[No. 2] ErHu Practice Log | 二胡練習日誌

[The Lesson]

Aggravated. Aggravating.  This was one of those weeks that shit just didn’t go as planned. I guess learning an instrument is kind of just like learning anything else. When you first start and don’t know anything, it’s really easy to see steady progress from day to day. But, once you get past the “I’m going to start learning ___” phase and move onto the “I’m learning ___” phase, its harder to see the progress between each practice session. I usually practice at least one hour a day, and I usually follow the format of the lesson of that week. And for the most part, the first part of the class stays the same, empty string bowing. So you would think after like a month or so of doing the same thing you’d get that shit together lmfao. But the shit just not coming together LOL. Like the sound is all off kilter. But to be fair, I put the worst recordings of my playing as motivation to get better. So maybe it’s not that bad, but I’m really aiming for a consistency in my playing. Sometimes my bowing is stable consistent sound without any screeching, but then other times, again, it sounds like a cat in heat. I don’t know lol. This week we went over how to finger scale degree 3,4 and 8. There were about three exercises for each scale degree. We also started practicing actual songs, like Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, and some other Chinese songs. I decided to keep the practicing videos concise, so I won’t play each and every exercise, but just the ones that were the most challenging for me that week. I’ll probably also limit playing trouble spots of the songs that we’re learning that week as well.

[The Video]

1. Open String Bowing Practice Outer String

2. Open String Bowing Practice Inner String

3. D Major Scale

4. Etude for Playing Scale Degrees 2 and 3

   

   1. I find that it is relatively hard for me to get good intonation on the 3rd scale degree, just as much as it is hard for me to get good intonation on the 7th scale degree. In my class, the teacher told us that we should keep our 2nd and 3rd fingers close to the point that they almost overlap. By my ear, that seems to work pretty nicely. However, when I check against a tuner, It’s apparent that there needs to be a wider gap between the fingers. We were also taught that finger placement for the notes pretty much line up on the inner string and outer string. But, it seems that you don’t need as much of a gap between the 2nd and 3rd fingers to make the 7th and 8th scale degrees in tune. But I’m not sure.

5. Etude for Playing Scale Degree 4

   

   1. I find that I have a lot of difficulty figuring out if I’m in tune when playing scale degree 4. For the the 3rd, 6th, and 7th degrees, although it’s hard for me to tell when I’m perfectly in tune, I have some intuition. I know what the interval between the tonic and the scale degrees should sound in general. But, the perfect fourth is really hard for me to accurately imagine in my mind. So, I’m always in doubt whether or not I am in tune.
   2. According to my tuner, I am usually pretty far off when it comes to hitting the fourth scale degree in this exercise. But the weird thing is, when I play Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, I am much more accurate in both the 3rd and 4th scale degrees. Weird.

6. Etude for Playing the Octave

   

   1. The octave is also kind of an annoying note to figure out intonation on as well. When I play the scale, if I mess up somewhere along the middle, I adjust the intervals to sound correct starting from the note I missed the pitch on. Because of that, when I get to the octave, the pitch is off, and it’s obvious because the tonic is the open string. So far, it seems that I consistently undershoot the note. So the note is usually a bit flat.

Twinkle Twinkle Little Star

1. This is the first song I learned on ErHu, so I guess I should see this as an accomplishment? But I’m not sure LOL. We’ll call this a starting point. I think my pitches while playing this are kinda shaky, but it’s not like a dying cat (at least I think so), so I’m satisfied. I just can’t wait until I learn to use vibrato or some other type of embellishment. Because this kind of feels like dry unseasoned chicken.

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[No.1] ErHu Practice Log | 二胡練習日誌

[Intro] ErHu Practice Log |[介紹] 二胡練習日誌

[Travel] Fukuyama City, Hiroshima May 23rd, 2017