Yakima Fernandez Violin

Black and white filter for the late night practice! In my phone, this is time stamped from yesterday, at 1:32am. There is something that I absolutely love about practicing late at night. I'm not sure if it's the solitude, the ghostly aura of the practice rooms at this hour, or the thrill of drinking coffee at 10pm, but I seem to get my most productive and inspirational practice done at this hour. Here I'm messing around with the Sibelius cadenza. Or uh...'practicing'...I love this cadenza so much; sometimes when I'm playing through it, trying to memorize every detail, I get so excited and worked up that I can't keep playing and have to put my instrument down and jump up and down like a pet happy to see its owner. #cadenza #sibelius #latenights #unm

At first, I didn't want to post this video. It's C#minor 3rds, from the Flesch scale book. My reluctance came from listening to it, and being very unsatisfied with the final product. Is it in tune? Hahaha! Not even close. However, I tried my hardest to play slow, and piano. I had to remind myself that even though I want to always sound good on social media, this, right here, is how I sound right now. It's a work in progress - double stops are hard as hell! I suppose that is the lesson for me in this post: the point of these instagram videos is to share my violining journey with others. If something isn't sounding great, it's still ok to share it, with the understanding that next time, it will sound better. Speaking of journeys, I've been trying to incorporate more double stops into my practice. I've been playing them slow and piano because I think that is much harder, and requires more control and focus than fast and forte. #fleschscales #100daysofpractice #doublestops

Yikes! My 100 days of practice kinda crashed and burned. For many reasons, from a shift in a living situation at home to being back and forth between Santa Fe and Albuquerque nearly every day, my practice has suffered. I wish it weren't the case, but the time that I was able to practice, not great practice, and I felt underprepared and naked during rehearsals. That being said, I'm now in Wisconsin with the contemporary music ensemble and I have plenty of time to practice and work on basics - like this Schradieck exercise! I think the hundred days of practice is an awesome idea, and I want to keep going and posting stuff that I'm working on, but I'm not going to keep track of the days anymore, and I might post only a few times a week. Getting in the good practice today felt so refreshing, and only an hour in, I was already in such a good mood. #100daysofpractice #schradieck #galesville

Some more late night Sibelius! This is a short little doodad from the 3rd movement. Aligning it with the piano is very difficult because my triplets are against the piano's sixteenths. I'm always trying to get my octaves better, but sometimes they just slip away from you. I enjoy practicing the Carl Flesch octave exercises; I think they have helped a lot. Day 12! #100daysofpractice #octaves #intonation #sibeliusviolinconcerto #bathroompractice

Sometimes I can get very good late practice done. I'm not sure if last night was one of those nights...I was in the university practice rooms, and definitely felt inspired, but something about my practice was missing. Even the slow Sibelius practice I'm doing here, doesn't feel quite right. Little 'moon' filter, to go with the time of day hehe. Day 9, #100daysofpractice #kopakabana

Today was somewhat unproductive as far as practicing goes. Due to poor planning and time management, I only did an hour of Flesch and a half hour or so of Sibelius. Was definitely nice waking my fingers up with g# minor hehe. Also it looks like I have a solid start on memorizing that scale passage from the second movement! So that's good, but not nearly enough practicing today. Tomorrow will be better, I'm sure. Looks like this is day 5! #100daysofpractice #violin #fleschscales