Frustrated

All week I've been working on the same two measures of Frederick the Great's Daily Exercise #7. I've slowed them down. I've broken them down and played the same interval of two notes over and over again. I've played them using a variety of rhythms. I get to the point where I can play them without a mistake. Then I try to play through the whole Exercise and fall apart on the same two measures.

So I put it aside before making myself crazy and spent some time working on The Margravine's Waltz before picking up the Bach Partita. Today I decided I'd play the whole Allemande first and then spend time working on two measures. For the past month I've been picking two measures at random to practice and get under my fingers. You'd have thought I hadn't been working on any of the Partita in that time.

I was so frustrated I almost resorted to Lise's penny pushing. Lise was my flute teacher when I attended Moorhead State University in Minnesota. She told us a story of sitting with her father when she was practicing as a child. He kept a stack of pennies. Every time she played the piece she was practicing correctly, he'd move a penny to a second stack. If she made a mistake, a penny went back to the first stack. When all the pennies were in the second stack, she could stop practicing. Except that I figured I'd be up all night.

Maybe tomorrow I'll move on to the second movement of the Partita. Or maybe I'll pick up one of the Telemann Fantasies.

Or maybe I'll just play dance tunes for half an hour.