It's all about the bow

I managed half an hour today, until my left forearm started to be a bit sore. Uncharacteristically I shared some of the footage with my mum yesterday. She is an excellent musician and I know was always a bit disappointed that I stepped away from music in my twenties. I'm reticent asking for feedback from her because I find it hard to listen to without me misinterpreting and also I'm worried generally about advertising my ineptitude at things. Her feedback was short and sweet - decent intonation but I needed to use more of the bow. So today YouTube was my friend as I searched for some information about bow technique and a little bit of finger placement.

As an aside, it's worth noting that my two cats have taken extreme umbrage against the fiddle. They are normally completely delighted to be near humans, to the point where Lyra will climb inside my jumper whenever she has the chance. Whenever I go towards the fiddle case both of them hiss and bolt to the furthest part of the house.

I found a brilliant set of videos from the Online Academy of Irish Music and set about watching and playing along. It's far easier doing that than trying to be self-motivated, partly because I didn't feel like I was floating about not knowing. Here was an expert and she could guide me a long a bit. I'm all for constructivism, but sometimes you just need telt.

So today's effort. Some bowing, and thinking about wrist positioning, and thinking about finger placement and how everything I do should be curved and thinking about how to move the bow enough but no more to move from string to string and thinking about the angle of the bow and the pressure on the strings....

Like I said, very analogue and multiple demands on one's RAM.