I was thinking very seriously about breaking up this blog into two parts, as gottagopractice did – a practice blog and and a discussion blog. This way, you don’t have to read ten entries in a row like “struggled with the Gavotte again, this time with my up-bow!” or such. The main disadvantage to this approach is that I’ve got to maintain two blogs. It’s not an approach for the lazy.
Today I got to live that famous joke about “how do you get a cellist to play mezzoforte?” – “Mark the score pianissimo”. Worked the Bouree p sections trying not to sound too scratchy or reedy. On my Minuet #2, I worked on forte and still drifted ridiculously close to the bridge and needed to pull back. I’m still getting used to my new strings, as well.
I like the idea of keeping it all in one place. The Gavottes and upbows are as much a part of your life as anything else.
I seem to have the opposite problem with my dynamics: I have to mark p passages as mf in order to play them loud enough. I’m still tentative with my sound, I guess. Interesting how solo dynamics don’t correspond precisely to orchestral dynamics, too, and I think that’s the other part of my problem. My orchestral p is equivalent to my solo pp, for example.