ricardienne | What's wrong with this picture?

I clicked on this guy's videos mostly because they seemed to be shot in his living room. But they don't sound that bad. And… well, it took me a minute to figure out what was wrong. It's actually very disorienting, watching his bow move. But it's also really cool.

I had a minor crisis about the fifth suite allemande today. I've been having it periodically -- I think it may have cropped up in the fourth suite sarabande, too. I have this weird idea that it isn't Baroque style to hook dotted rhythms. I guess it's because we hear so much about the baroque bow that is weaker at the tip than at the frog, and so it seems as though even down--- down up--- up would be hard to pull off. In the courante, I'm mostly not hooking, and I experimented with down-down up bowing for the gigue today, and that seemed to work. It's really the prelude-introduction and the allemande that are problems. I don't play the prelude fast enough for down-up to really work, unless I do big retakes, and that comes off sort of silly. So right now I am committed to hooking it. But the allemande, I don't know. And it's getting tied up with my interpretative problems, too. I have a really good idea of what I want the last few phrases to sound like: rather dry and very dancey, actually. And this afternoon, I kind of worked out the corresponding place in the first half. But I can't seem to pull of the whole movement that way. It sounds to choppy. According to the distinctly less helpful than promised text volume of my edition, an allemande's main features are "solemnity and orderliness," with the fifth suite allemande being of the "fast and cheerful" variety. From elsewhere, though, I have an idea that the allemande often replaced a formal prelude, and after the huge fugue, of the prelude, it almost makes sense as a second prelude/ reprise of the French Overture style prelude. I think I got close to starting to work something out, by leaning on the beats and mixing hooks and separates.

This ell-jay is getting rather cello-heaving these days. But I suppose it's telling that when I got spam this afternoon promising "Worlds Leading #1 Mens Enlargement Supplement" my first thought was that it was talking about raising my IQ.