At my 2nd lesson, Bill and I covered what we'd talked about at my last lesson. Then he had me start working on arpeggios. (For those of you that don't know, an arpeggio is made up of the 1st, 3rd, and 5th notes in a scale. For example, a C major arpeggio goes C, E, G, C, E, G, and so on.) They are played with fingers 1, 2, and 3. They are actually quite fun! (Especially when you get going fast!)
Then we worked on Exercise #7 in Stephanie's book, which focuses on placing fingers in groups of 3. After that, we went over two songs, "First Waltz" and "Second Waltz".
Then we went over placing groups of 4. "Placing" is when you put your finger on a string, and a "group of 4" is when you place 4 fingers at once. It is a bit hard because the goal is to place all fingers simultaneously, which takes practice.
Then we talked about "lifting" - raising your hands slightly after releasing a string. It is a very small movement, but it adds expression to a piece.
Then, in Stephanie's book, we went through "Yankee Doodle Puzzle". It's an arrangement of "Yankee Doodle" that uses some tricky fingerings on purpose, because it's an exercise. Bill told me that "Yankee Doodle Puzzle" was the first piece he ever memorized and that it would be a good idea for me to try memorizing it.
Note: I did end up memorizing "Yankee Doodle Puzzle". It sounds hard, but it wasn't - not really. I just played it over and over until I didn't need to look at the music.
