Lesson Blog #12 - Iso Chidori (磯千鳥), pt. 4 & 5

Sorry for the gap in lesson blogs! We've only had 2 lessons in the past month because of scheduling. The first of the two lessons was unfortunately like the lesson of February 10th - poor. I find myself getting so frustrated with this piece, and it's definitely showing in my lessons... It has a lot of complicated singing and playing like most Kikuoka Kengyo pieces.

This week's lesson was much better. I had focused more on the atouta and the tegoto than the maeuta this week because I anticipated that my sensei would focus most strongly here, but I was incorrect; we still spent a good amount of time on the maeuta, BUT this time, my singing and playing were finally starting to come together. I made a conscious effort to practice more this time around. I know that most of my struggles have been my fault because I wasn't practicing as I should. There are still several spots with difficult rhythms and even after putting some real effort into practicing these parts, they continue to stump me somewhat, but it's improvement nonetheless. The tegoto and atouta didn't cause me too much trouble overall.

Next week, we will probably finish this piece and maybe start a new one.