Day 1 of non NoMo Blah blah blah recording experiment...

Yes I did record myself today...and getting back to you with an short update.

I took that digital voice recorder and recorded various parts of the pieces for the concert tomorrow in Norwich. (It's the third rendition of the concerts from a couple of weeks ago.) My goal was to record short excerpts less than a minute and play them back immediately so I could zoom in what to fix in the next minute. Then the minute after that was my absolute favorite-deleting the track....

Excellent.

First I picked the fourth movement of the E. Nielsen work. It's fairly fast in 5/4 with a one beat four sixteenths-note motif that is passed between the four instruments (french horn, viola, cello, and piano). But there's rests in between these pass offs. So I recorded this and counted all the rests. The beginning was fine. Later not so much. I have been counting one measure in 6. Went back and did it again and fixed it.

Then I worked on the Nielsen third movement. There is a great viola solo near the end that alternates between a duplet and triplet pattern. When I heard the playback, I was very surprised that my most of the triplets sounded like two sixteenths and a eighths. Evil Dr. Beat to the rescue (that's the official name ;)). Put it on the triplet beat pattern and worked on that. Think it will go better tomorrow.

Also worked on the Bathory-Kitsz double stops and the Busler-Blais' wonderful viola solo at the beginning of the first movement.

General Thoughts?

Right now I'm observing my playing with a sense of detachment and not trying to pass judgement on my flaws too soon. Probably because I'm tired a lot of time and maybe because I'm older, I'm not so freaked out by the bad sound quality. And I guess the intonation is generally good, save for one or two notes in each passage which is easy to fix.

I do know that my co-ordination in shifts and particularly double stops is not rhythmically perfect. And my legato in bow changes is quite non-existent these days. So there's two flaws. Good. Something to work on. Take two tomorrow...