[The Lesson]

[Short Rant]

I went on a business trip last week so I missed a week of lessons and I didn’t get to practice at all. But I only took one lesson so far, so no big deal. I’m still getting a feel for this teacher. I guess most of her students are children because the way she teaches seems more appropriate for children. At times I felt a little annoyed by her tone and the way she overcorrects. She doesn’t let me try things out first and then correct me, if she thinks I’m about to make a mistake she will stop me immediately. If I already had the fundamentals down, I could see her taking that approach. But, since I don’t know anything, I need time to process what she said, as well as make my fingers move. Now that the rant is over, let’s talk about what I actually learned yesterday.

[Technique]

This week I learned about 勾 (Gou), this is when you use your middle finger to pluck towards yourself. We did an exercise that was similar to the exercise when I learned 抹(Mo). You play octaves with  托(tuo) being used to play the lower note and 勾（gou) being used to play the higher note. The difficult part about doing this is to keep a good hand shape. My teacher explained that the hand shape for playing guzheng is about the same as the hand shape for playing piano. You want to imagine that you’re holding a bubble in your hand. Your hand should form somewhat of an arch shape. Aside from that, I asked my teacher when I should change the tape on my nails because I thought it was time to to replace mine. She told me about a trick to save tape. Instead of changing the whole tape, you can switch the end of the tape thats attached to the nail with the end thats free. Now, there should be a fresher piece of tape on the free end. If it can stick like normal, you can just use it as is until it doesn’t stick anymore. Obviously when it can’t stick anymore, it’s time to change the whole tape.

[Repetoire]

We only went over the last part of the song we went over last time and finished two other random songs.