Day 17 - £200 reached

I gave another mini-performance yesterday evening to one of my pupils who had asked if I could play any tunes yet. After her clarinet lesson while we were waiting for her mum I played Azaleas in Houston. As her appreciation was clearly not forced I asked if she would like a go. One test of whether you can do something is how well you can teach it to someone else so I went through the first steps of how to sit, where the harp should be and what the hand position should be. Then said "pluck it!" As my pupil plucked a string I realised I hadn't told her about hand position, only imagined it, so showed how to manoeuvre her hands to what I think was the right position. Watching someone else was revealing as the difference from bad to good hand position is really noticeable.

At the start of today I was wondering whether I would be able to keep the daily practice and the blog going for another 5 weeks but having reached the £200 fund raising level and had two more sponsors my spirit brightened. The first practice session was for myself as the donation only came in after I finished. I need some new pieces to work on as the exam pieces are ticking along nicely and I've had enough of Lavenders Blue. I did a little more on Night Song, the Slavonic folk song, although don't feel I have mastered the wide stretches so my put this to one side. I did manage some arpeggios, something I forgot about yesterday.

After teaching a lively sax pupil who wanted to jazz up a classical piece I went back to the harp to calm down. By this time I had received a donation from Susan, a member of Palace Band. Susan is a clarinettist and was also one of my participants when I did a study on adult learners a few years ago. Her answers to my invasive questions helped me to discover a few of the secrets of the adult amateur musician, some of which may be revealed in later blogs. The session for Susan was another 20 minutes. I managed to find a piece that I liked the sound of and didn't involve playing two notes at once with the same hand. A French-Canadian piece called En Roulant kept me amused for half the session. The left hand was mostly individual notes using finger 2 and the right hand was a folk like melody that used a little bit of linking. I got to grips with this fairly quickly although had to remember when to get my fourth finger ready. It needed some careful practise but on the whole was not too challenging. I finished with a run through of the three exam pieces.

At the time of posting there were two more donations so that will keep me motivated for the next two sessions.