I never post videos of myself playing. Why do you ask, because it never is perfect. Things need to be worked out. Chords need to be put in tune and by golly more vibrato, more dynamics, more everything!
So as I'm being hypercritical of myself and you all are thinking "She's too hard on herself". Friends who aren't musicians, I'm being to nice on myself and I need to be upping my game!
Music is all about tedious meticulous practice. It is sitting in a chair and listening to one note stay in tune for 1 minute or more! It is making sure that every single one of those notes are in tune and it doesn't matter if there seems to be a thousand on the page, by golly I am going to sit through each one to make sure it is in tune.
After the notes are in tune you better make sure the rhythm is solid, and you don't miss a beat or rush a part or take a measure to slow. So you get your metronome out and practice the song at sloth speed until it's right and then you practice it at turtle speed, and then you're like ok a little faster than a turtle until slowly but surely you have the rhythm, but while you were working on the rhythm you forgot about the dynamics.
So you go back and listen to the song from one of the many people that play it better than you to see if you can get the dynamics and the feeling of the piece. More likely than not you'll hear educators describe a couple of notes sighing, or joyful, or forceful and it is your duty as a musician to make those notes have emotion!
And let's not forget about bow placement, phrasing, articulation, breathing, and the numerous other things that make a song come alive. This will be my life until August 25th, until the day of Amarillo Symphony audition. 46 more days but until that day, I need to practice and definitely make sure it's quality practice...
