I began my practise after tea and as the first E flat major scale died away the phone rang. I thought it might be the neighbours asking for some peace and quiet but it was a colleague with details of a gig I have agreed to do. As we chatted I craftily realised that as part of the deal I could secure a donation from him. I made a mental note to remember who else owes me favours at the moment. I went back to my technical practise and did scales and roundabout patterns with all four fingers of both hands. It was quite mundane but after a full day's teaching I was quite happy watching my fingers and listening to the sounds. Scale tones are still inconsistent and I did make a discovery that one of the reasons the tone is not quite right is because I'm plucking the string too low down. It's amazing the difference in tone when you pluck in the centre compared to plucking near the sound board or the levers. I am now noticing when the string has more of a twang than a ping and this may be one of the causes. The angle of the finger when it plucks also makes a difference although I still find it tricky to remember to concentrate on the angle of my hands after the first few notes. I had another bash at Rondo with the left hand chords. I attempted this quite slowly today and treated it more as a technical exercise than a piece of music but it filled up some time. I also looked at the first page of A Fenland Fantasy, one of the other orchestral pieces and worked out what fingering I am going to do. The second page looks much harder so I'm leaving that for now, probably until week. I think I managed about 25 minutes in total and finished with a performance of Sound the Trumpets to Chris who happened to be passing my room just at the right time (or wrong time, depending on your perspective). Chris will get a proper mention at some point but not until he's parted with some cash!
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