Just the Eighth Notes, Ma'am

Who would have thought that just playing straight eighth notes could be so hard? At today's lesson that's all I did. Sometimes really well, but for a lot of my lesson, my playing was just slightly off. I had to switch bowing patterns after playing the first 4 bars of No.6 of the Sevcik, and my up bows were most definitely a bit shorter than my down bows. It was harder to play strict eighth notes when the metronome was on the off beats - but that was the point. The only thing that was different was the relationship of what I was doing physically relative to my sense of where the timing was, but it was hard to do. Also, the effort involved in playing something that sounds smooth and even is anything but that. That's certainly not so true on the piano!

Of course, playing eighth notes in strict time is not necessarily the most musical way to play, but you have to have the foundation before you can deviate. Plus I want to become a better ensemble player, and my timing/rhythm needs to improve. Being trained as a solo pianist didn't prepare me for this.