[No.3] ErHu Practice Log | 二胡練習日誌

[The Lesson]

This weeks lesson made me aggy as hell to be honest. I’m not used to taking group music lessons, so it’s probably more of a personal problem. But, I feel like we did a whole lot of nothing in this damn class this week. I came a little bit later than I usually do, but I made it towards the end of the teacher tuning everyones instrument, no problem. We go through the normal shit, open string bowing, scales, and then we split into the different rooms. He did introduce something “new” though. When we were playing scales before, we were always using kind of a long bow. But this class he tried to switch shit up I guess and we worked on short bow strokes. In this case, you just want to use the middle third of the bow to play. Anyways, so we split. He told us to go over some material in our little handout as we wait for him to come over. Most people were playing the new short bow scale thing we learned, or going over songs and what not.

Eventually the teacher came back and we started our beginners’ class. Here’s what got me real heated. We didn’t have a class last week because apparently the school was having some kind of event or activity last week. I came in expecting to learn a whole lot of new shit to make up for last week. Nah. This man literally had the nerve to walk into this classroom, tell us to flip to the same damn page we did the week before last. We go ahead and play through the same little tired dusty exercises we already learned and that I’ve been practicing for the past two weeks. Finally, we get to the songs we also started to learn the previous class, and he packs up his shit and is like, “Alright, practice these next pieces and I’ll be back to check on you.” I WAS SO. FUCKING. HEATEEEEEDDDDDD. Honestly and truly.

Likeeeee, I felt so disrespected tbh lmao. I think a quick review of previous material is okay and helpful for correction. But, to let us literally practice the same damn thing we did two weeks ago for an hour and a half in a two hour class is ridiculous. Also, I guess he knows the other students aren’t very serious about learning (which is like whatever lmao. I don’t expect everybody to be extra as hell like me). He tells me that he sees that I’m learning a bit more quickly than the other students but doesn’t give me any additional things to work on to get better lol. Luckily, in the end we did learn something new. We learned how to play legato notes. Put simply, on one bow stroke you finger different notes. It’s the first time we’ve encountered eighth notes. The teacher gave us an exercise on the board to play, as well as giving us sheet music for a legato way of playing scales.  But that’s about it for this week, no new song. haha. I don’t know man, I was expecting a bit more.

[The Video]

Open String Bowing

For the most part, I think that I’m getting better at eliminating the scratchy sounds in my open string bowing. I can still hear it but, I think it’s becoming less and less apparent. At least I’m seeing some progress right?

D-Major Scale

I think I’m slowly but surely getting better with my intonation, my scales are not perfectly in tune, but close enough for me to be satisfied. There is something about the third scale degree that I just can’t seem to play it in tune. I’m not even sure how I can check, which is the part that sucks.

D-Major Scale Legato Exercise 

 This exercise isn’t so difficult, but it’s just that the string change at the fourth scale degree is hard to play smoothly. I want to eliminate any audible break. It’s something for me to work on in the coming videos.

General Legato Exercise

This is an exercise that our teacher just made up for us. It’s pretty easy, but it gives me a chance to practice with attention to just this specific technique without worrying about anything else. So I think it’s useful.

Jingle Bells

I really don’t know why they put this song in this song book LOL. I thought it was just a western song, but somehow it traversed the continents and made it here. But this song again highlights what I was saying about my third scale degree. I find it difficult to play this note in tune. So to me it’s something I definitely need to work on.

小毛驢(Little Donkey)

To be honest, although this song is really simple to play, I really enjoyed the sound of it. The structure of the notes just sounds typically Chinese. I feel like it’s the first “official” song I learned, since it plays in the style the the instrument was intended for.