Tidy playing

Tonight we learnt the tune Young Betty by Mairi Campbell. We spent some time working on controlling the volume of our playing, trying out playing long open strings as quietly as possible, taking a lot of the weight of the bow from the string by using a bit of pressure with the pinkie. Then we tried playing really loud notes, using pressure with the first finger on the stick of the bow, and transferring the weight of the arm into the bow.

There are several points in the tune where we tried out separating pairs of the same note with a grace note. We emphasised the second note in the pair when we were doing this. we also worked on a bit of bowing in the B part, bowing this phrase down, up, up, up, down. We made the 3 up bows short staccato notes.

We ended the evening by playing through the tunes we have learnt this term.