Last week i had to cancel my lesson due to illness, so i took it last night instead.  For the first time i didn't go to pieces in my lesson; scales went great (better than i had practiced at home),my third position piece went well and the piece i have been practicing went well and my teacher had me trying quite difficult vibrato exercises.  I think maybe she thinks i should be progressing at vibrato faster than i am.  I feel like at home i have a few breakthroughs and get a good motion going with both elbow and wrist vibrato and then in my lessons i can't quite do it, it's still very hit and miss at home at this point.  She's suggested i practice it while doing scales, like vibrate each note up and down the scale so i'll start on that this week.

She asked me to vibrate my fourth finger on the G string in fourth position, OMG so hard!  I've broken both of my little fingers in the past and my left little finger is slightly bent when relaxed so the knuckle gives way and my finger straightens when i put any pressure on it. I did manage to get a little motion but she wasn't pleased about the poker straight finger, she'll just have to cope with it as there's not much i can do as the injury is old.   

Hoping to get a video of the new tune i'm working on over the weekend.  And also starting to practice Dvorak's Humouresque because i want to play it with the traveler when it arrives

Had the traveler for almost a month, I've been practicing a few tunes to play on it for the video and thought I'd post a practice video.  Some of it sounds good, most of it needs work.  It's tough because I'm so used to the tapes on my violin so finding third position without anything to go off makes it sound not s great.  

http://youtu.be/lJYcJ9F1dQs

Hopefully it'll be okay enough to video next week.

Thanks.  She's fun to play and im sure I'll have something ready to video soon.

I had an great lesson tonight, I started on shifting exercises first to third and back.  I thought it would be so hard but if I don't over think it it's not so bad.  The piece I tried actually went pretty good.  I also started on piece 3 in book 3, only played through it once but it doesn't look too bad.  Teacher said my vibrato is coming along nicely, she wants me to play scales with continuous vibrato to help work my left hand and wrist, I even managed to play the d major scale and vibrate every note, even the 4th on the g string so I impressed myself tonight.  

Then I went to visit my parents and took the violin with me, played a few songs for them and my mother was overly critical so that was a bit of a sucky end to the evening.  My dad said it was good though so at least there's that.  I figured my teacher knows more about playing the violin than my mam does so I'll just ignore my mam and listen to then professional.

Thanks @coolpinkone!

I'm loving having the traveler here for a visit, i'll have to send her one in the next few days to the next person so i'll be taking some more videos over the weekend, hopefully the humouresque will be somewhere near ready to take the video, it should be even if i have to play it slower.

Thanks, it's been fun having the traveler around.

http://youtu.be/L-KY2alZ8js

Humoresque.  The first video I was recording was going well, no mistakes, then my iPad ran out of memory and deleted it.  All downhill from there, I must have tried 7 or 8 takes and all bad.  This is my last take, I was getting annoyed by this point.  It all goes slightly wonky in the middle but I thought you guys might get a kick out of it.   Oh and my cat was bugging me.  This is the first piece I have played with shifting involved except for the exercises in the positions book.  

@fiddlerman, thanks!  I've been learning third position for a while now but did my first shifting exercise from the book about 3 weeks ago.  It's tough, trying to judge where to land and it's going to take practice to get the distance from first to third right.

@coolpinkone Thanks!  I like this piece too, although i've played it to death over the last few months so might have to move away from it for a while and maybe come back to it in a few weeks.  I actually don't mind shifting, it's not as hard as i thought it would be, but tough to land right on the note without a little wiggle room.  Practice, practice, practice!

@damfino, thanks.  I have issues gripping with my thumb and shifting along the neck actually seems to be making me NOT grip.  I've found that if my hand isn't 100% relaxed my thumb gets left behind which can get annoying.