Day 12 - Backing tracks

Just as I was about to getting myself ready for this evening's practise an email popped in saying I had another donation. At around the same time a head poked itself around the door with a look of pride. I quite naturally linked the two and indeed it was Chris, my other half and love of my life (along with the harp), who sponsored this evening's practise and he is the first person to have heard his own session! Chris and I have known each other for a very long time as we went to the same schools and lived on the same street in Northampton. While I was playing my clarinet he spent his spare time disassembling and reassembling computers, messing around with electronics and using his Junior Chemistry Lab to set fire to the garage. Chris ended up studying chemistry and computers and now works 'with computers'. I'm still not exactly sure what that means but he can fix them when they go wrong. I have a sneaky suspicion that all he does is turn them off and on again but as this seems to work I've not complained yet. Chris also came up with the title of my blog. I thought this very generous of him as at the time I'd just told him to hoover the lounge, empty the dishwasher and put the bins out. He muttered something and I caught the phrase 'harping on'. I was about to ask him to repeat what he said but then realised he was must have been talking about the blog! What a great suggestion!

I enjoyed my practise so much this evening that I forgot to work out how long I went on for. It was more than half an hour but I'll count it as 30 minutes for the record. I did some scales and arpeggios and these are now up to 60bpm. I worked on Rondo and kept the metronome at 60 as this was manageable. I ran through Gymnopedie with the CD then as I was wondering what to do next I had a flash of inspiration. I have a huge range of resources for teaching and today had taken along a CD for my junior recorder club to play along to. These are great fun, with simple tunes but exciting backings in a range of styles. I did a Samba with the lunchtime group playing a tune based on notes C and A. This was perhaps slightly too easy so I got out Razzamajazz for flute by Sarah Watts which has some lovely tunes in. I put the CD on and played along. I used right hand for some tunes, left for others and even went back and did some with hands together. Skills possibly being developed here include looking ahead to plan which fingers to use, plucking each finger at just the right time (fingers 3 and 4 are often late) and looking at the music rather than the harp. This last one is something I was incredibly bad at when learning the piano. It meant that I was able to memorise my piano pieces but sight-reading was rubbish! My teacher tried all sorts of tricks to make me look at the music rather than my hands, covering my hands with the music, making me play duets with the very advanced pupil whose lesson was after mine and even once just pleaded that I look at the music. That is definitely a last resort method but it still didn't work with me. Like most of my own pupils I was happier playing very slowly with the right notes, rather than in time with a few wrong notes. I have experimented with this on the harp and am certainly more aware of where I am looking than I was on the piano. However I have already decided that I will play my pieces from memory anyway as they are almost there in my head even if the technique is not. I enter the weekend feeling good!