Morning reading: The Percussionist’s Art, by Steven Schick – Intro, and started the first chapter, Because the World is Round
2-mallets/Rip Tide
Sightread – Bach partita
Warmup/Improv/Technique – yesterday in practice, I noticed that my use, tone and aim was bad in LH 8th-note passages (in Rip Tide) that included movement from naturals to accidentals, in both close and farther reaching intervals (in this piece the farthest single-handed reach is no more than a 5th). So, I intentionally incorporated a lot of this type of movement in my improv, sometimes playing with only LH, sometimes only RH, sometimes linear, sometimes double stops, altering tempos, dynamics, and style throughout
Mm. 94-118 – worked through, with metronome at 170bpm, playing hands separate and hands together, in a few ways. 1. striking 3-4 repeated notes for each written note, and 2. playing two beats into the downbeat of the third, so the practice of the two-beat phrases overlap. Intention is to build capacity to play smaller phrase at performance tempo, with good use, and ultimately lengthen to full phrases (over the course of the next weeks/months of practice). Some phrases posed more difficulty, partially because this method takes things out of context a bit, both physically and reading, so some phrases were repeated quite a bit and some needed single hand repetitions, and others even needed to be played at 1/2 tempo several times between attempts to play at 170bpm, in order to maintain good use. Also, my RH is often late at this tempo when returning to marimba from thunder sheet, so the double stops sound like flams. This ended up being very draining, both mentally and physically – after 40-minutes of this, I actually only got through about ten measures of this section….and needed to stop.
Mm. 94-153 – using same method as above, worked through the whole section (went much faster than my earlier session today); then played through all, without metronome, and felt like use was good throughout.
