Saturday, February 26, 2011

4th Lesson: 11/24/2010

We started the lesson by reviewing my arpeggios, then we jumped right into working on "Il Est Né".

I feel like we had a great lesson!  I'd been working hard on the piece, but sometimes you need somebody to point out all the little things you're doing wrong that you don't notice!  (For instance, I hadn't realized that my tempo had been varying slightly, and that I hadn't been closing my hands completely.)  He reminded me that it's important to place groups simultaneously... again.  I'll admit, it's a bit tricky, because proper hand posture means you can't actually see your 3rd and 4th fingers of the left hand, so you just have to remember how a certain passage "feels" and rely on muscle memory.

We worked out a new fingering different from the one Sylvia Woods suggested in the last measure of the first half of the piece.  Bill calls it "anchoring" - making sure that at the end of each phrase, at least one of your fingers is already placed for the next phrase, so if you need to look up from the harp for any reason, you don't lose your place in the song.

After we worked on the first half of the piece, he walked me through the second half, making sure I used the proper fingerings.

I feel like "Il Est Né" is really progressing quickly and I am getting very excited for Christmas!