Viola day 55 - Handel against a wall

I feel I have progressed a lot with quite little practice over the last ten days. The primary barrier I've been trying to overcome is the vibrato (leaving the stupid bow hand for later), and I feel I finally have some solid foundations.

I found out only today that there are two types of vibrato on string instruments; one where you use your arm to wobble, and one where you only use your wrist.

I was truly struggling with the arm one which I was doing intuitively, but the wrist one, when I figured it out, felt much more at home with the style of vibrato I grew up with on the guitar. Both are making me a bit carpal tunnel-ey, but I just need to train up a bit.

The next problem is that by wobbling, the viola also wobbles around, causing mayhem. I found one piece of advice that said to put the tip of the viola - the scroll - against a wall, which removes that problem, allowing you to vibrato in the context of a steady instrument.

It might not look or sound great in this little Handel chorus I was working on, but it feels a lot more comfortable for me to play now.

The piece itself is quite easy, much easier than other pieces I've been working on, but a second key feature of this video is that I didn't know this Handel piece prior to learning it, so I had to actually learn to read the music on the C (alto) clef and learn where to put my fingers in relation to that. I would then listen back and see if my attempts were correct.

So far I haven't really needed any music since I know the piece of music and can quickly work my way around the fretboard (or whatever it's called) to match what I hear. This feels a little cheap so it's good to do things the proper way.

Anyway, here's the somewhat unimpressive sounding video.