He said that my slurs were fine. I asked him what was the best way to reduce the tension in my left hand and he suggested conscious relaxation and practicing scales.
We agreed to work on a second flamenco piece before going back into classical. This will be Juan Martin's grade zero Alegrias en Mi. To introduce the alegrias compas, Dale gave me an exercise with the E and B7 chords to practice.
At leisure, I was also told to practice the first nine measures of Sor's Opus 6, No.8. He asked me to carefully listen for the two separate voices and, presumably, bring them out in my execution. I have only a vague idea of what he means so I hope to understand more in our next lesson.
Dale wants me to sight-read Sor's study but he said I can keep the tablature version for reference. I've been slack and hadn't done my daily exercises from the Benedict book.
In today's lesson, I had to ask Dale three times to simplify some of his teachings. He discusses arrangement and composition and both of those subjects just fly over my head. He explained that he sometimes thinks that I already understand more music theory and recognize more basic chords than I do. He'll eventually grasp where the holes are in my self-study.
He told me to be more sparing in using CD's and MP3's for reference because they could impair my musicality. I'll try to take his advice but, this early in my studies, it's just so convenient to learn these pieces by imitating and modifying what I hear.
