Lesson 4/23/03

Pretty good lesson tonight. I asked Fred about the difference in playing staccato, legato and accented notes. While I probably don’t need to worry about this much, since I’m really only playing for myself, the book I started two weeks ago has the notation defined on the first lesson. Staccato is basically what I thought — there’s a distinct pause heard between notes (though when Fred played staccato, I could still hear air coming through). When playing legato, the goal is to tongue between notes without actually making it sound like you’re tonguing. And accented notes have a definite “boom” at the beginning of the played note.

We talked more about breathing, too. I think my problem seems to be that I just don’t take enough time when I breathe. I know that it needs to be done fairly quickly so as not to interfere with the rhythm of the piece. But that means that I just don’t get a good breath. And maybe down the road I can get the same amount of breath in a shorter amount of time, but for now I just need to concentrate on getting enough air. (Yes, I know about breathing from the diaphragm from theater classes and choir, I’m just not good at it anymore.)

I played The Emperor’s Waltz Theme, that I’ve been working on, and did just fine with the breathing (though Fred kind of breathed with me, to give me a clue how to get it right). I didn’t end up playing Morning Has Broken, but that’s just as well. It’s a fairly easy song, but I need to work on getting my low C to come out consistently.