Tonight, we started off by looking at some things we can do to make playing fast tunes a bit easier. We played Bryan the Seasoned Traveller a few times, which is the trickiest tune in the new set to play at speed. Here’s a few of the things that help:
- Using only a short length of the bow for each note.
- Using the wrist (rather than big elbow movements) to move the bow from one string to the next.
- Keeping fingers down on the fingerboard after playing a note, if the tune returns back to that note again shortly afterwards.
We played through the full set a couple of times, and worked out how we wanted to end the last tune (we went for the comedy version!)
The class has been full this term. St Bride’s are hoping to start taking enrolments in December. They will allow a week for the people currently in the class to enrol for next term before they open enrolment up to anyone new to join. I’ll let everyone know as soon as I hear that enrolment is open.
If anyone has ideas of any tunes they would like to learn next term, let me know (I can’t make any promises at this stage about specific tunes, but will try to base next term’s repertoire mainly around suggestions from the class)