Saturday, January 9, 2010

Finding Clarity




Finally feeling better today. Still weak, but the body ache is gone. I was reading The Inner Game of Music this morning and Barry Green suggested giving yourself permission to fail. That trying to play a part is the issue and when you try to play the part incorrectly your body plays it properly. I had experimented with this in the past but not recently. I picked up my guitar and went to play the troublesome part in Dandelion Wish wrong and lo and behold I did. This may have been the best laugh I had all week.

Another suggestion he had is to make a similar motion away from the instrument. I played with this a bit and then went to work. The playing improved. I devised another exercise to isolate the issue and noticed that I was not completing the motion for the  double artificial harmonic before returning to my regular playing position. I isolated this further and played using the metronome and then began to put the part back together. By end of my session I was reliably playing this part at 60 bpm.

Looked through various pieces that are works in progress to decide what to add next. Picked one of the Frames and revisited Stepping Stones. Enjoyed working with Stepping Stones, much of it still in my hand. Time to get to know this piece.

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