[The Lesson]

[Overview]

So I don’t really know what’s going on with these lessons anymore. My teacher doesn’t follow a linear order so I don’t really know what direction we’re going in. The piece we’ve been working on was a grade 3 piece, but this week she said she wanted to introduce a simple piece for me to play. So we went back to playing grade 2 pieces. I’m assuming it’s because there were some techniques I didn’t learn so she wanted to use simple pieces to focus on those techniques maybe? I don’t know. But regardless, I personally would prefer to work more linearly. But I don’t know, we’ll see where we end up. I just need to do my part and actually practice what I should be practicing.

[Technique]

This new piece kind of focused on 劈 which is using the thumb to pluck the string in a direction that’s going towards your body. When you play it, you should anchor your hand so that you can have some stability to play with force.

[Repertoire]

凤阳花鼓，挤牛奶

[The Practice]

[Practice Breakdown]

Warm Up

Hand Shape Exercise: My teacher still complains that my finger gets straightened out, instead of being curved. So, I’m going to keep this in my warm up.

颤音(ChanYin, vibrato) Exercise: My teacher told me that since I’m not used to playing 颤音(chanyin), whenever I play a note that requires it I go off rhythm. So this exercise is to help with that. To do this exercise you should play 抹(mo) 托(tuo), or 托(tuo)抹(mo) it doesn’t really matter. But the second note you play gets 颤音(chanyin) added to it.

 

凤阳花鼓

Measure 1-2: This measure I can focus on getting the technique for 劈(pi) correct.

Measure 5, 8: These measure practices 上下滑音(shang xia hua yin, slide notes), as well as 劈(pi)

Measure 11-12: This measure is a combination of all the techniques needed to play this piece, so, this is the one I should practice the most.

挤牛奶

Play through the first part (Measure 1-32): I think for the most part I don’t have any major technical problems playing this piece so I will just split it up and practice playing it all the way through.

Play through the second part (Measure 32-End)

西厢词

First System (Measure 1-6)