first two notes of each three-note rhythm, which will challenge my bowing a little bit.

I have also decided that I want to try to learn some vibrato (rapid slight change in pitch by moving the finger back and forth) as one of my main goals for the end of this project. As such, I want to try to play a violin cover of Somewhere Over the Rainbow as one of my final songs for this project. For reference, I will probably base it mostly off of the video below, but my vibrato may not be as great as his and I may have to make some modifications to make the shifting easier.

Questions about my mentor

What went particularly well during your mentoring sessions?

Since my mentor is a good friend of mine, we try to have some fun during our meetings. Usually, we practise violin for about 40 minutes and then take a break/chat for a couple minutes before practising violin again for about 30 minutes. After our meetings, my mentor sometimes stays over for a while and we go outside to shoot some hoops. The result is that I don’t really feel as though he’s teaching me, but more so that he’s just helping me out with any problems that I have. As such, I greatly look forward to our meetings. I know he’s nice, and that I can ask him any questions I have without getting judged. For example, if he was explaining something and assumed I already knew about a certain musical concept (from my piano experience), I could ask him to clarify it if I didn’t know about it already. Being able to easily try out new ideas helped me improve significantly faster.

What learning challenges emerged?

Sometimes we get a bit sidetracked talking about interesting topics. These conversations aren’t necessarily completely off-topic and are usually music-related, but they don’t directly contribute to my learning and end up wasting a lot of time. For example, in our previous meeting we talked for a while about a Russian folk dance called Sasha that I found in my old binder from my elementary school violin club. We googled it and talked about how the violin teachers at the violin club may have been Russian (I hardly remember anything about the club) based on the other pieces that I still had in the binder. However, this conversation was unnecessary and took up a chunk of our meeting time. Although time is wasted from these discussions, in most cases, we are not strictly limited by time because we meet on weekends so we are able to meet for longer if needed until we accomplish our goals for the meeting. I think we are able to easily recognize when a discussion is spiralling off topic, and after that example I just shared, we learned our lesson and try to keep our side discussions short in order to get back on topic quickly.

What three strategies could improve the quality of your mentoring interactions?

  1. Set specific goals for the next meeting. I know this works well because I use this strategy with my piano teacher. It works well because it gives us topics to address at the beginning of each meeting, which also has a benefit of keeping the meetings more structured. For this to work for my in-depth project, I first need to form a more regular meeting schedule with my mentor (currently we don’t have one).
  2. Let my mentor demonstrate techniques if I don’t know them yet. I feel like we can definitely utilize the benefits of meeting in person better, as sometimes I go straight into attempting a difficult technique. For example, when we were talking about vibrato, I ended up trying to do it by myself for a bit without actually knowing how to do it. After I saw my mentor do it, it was much more clear.
  3. Take notes during the meeting. For me, notes serve as a good way to remind my brain about the information I previously learned. Especially with in person meetings, they trigger certain memories. This way, I can practice more effectively outside of meeting time, targeting my efforts towards problems that had been previously identified.

Thanks for reading!

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