Lesson #112C (01/27/13): EMajor & Vibrato

EMajor
Went over EMajor scale and Clayton wants me to start singing along with scales for ear training to start  recognizing what a Major scale, i.e. start recognizing intervals for major scales.

• Exercise #1:
• During scales, sing along to the notes. Make sure I can hear and/or think about each note before it's played
• Exercise #2:
• Put the tuner on E and then sing up the scale to test whether I know what the intervals are. 

Did I mention I'm a terrible singer?? Soooo embarrassing to sing...blah...LOL!! ;)
Anyway, below is a fairly timely YouTube video regarding singing. Clayton went over this stuff while we working on phrasing for Minuet No. 2 in Book 1. It's funny, but during that lesson I remember Clayton asking me if I could hear, or know what I wanted the piece to sound like, which I hesitantly replied, "not really." His response - "yeah, I can tell..."
My immediate internal thought was a knee jerk reaction of something to the effect of "flip off!" ;). He didn't say it in a mean-spirited way, and Clayton is SUPER nice (but honest), and he knows me well enough that he knew I wouldn't take offense, but it definitely got me thinking about being more aware of what I want each piece of music to sound like and if singing will help, so be it - I guess I need to learn how to sing!

Pretty much what my teacher was saying too.

Vibrato 
My vibrato is kind of non-existent. I'm "vibrating" but it's not really making any sound! Lol! ;)

• Exercise #1
• Put the metronome on 60 and watch my finger to make sure that my knuckle stays loose and that there is a small pivot point at my finger pad. Rotation should not be consciously done, but an effect of the arms movement.
• Exercise #2
• Put the metronome on 60 and then vibrate one pulse, than two pulses per beat, than three pulses per beat and than 4 pulses per beat
• Exercise #3
• There's an exercise that he was shown that was taught to him by a violist to keep their knuckles loose.

Vibrato notes

• The position of my hand should not change when I do vibrato. I should not have a different looking hand when I play with or without vibrato.
• When I was vibrating on my third finger, I tended to sqaure up my hand instead of leaving it at a slant.
• Weight of my finger
• My finger seemed to be moving around too much and not staying planted in one spot
• I'm having more issues on my first finger than any of the other fingers so he suggested that I slant my finger more on my first finger.
• Getting my 2nd finger to start vibrating was also difficult so he had me experiment with where my arm felt more comfortable starting vibrato 

Because I'm a bit impatient, I asked how long it typically takes to learn how to do vibrato and of course, I received the expected standard response of, "it depends" or something to that effect. ;)

Although Clayton did mention during his undergraduate studies that he had to re-examine his vibrato and work on it a lot because his vibrato wasn't very noticeable. He explained that he was being a "good student" and vibrating all of his notes, but when he would audio record his playing, he couldn't hear the vibrato. This led him to re-examine and re-learn how to play with vibrato. I wouldn't have expected him to have issues with his vibrato because he just plays beautifully. Anyway, I guess this means it'll probably take a loooong time!! ;)