Click here to see the introduction of the TCHAIK PROJECT and know what it is about. =)
And here are the links to all the practice diaries of this PROJECT.
3 days without practicing. 3 days with pain in various parts of the body, mostly muscular and in the torso region, both front and behind. I was unable to follow my exercise goal (I even felt real pain the next day this one time!), body asking for-the-love-of-whatever-I-want to go move for real, go walk.
Yesterday I walked. My mask and I went for a walk on a São Paulo Sunday full of people on the street, almost as if it were a normal Sunday. “Do these people also feel pain in their bodies?” At the same time angry because there were so many people on the street and angry to realize I was one of them, I preferred to walk down the small streets behind my house than on Paulista Av., a choice was once obvious. I came back feeling much better.
And now to practice. With a thousand projects starting or waiting to be started, when I sit here to write and decide what to practice I don't even know where to start. I no longer have the time to practice technique, the amount of time I've been doing it. Where do I start? There are at least 2 projects for the Municipal Theater, plus the Tchaikovsky Project.
Technique Random practice
- Open strings with 4, 6, 8, 10 and 12 beats per bow at 60bpm
- Vibrato
- Staccato in the middle of the bow at 70bpm
- Whole step trills
Repertoire
- Bartók (practiced a little the rhythmic singing and open strings to see tone and articulation)
- Reinventio (re-read)
- Tchaikovsky 3rd mov. bars 290 to 313 (remember and re-memorize)
May 20th, 2020 - Wednesday
I didn’t practice yesterday. There was an online rehearsal of my violin section from the orchestra, I used the end of the morning to prepare to it and then was taking care of the Bartok Circle Project, with the violinists of the orchestra. This is a project I came up with, submitted and got approved by the artistic direction of the Theatre. Wow, so much work!
- 1234 on G string
- Bartok (intonation and left hand mobility)
Tchaikovsky 1st mov.
- Middle Section (what I’ve been practicing before, but I switched, what I was practicing only bow I practiced only intonation and vice-versa)
May 21st, 2020 - Thursday
Today I started working on the post #9 of the practice diaries. Very strange to look back and recognize some of the same problems as before, but now in quarantine. I see this crazy world and ask: "Why did we choose to live in this mad way, fast in a way we can't keep up with?" And another question: now that we are in quarantine, on the verge of the (necessary) lockdown, why those who can go away from São Paulo?
- Open strings with 12, 14, 16, 18 and 20 beats per bow at 60bpm interleaved with whole bow Staccato
- 2, 3 and 4 octaves B flat scales, 3 octaves arpeggios and double stops (3rds, 6ths, 8ves and even 10ths!)
- Bartok (I practiced bow only and then played with metronome for a while, from 200 to 250 = eighth)
Tchaikovsky 1st mov., Exposition
I decided to play a little the beginning, intonation work in mind, and I ended up changing the fingering and eliminating for good that shift to the 5th position on D string that I ALWAYS played out of tune (bar 30, 4th beat, playing the B with 1st finger on 5th position). I’ll go to A string and that’s it. Problem solved. I played the first melody beautifully.
I also went after those little connection passages I still didn’t memorize (I detected several of them last time I tried to play by heart and stopped at the middle section)
- Bars 46 to 53 (memorizing and working intonation)
- Bars 55 to 58 (with special focus on bars 57 e 58, memorizing better, with attention to intonation and mobility)
- Bars 99 to 107 (memorizing)
Tchaikovsky 1st mov., Cadenza
First I played the middle section and I was very happy with the improvement that already happened, although it’s still not memorized. Then I played the Cadenza to see what spots I’d practice.
- A major arpeggios in the beginning (I practiced left hand mobility alla Benedetti and with accents in diferente notes)
- Descending chromatic scales in sixths (I practiced placing both fingers on the strings, but playing only one with the bow, first the upper one, then the lower one, to hear if I was going down with the right notes and start to get used to the bow use here.)
- 2d line of 2nd page (decided to play by heart to see if I get better acquainted with the passage, and it seems to work…)
In the end I played the whole recap and coda of the movement to see what has remained of the work I already did. It’s already much better than before, but still need a lot of work, the recap is more difficult than the exposition. I ended the practice session feeling all sore.
Wow, now that I think of it, I went through the whole 1st movement today…
May 22nd, 2020 - Friday
I recorded one Bartok. Man… this recording thing is another profession!
May 24th, 2020 - Sunday
Sunday. But it feels like Monday. I’m starting to practice one hour and a half later than I intended to. I'm glad I scheduled to start early, it's not too late now. It’s just not that early…
Today the quarantine continues, more than two months already. The widespread imprudence that plagues the country, even more than the virus, promises a quarantine even longer than expected, perhaps even turning the year in this danger. Can I get out? Out of the country and maybe the planet?
So, violin.
- Open strings with 4, 3, 2 and 1 beat per bow at 60bpm
- Whole bow staccato
- String crossing
- 2, 3 and 4 octave C major scales, 3 octave arpeggios and double stops (3rds, 6ths, 8ves and 10ths)
My hands won’t get warm!
Tchaikovsky 1st mov.
- Bars 97 to 107 (just memorization, on second and third times with metronome at 60 = eighth)
- Bars 160 to 188 (memorization)
- Bars 243 to 250 (memorization with metronome at 100 = sixteenth. Then I played at 60 = eighth and in the end, at 60 = quarter note. And it came out!!! Good!!! I still have to work more on tone quality and consistency watching bow distribution etc, but I was very happy!)
Now I’ll lie down on the floor for a Constructive Rest because all the muscles in my upper body are tense and sore.
Tchaikovsky 3rd mov.
- Bars 188 to 196 (intonation of the octaves: I practiced with harmonics and then with a lot of weight on the right hand and very light on the left hand)
- Bars 333 to 349 (slowly memorising and revising fingerings…)
- Bars 368 to 400 (slowly to understand the passage, what are the issues I have to work on the next practice sessions)
May 28th, 2020 - Thursday
It’s end of May and we are still without a Minister of Health, in the middle of a pandemic that in Brazil alone is KILLING over a thousand people a day.
It’s very - extremely - difficult not to think about these things and simply hide myself in the practice room, especially before starting. I think about the crazy situation we are in and this culture (would it be because we are colonized?) of always expecting a salvation coming from outside, the problem solving coming from outside, that actions taken by others. How come we’re not all together crying out for more assertive and pro-population attitudes in the pandemic, such as having a health minister? We hope that someone will sympathize with us, that someone will create work for us, that someone will improve working conditions without us having to demand, that they will pay us better, that they will improve our health system. At the same time we are afraid to use our voice to claim our needs. Sometimes we don't even know we have a voice. We’re afraid of retaliation, of not being called to work anymore, and we also give up, thinking no one will listen.
I heard a very interesting conversation at the OSUSP channel on YouTube that made me think about all of this. At a given moment, the proactivity of musicians within the orchestral environment was discussed. Proactivity is something that starts from within and goes into the environment, from the inside out. The movement I described in the previous paragraph is the opposite: we are used (perhaps trained?) to just receive, from the outside in. Don't learning and life actually happen in the balance between the two movements?
I think about the relationship with the body when playing an instrument, my whole process that is being based on listening to the body, a movement of self-knowledge from the inside out through sensations and observations, and from the outside in acquiring information, through books and videos. A continuous two-way movement where self-observation, feeling, knowing yourself is essential. This autonomy within my own body is something I didn’t learn during my formative years, from school to instrument lessons, always waiting for instructions from others. If we are not equipped with this primordial autonomy, if we don’t even know we have the option to be proactive within our own bodies, how can we conceive being proactive in the professional field or in the society as a whole?
- Whole bow staccato
- 2 and 3 octaves D major scales and 3 octaves arpeggios
- Bartok 16 to record
Tchaikovsky
I played the whole thing through! The three movements. It was the first time I did that after the first reading in this Project.
Already in the middle of the 1st mov. I was stiff, with the entire shoulder area, especially the left one, very tense. I ended up really sore. My body still associates this Concerto with tension and excessive effort very much, even though it is infinitely easier to play, with many passages coming out technically well and some pretty places. At times I was able to loosen my body while playing, which 11 years ago was impossible for me. Even though I was all tense, I felt that my body reached the end of the Concerto managing to move, even with my left arm tense and sore, my fingers moved well. This is a big difference between now and the first time I studied this Concerto, at that time my hands were already completely locked in the middle of the 1st movement.
I also came up with some interesting interpretive ideas in the Cadenza and I saw that the most difficult part of playing the 3rd mov. is not the speed of movement of the fingers, but the speed of anticipation of the mind. My fingers could play fast without any problems, but neither my eyes nor my mind are used to fast tempo yet. It’s a curious thing to notice, that the difficulty of fast tempo is inside the head, not in the fingers...
TCHAIK PROJECT 18 - Beginning of June, 2020 >>>
<<< TCHAIK PROJECT 16 - Fine tuned observation: needle in the
haystack of reasons behind a mistake
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The Tchaik Project is part of the Master’s Degree Research of Helena Piccazio, enrolled in the Master’s Program in Music at the School of Communication and Arts of the University of São Paulo (ECA-USP).
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