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"He who practices improves!"

That's something I'm really starting to understand the more time I spend in the practice room.  I'm usually in the practice room no later than 8:00 am during the week.  My goal is to try to get a minimum of two hours of practice in before my first class.  If I don't get this done, it makes getting a minimum of 5 hours in very difficult.  It can be done, but to be honest, after my last class, the odds of me practicing any more are slim to none.  When I get home, I'm home.  I guess my point is, you have to know your tendencies, know what your habits are, and plan around them.  Also, you have to know what your priorities are, if you know what your true priorities then you'll make time for them.  No excuses.

I had my lesson with Dr. DeStefano (3D) last Friday.  It was a good lesson.  Many things were brought to my attention.  One being, my left hand frame is vastly improved, but because of my focus exclusively on the LH, my RH hand suffered some.  My cole (finger motion), has gotten weak, and I haven't been keep weight in my bow strokes which cuts my sound in half.

I always like to start my practice time with about an hour of technical warm-ups.  I work RH technique for about half the hour and LH for the last part of the hour.  Usually, I do a couple of Bowing exercises Dr. Carroll taught me, then I get my copy of Sevick Op. 3 out and work right hand that way.  However, this apparently hasn't been properly working my RH.  So racking my brain back to when I reworked and developed my RH technique back in High School, I've gotten out a few exorcises to rework my muscles.  I can tell you, it has been a while.  After working a few of these, my RH was more sore than it normally is.  So we'll see what doing this for a couple of weeks will produce.

I've also got the go ahead to start working on my next piece, Bach Suit 3, all the while still working on my concerto to continue working intonation and bow stroke.  All of this is to prepare me for playing Brahms Viola Sonata No. 2 in Eb Major.  So I'm pretty stoked.

I made an exciting discovery this week about my elbow.  I know I might have said that I don't have to have my elbow as far under the instrument as I used to, but I found out I'm still having my elbow too far under.  I know when I have my elbow in the right place, with no tension, when my pinkie finger no longer feels like I'm trying to rip it off with my teeth.  It's a great feeling, the lack of pain.  I highly recommend it.

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I finished "Inheritance" this morning.  It made me late for church, haha.  Priorities right?  It was one of the best books I've read, top 5 probably, in the past year.  I would even go so far as to say it's better than the finale of Harry Potter.

As I predicted, I didn't too much writing done on my own book, "Incarnations," but I did write a couple of paragraphs of Ch. 26.  Perhaps, while I wait for the next big book, I might get some more written in the following weeks.  However, I have decided to continue working through my book shelf.

There was a time where I couldn't help myself, every time I went into a book store, I bought a book.  I couldn't read them faster than I bought them.  So I decided that I would restrict the amount of books I bought, preferably, none, until I finish my Book Shelf.  I also am trying to adopt a practice of between every sci-fi/fantasy novel I read, I read a non-fiction or a book from another genre.  I feel sometimes it's easy to become narrow sighted, so this is my attempt to become more "well read."  So, following this pattern, I need a non-fiction book.  Going to my shelf, I found "The Inner Game of Music."  It's not too long, an easy but good read for sure.

Final thought:
"Not only is practice necessary to art, it IS an art."