I am oooh so dissapointed in myself...My usual two weekly slot had to jump forward a week as holiday plans were getting in the way. I had knuckled down, learnt all three movements of this Oboe Sonata in under a week...(it wasn't particularly difficult) so I thought "yes thats not bad in 6 days", "all the notes are there and its ornamented"..."I take it along and play it"...well Lordy Lordy Go tell it on the Mountain, did the wheels ever fall off Apparantly rythmically I was correct but my trills were starting half a beat to early (all of them...wretched Baroque trills). Add to that I was, for some bizzare reason accelarating in the runs which as we all know is absolutely spankable and simply not the done thing...What was I thinking I have no idea, what was I doing...I thought I had nailed it but NO, quite the contray. yes I had the notes I knew the piece but I broke the rules from a Baroque standpoint and my performance was undone...It was very frustrating. My teacher was lovely about it but as she said "Rules is Rules" and particularly in Baroque they are pretty rigid...

So there you go, tongue in cheek rant over...I thought I had done quite well...but as we all know "Pride cometh before a Fall"...

Hey ho...

Andrew

You have done well, you big twirp! You've learnt a complete sonata in a short time. Of course it isn't going to be finely tuned yet but it sounds like a good effort to me. I would be really pleased if you were my student. (And if I could play the oboe!! ) Teachers are there to help when things go adrift. You'd have felt even more of a twit if it had been a public performance and the trills had been un-baroque and the runs rushed. The next sonata will be even better.

Who's your Teacher? Can they come to Manchester?

Teacher is obviously trying to get you to the next level. I rather suspect it's one of those cases where she or he knows you are capable of more.

Stop moaning and get on with it

which oboe sonata was it?

Sounds to me like you've done well despite this set back. And your teacher will point you in the right direction with technicalities. Don't be too hard on yourself.

Hello Petrat, Notmusimum and Oboecop (intriguing name there)

It was so funny/irritating at the same time...there I was all confident that I could play this Sonata albeit not to perfection but I had it "Down" and would fine tune it over the next couple of weeks, it was still so fresh I was actually reading the score whilst I was playing, I hadn't committed it to memory as of yet, well not all of it. My presto should not have been Allegro, the Siciliano should have had more depth, it definitely lacked soul..and my Largo was a tad fast...the runs in the Presto went "Hoofing" along with most of the articulation but not all which is hardly a great surprise and my teacher looked fairly stunned as I played the entire Sonata...( I do a lot of practice a minimum of 3 hours a day) and in fairness she was very complimentary about my playing/control and tone but as I mentioned I fluffed (forum speak, it won't let me say what I want to say ) the trills etc...I thought they were ok, I accentuatued the note above etc, tongued in the leading note and trilled for all I was worth, but apparantly I was puting an extra note in which was naughty and was far too interprative at times...I was way too caught up in the actual performance of the piece (Bach G minor BMV1030b) and ingnored the most basic of rules...Somebody stand me in the corner right this minute! It was all my own doing no one to blame but myself I just got carried away, caught in the moment and made twit of myself....and I might add not for the first time...

I'm not downhearted about it, it's happened, its done, I learn't from it and I WILL NAIL IT but correctly when next I see my teacher, who by the way is beyond fabulous, she never clock watches with me I am only meant to see her I guess for an hour but we always end up doing nearly two ...I suspect this is because I do practice a lot and get a lot done...but to my mind, why waste my money and her time...if I am going to do this then I had better put the work in...also I did hear about another pupil of my teachers who was doing post grad studies...she only lasted a month simply because she didn't put the work in and I have no intention of being asked to leave...I wouldn't know what to do...it doesn't bear thinking about so I knuckle down and work my socks off...

I wasn't having a serious moan just a tongue in cheek "well that'll learn you" type laugh at myself...it keeps me perky and upbeat and makes me work even harder...but I could have kicked myself yesterday...


Regards

Andrew






Thanks Daisy...I am not going to beat myself up...its one of those things but at the time it was so frustrating and funny at the same time...

Didn't think you were serious. I kind of know what you mean in reverse if that makes sense.

Someone who does the work then isn't told to go away and improve it. Somehow it's all just meant to happen . I suspect you might find that more frustrating long term and would be moanig for real.

So what I want to know now is what improvements have you made in the last day?

the name was my friends idea who's a euphonium player so I had to obey
In my oboe lessons no matter how well I play my teacher will always find something to improve on if she didn't there would be no point in going to see her, I don't go to my oboe teacher to get told how brilliant everything is (which is just as well!!). If lots of things were very good about it then surely a week of practice with no input from your teacher is really good. (I know I'm basically just reitterating what everyone else has said and your probably over it now anyway but I thought I'd give you my opinion - I'm meant to be writing an essay!)

That's probably why when one of is is going to be away I get 3 weeks between lessons and not 1 (Usual is fortnightly).

I had a blinding revelation the other evening as to one of the reasons I continually feel as though I'm just not putting enough effort in, or making the progress I think I should between lessons.. I'd just been in quite a high powered meeting at work, then came home to do some practice and was thinking "I'm never going to get this up to scratch for my lesson on Saturday". Then I contrasted it with my work situation - if I go into a meeting to present some initial analysis, we have a lot of discussion about what else needs to be done, and by the next time I present it all the suggestions, comments etc have to be incorporated and it should be pretty much perfect. But....my music doesn't quite work like that, I take a piece to a lesson, play through it, get comments on what needs working on etc then go away to work on it, and the next lesson it still won't be perfect - some of the areas that need work just need more than I can fit in between lessons. My teacher tells me she can always see progress between lessons, which is good, it's just I want to have made more progress.

This is also the problem when you stop having lessons. I can't remember the last time I perfected a piece. And the ones I have learnt since I no longer have a teacher... well, who knows if everything is as it should be...

Is that better or worse than when you go to your lesson knowing exactly what is wrong with what you are about to play (my teacher has banned me from telling him everything that is wrong before I have even played it to him, although I can still sometimes get away with a "how can I ...?" question)?

Or when you finish playing and can pinpoint yourself what was wrong?

In both cases I tend to feel that since I know what is wrong I should have done something about it myself before my lesson.

My teacher ha s a great strategy. He tells me to practice a certain piece each week and use particular bowings.

Wehn I play it to him the following week he asks me what I think I did wrong rher than just telling me.

This is a great way of making a person think how they can dramatically improve a piece of music.

My teacher often does this and it is because he invariably says that I have an accurate view of what is wrong that I feel I ought to have been able to do something about it before coming to the lesson.

Hard luck Andrew, I know the feeling. You want everything to go right, and then your fingers get tangled up...I think in all the lessons I've had, I've only ever had one piece where my teacher said he had nothing to say...this time round, I made plenty of mistakes, but he reckoned I played my chunk of Bach reasonably well and the last note was great...Now back to Haydn. I have to learn about bravura "in your face"/"look at me, I'm fantastic" oboe playing... it's not my natural style!
Still, it's all good in the learning process, at least your teacher thinks you're worth pushing on and up for some hard work. Every time I'm pushed to get things just right, it always pays off, simply because it's easier next time you have to play the piece.

It was soooo frustrating I made the silliest of errors which I should have known better...twas all my own doing...and in fairness my teacher did seem fairly stunned that I had tackled the whole sonata in just under a week but I wanted to have the bare bones ready for the lesson so I could fine tune it and memorise it over the next few weeks...As for the bravura well I think I had just the tincey weensiet bit too much of that and ended up with egg on my face it never hurts me to be pulled down a peg or two...adn when it was mentioned that I handled the hemiolas nicely I just said thank you with not a single clue what a Hemiola was...am still none the wiser I just saw the notes and the rhythm and played the wretched phrase, Hemiolas included at no extra charge...

As I mentioned the notes were all there but I didn't stick to the rules for Baroque music and my fingers were getting faster and faster in the runs....my poor tongue was having one heck of a job matching the speed it must have looked and sounded a bit frantic rather like a duck landing on a frozen pond... Anyway we discussed my next couple of weeks work and then my teacher said "Oh just for some light relief could you sight read the Cimarosa for me now" so out came the music and I read the 1st 2nd and 3rd movements...for her. You can't really say I was sight reading, I have heard this Concerto many times so that always makes things easier but at the end of a nearly two hour lesson it was one heck of a blow...

Never mind we always have a cup of tea and choccy biscuits afterwards and that always makes me feel very spoilt...

It's interesting though when we think we have something correctly established to watch the bridges come tumbling down... Also its vital that we get brought to task about our playing...no one is perfect...(except AmandaL and CarolPiano) and a gentle reminder that we don't know it all does nobody any harm whatsoever...

Hey ho...feeling perky...

Andrew

Aww - that made me smile in the middle of a bad day