Lesson Blog #19 - Shiki no Yanagi (四季の柳)

This was my first lesson back after an 8-month hiatus due to health issues. While the health issues haven't been resolved, I didn't want to feel like I was putting all of my hobbies indefinitely on hold, especially those that truly bring me happiness and give me a sense of normalcy through all of this craziness...

We started back with the piece that we had nearly finished in March - Shiki no Yanagi (四季の柳). Given that I had not played but a few times over that 8-month gap, I figured I would have forgotten nearly everything, but to my surprise, most of the lesson went quite smoothly! As I would expect, the singing is what I struggled with the most because it is normally the most difficult aspect for me but I also have had a bad cold that nearly took out my voice entirely. Despite those circumstances, it went better than expected as well.

The main things I need to focus on for next week are the tricky tegoto in the autumn part of the song and the singing in the summer, autumn, and winter parts. The tegoto is fast with very unexpected jumps between notes, but it is supposed to be chaotic (like a woman who has gone mad), so I just need to play it more slowly until the muscle memory develops again. The other goal for next week is to have me sing some of the parts solo. We usually play short parts together, and then I repeat it back by myself. I don't know how in-depth my sensei will go on this, given we had already done so much on this song before, but I am preparing as if we were doing this song for the first time.