Lesson 10/22/03

These past two weeks, I worked on a few of the duets in the new book Fred had be buy last time. I ended up (not entirely on purpose) working on three “seasons” pieces by Bender — Winter, Spring and Autumn.

Winter was the piece that I stumbled on last time trying to sight read it, so I wanted to work it through this week.

Spring was a fun, up-beat piece that I need to work on a bit more. One of my problems is that I tend to cut longer notes off short. So in Spring, I’m supposed to hold a note for a full count (fast 6/8 time), but I cut it short, so Fred has to play catch-up a bit.

Autumn was actually fairly easy — I picked it merely because I was already doing the other two seasonal pieces. When Fred and I played it, I started to notice that we seemed to be slowing the tempo down as the song wore on. By the end, it almost sounded like a dirge.

I’m having a make-up lesson on Saturday to make up for last Wednesday. Goodness! That means I’ll actually have to practice tomorrow and Friday!