Thursday, April 9, 2009

10 Hour Project

I chose to learn a new song on the violin throughout the semester. I have been playing the same song for quite a while now, and I haven’t made much progress. I decided that I would start a new song this semester and see how much progress I could make. The song I decided to do was the first movement of Concerto 3 by San Saens. I knew that there wasn’t any way I would be able to finish the whole movement in 10 hours, but I wanted to see how much progress I could make.
Listening to the song was the first step I took. By listening to it, I knew that I would be able to get a feel of how it sounded. Next I tried playing through as much as I could. I made a million mistakes but it helped me get a feel of the song. Next I decided I would take a section at a time and try to master that section. I was very surprised at the amount of time it took to perfect one section.
Through out the semester I went to my violin lessons and got feedback from my teacher. He would give me things to work on and I would go home and work on those specific aspects of the piece for the next week. As I went back to my lessons, it was apparent that I had focused on specific things in the piece, but there was always something new to work on.
By listening to the piece, working section by section and receiving feedback from a more knowledgeable other, I was able to perfect a few sections of the piece within these 10 hours. I know that I still have a lot of work to do and that it will take many more hours, but I am excited to have the whole piece perfected!

Learning Log
February 16 – 10 min
February 19 – 20 min
February 24 – 90 min
March 3 – 120 min
March 9 – 45 min
March 10 – 60 min
March 16 – 45 min
April 6 – 60 min
April 9 – 60 min
April 10 – 90 min

2 comments:

  1. Audrey,
    I'm glad you were able to focus on learning something new. I'd love to hear you play this someday when you complete the piece. As you learned this in pieces, what did you notice about your own style of learning?

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  2. I learned that I learn better when I learn it from part to whole.It was too difficult of a piece to learn it from whole to part. There are some circumstances when learning whole to part is the better option, but for me and this particular piece it wasn't.

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