@stringy @ABitRusty 

Thank you both.  It's hard sometimes to keep on trying to play well and just when you think you're getting somewhere, wham!, suddenly it's like that kids game Chutes and Ladders and you're going down one of the chutes.

I don't think you can see it but I removed the fingerboard tapes for the first and second fingers.  The 3rd finger tape is still there as are the other bits up above 1st position but those will go bye-bye soon enough.  I will put some finger tapes back on when I start learning 3rd position but that's down the road a few months from now.  My intonation loss might be from the missing tapes since I can't feel them under my fingertips.  I'll fix it, no worries on that.

I am kind of worried that I'm overposting my lessons but I really don't have anywhere else to get any feedback.  If that's the case, someone let me know please.

ELCBK said
@RDP -

Have you given up on learning to hold the bow at the frog? 

Do you practice any full bow strokes on open strings?

  

No, most of my warmup is done holding the bow at the frog.  It's only when I play spiccato that I shift my hold to the Celtic bow hold in order to better balance the bow.  Otherwise I cannot control the bow at all.

Interesting bit:  This is the bow that I borrowed.  I can't play spiccato with my Fiddlerman bow no matter where I hold it, it's too tip heavy.  The borrowed bow is Pernambuco (not "Brazilwood" which is just poor grade outer trunk Pernambuco) but is very poorly rehaired and is only 7/8th's in size.  Yet I can play better with it than I can my carbon bow.  Almost all my intonation improvement came after I switched to this bow regardless of how I hold it.

DZStrad has a model 600 that's supposed to be a really good bow for an extremely good price.  I'm interested but they don't have a trial program and charge 20% for restocking if the bow isn't what you're looking for.  Do that a few times and suddenly the bow you do find is much more expensive than their competition.

AndrewH said

ABitRusty said

@RDP try and enjoy the ride and have fun with it.  I dont think we ever are supposed to feel like weve "arrived"  and if we did ..then what?  welp learned that violin thingy...on to rock climbing. 🙂

  

I'm reminded of what the great cellist Pau Casals said when asked why he continued to practice three hours a day in his 90s: "I think I'm starting to see some progress."

 

As for the intonation, I thought it was fine at first, but started to slip at the same time that you seemed to become less confident about the bowing. What that tells me is that you're able to play in tune without the tapes, but it still takes a lot of attention to do it.

It may help, when working on any piece, to practice the two hands separately: practice the bowing on open strings (in the correct rhythm and on the same strings that the notes are on), and practice the fingering playing one note to a bow without worrying about articulation. Practicing the bowing separately on open strings would also help with rhythm, which I thought was a much bigger issue than intonation here.

  

I know, I know...  more scales.

Wait until the next lesson.  It's playing Long Long Ago using a variation of the score and Martele bowing.  No recognizable rhythm or tempo in it.