Mini group lesson

[basically_muh]

Texas has been fun. I'm really learning a lot at this Suzuki institute. Today we gave our mini group lesson to our class. My piece was Etude, the huge transitional piece of Book 1. There are so many techniques involved in it! My lesson was going to be about articulation, but it ended up being how to get a class to play together. My lesson was going great until our teacher started rushing on purpose. I was able to hold the class together until we repeated the piece in 16th notes. Then they all started shouting that they won (started by our teacher). I was so shocked I didn't know what to do. I found myself a couple seconds later and tried to tell the class that we wanted to play together as one big violin and that it wasn't a race. I told them to watch my body rhythm and my bow to help us stay together if they got lost. It started off really working until my teacher ruined it again. I didn't know what to do. She asked me what I could do that might help the class stay together. Then I miraculously found myself again and used the lesson plan I was planning for my articulation exercise: stomping in rhythm. And it worked! She stopped my lesson there because we were running out of time. I'm glad that she did, because my exercise had just been used for tempo instead of articulation (my original objective).

After that I took the train into Dallas to meet Linzi. It was really nice to see her again. She took me out to TexMex and drinks. We walked around the downtown for a while and then around 9:00pm I got back onto the train to my hotel. It was nice to get out of this hotel for the evening.

I've been watching Sex and the City so much! haha! Its a nice juxtaposition to all the Twinkle Little Star 8 hours a day!