Suzuki summer school and first violin lesson in 2012

We neglected our violins somewhat and didn't practice every day in January. The teacher was away so there were no lessons. Furthermore, I bought our violins after the rental period was up so for a couple of weeks there were no tapes to guide the left fingers. The frustration of not getting the note right also cast a shadow over practice and made it less frequent. Fortunately Lara and I slowly learned to listen to the tunes and adjusted our fingers accordingly.



During the holiday, we manged to get to the Suzuki summer school for a couple of days. We attended 2 parent talks, a play-in session and the closing concert. It was nice to walk around in the beautiful Abbotsleigh ground, seeing kids with violins on their shoulders and immersing ourselves in music coming from many of the classrooms while lessons took place.

I'm glad Lara's teacher is back now. Lara just had her first violin lesson after 6 weeks of break. There were a lot of communications, changing of schedules before we finally arrived at the 8.30am Saturday lesson time. In the lesson, Lara learned to play 'small bow', a couple of bow work-outs (moving bow up & down and side to side in rapid consessions to build strength in arm and wrist) and the Allegro body movement song. This week, the main practice will be to get 'Mr 3' down as soon as possible after the open E in twinkles. I learned something new too - always start playing with a 'down bow'.

Looking forward to learning new songs this year!