john's lesson

my teacher applauds my ambition to play a beatles song.

"in my life". i found it in the library. it's not an arrangement for violin, but i can read the guitar line okay.

my wrists have been filled with shooting pain since monday's lesson.

but tonight i picked up my violin for the first time since monday to test the wrists.
i did the build up of exercises starting from the scale (albeit not the suggested 25 times), then the hundreds piece and i even got a little further on the thousands' piece.

not to speed, mind you. but i did manage to bring my elbow in enough where i did the transition from the 3-fingers on the a string (d) to open e string without calamity. i rocked the bow, arched the fingers a little higher, and voila. i cleared the a string with little difficulty.

it's all about slowing down and finding joy in the music, sandy says.

she's suggesting that i put an hour a day in so i see improvement.

i'm not ready for that. i know that sounds terrible, but i have not balanced my life enough to carve out an hour for myself in a place where it's acceptable for me to scratch out notes on my violin. read music, maybe, but not scratch notes out.

the beatles piece isn't the charanga i want to someday play with sabor and sentiment.
but it is a song that i can aspire to. i will need to get an intuitive sense of an 16th note first.

i hope that mr. lennon is not rolling too heavily in his grave as i piece out this classic piece of music. i only mean to honor the work.

but it will take practice.

much practice.