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Bar A to B Minor Change

by Cary Terry
(Arlington, TX)

Hello Trevor,

I'm working on Per-Olov Kindgrens Canon in D by Pachelbel, the most beautiful arrangement I've seen of this piece.

Here is my problem:
I play the A chord in the fifth measure using a half bar. It should be easy to switch to the Bm chord in the sixth measure, but I am having problems. As an exercise, I try to play the two chords repeatedly in succession at slow speeds. I play as chords and as arpeggios. I have been doing this for a week and don't see much improvement. The B on the second fret 5th string is weak and fingers 2,3, and 4 aren't hitting precisely on their notes.

I have just spent two month working on Sor's Study in B Minor, so I thought I had confidence in the Bm chord. It was a surprise to me to be struggling with the change from A to Bm in the Canon.

My question is what can I do to solidify making this change? Spend another week? Chris Davis has a Stop/Go technique that I think would help and I've just started adding this exercise as well.

Any help would be very much appreciated.
CARY

Hi Cary,

I think you're moving in the right direction. It is sometimes surprising as you mentioned that you can have mastered a similar problem but it doesn't carry through to the other problem at hand.

It's like when you come across kids that have amazing finger dexterity and don't even play an instrument and you can't reproduce what they're doing even though you have played for years - aarrrgghh!!!

But back to your question. I would make sure when you're practicing slowly that you're keenly aware of how much tension is in your fingers, arm and shoulder. Tension can be a real "destroyer" of your technique and hence your sound.
It might sound basic but when you said that the sound is “weak” and the “fingers aren't hitting precisely on their notes“, you need to make sure you’re actually looking at your left hand as you place the fingers slowly AND that you’re using the tips of your fingers and not the “pads” lower down the finger.
You could also try planting your 2nd, 3rd & 4th fingers together as a group and use that group as an “anchor” to then lift and guide your 1st finger into the full barre position so that it won’t sound “weak”.

I hope these ideas are of use. Let me know if it helps.

Kind regards,
Trevor M.

P.S. If there’s other’s out there that have good ideas then feel free to suggest them.