Endicott College: site of summer school |
However now it's time to take stock and get re-oriented. I am still working towards my goal of submitting a level 3 certificate by the October 1 deadline, so for the last week I've been starting my practice with running through the required technical exercises, with a view to recording them and getting them out of the way. I thought I nearly had them until I tried to run the whole set all at once - about 20 mins - .... reminds me of when my husband took up the triathlon and blithely commented that he could swim/bike/run the required distances no problem so of course he could do a triathlon.
Sprint Triathlon—750 meter (0.465 mile) swim / 20 kilometer (12.5 mi) bike / 5 km (3.1 mi) run
Standard or Olympic Triathlon—1.5 kilometer (0.93 mile) swim / 40km (25 mi) bike / 10 km (6.2 mi) run
The only thing I am still really not getting my head around is the improvisation... gotta remember to ask GT how I should approach it - if I have to memorize static scale patterns and shift them on the fly as the chords change, I might as well give up now 😐
What did I take away from summer school?
- I need to sit the guitar up straighter and look at my left hand less, so I've been working on that. My left hand is not at all accurate when I don't watch it, but I'm hoping practice will help, so I've been playing the Prelude, Sor D major and Carcassi 7 mostly without looking. I think there are parts I'm still going to have to glance to make sure I'm in the right place, but I do find I can concentrate on the dynamics, tone, and what's coming up next much better when I'm not watching my left hand.
- Not looking and better LH positional sense will of course help with sight reading - which is the the other elephantine task I need to work on. I'm doing a mediocre job of sight reading exercises a couple grades lower than my repertoire pieces at the moment (sadly that's sight reading exercises a couple grades down, not solo pieces). Still - last year I spent only a few months practicing sight reading , this year I plan to start off every day with sight reading for 15 mins! We'll see how that goes...😏
- I felt a lot better about performing the duet this year, so the efforts I've been making to get performance practice have been helping. I need to get back into it! Haven't done anything since I got back, but I did play my certificate pieces for my daughter and her boyfriend this week - they were the ideal audience - busy checking out their phones and not really listening lol!!!
And I still have another guitar "camp" to look forward to in my hometown at the end of the month, where I'll be joining several guitar orchestra colleagues (and a bunch of young adults) at a summer guitar intensive run by the Peabody preparatory. I have no doubt it will be a different experience (for a start, I'll not be "vacationing" out of town). I'm hoping to learn a lot from the world-class guitarists and accomplished teachers, including Ben Verdery, Julian Gray, James Kerestes, Zoe Johnstone Stewart, and Zane Forshee.
great info!
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