72

44

I had not planned on posting a video on Thanksgiving Day. I really thought I’d be too tired, or busy. However, I got good bit of practice in so I thought ‘what the heck’.

This is second of Luis Milan’s six Pavans. I realize that I have been focusing entirely too much on pieces that I am not very good at yet. I think that my time between now and when I play my final doctoral recital (on January 31, g-d willing), will be better spent on making the things that I’m already good at playing even better*.

Happy Thanksgiving!

*this doesn’t mean I won’t continue to spend way too much time on increasing my speed and making the very hard stuff less difficult in my practice. I’ll just be spending more time polishing up the “easier” stuff.

37

Starting this variation has been one of the hardest things. P and I on the same string is the hardest thing about, so I’ve experimented with just playing with P alone, and sometimes just P and I, with no A finger.

40

Another way of playing this variation with mainly slurs. Less right hand involvement. It makes the variation a lot more slurry, but it is smoother than some other solutions I’ve tried. Still needs much improvement, but it’s getting better at least.

33

Another challenging variation. Need to be more clear with what voice I’m bringing out. Also clicking. It’s a hard variation.

Day 10

Variation 4 from Joaquin Nin-Culmell’s Variations on a Theme by Milan.

It was recently brought to my attention how much a fan can interfere with acoustical sounds. I had to do numerous takes to get this variation ready to share. I believe the fan had a bit to do with this. Notes sounded overdone, or they would crescendo on their own. It was weird.

I doubt I’ll make another recording with a fan (even though it helps cool you off tremendously with these record breaking temperatures).

30

The Milan Pavans didn’t look challenging until I started learning them. Working on playing from memory again here. This is my second week working on these. I think now that I have played them by memory, I can start working on more musical aspects.

42

A little bit of Orbon’s preludio. Haven’t focused on this piece in a while. I tend to be a little too bright on some notes.

I changed my strings not many days ago, but I think I already need to change them. I think that, after playing on carbon trebles for so long then switching to light ej43’s, I’m a little surprised at how fast my strings wear out not.

Tomorrow I plan to do a video where the Preludio leads into the Danza “alla attacca”.

53

Feeling better about this excerpt of the piece here.

I worked on this Llobet variation a lot with the metronome today. I have an issue with clicking on this variation. Playing with p and i rapidly and consecutively on the 2nd string seems to bring about clicking. I have noticed that if I play with a lighter feel on the trebles this problem is lessened.

The boxes and plastic in the background are there because my home is still being repaired after it was damaged by Hurricane Michael, nearly a year ago on October 10. Despite living in a torn up world, I still have to practice, and I believe the challenge of making a video most days of the week will help me keep to focus on my practice.