Pizzicato today. I feel like Bartok was trying to get a word in.

I do lots of different things when I practice - I play scales; I drone my way through many double-stopped chords in search of every violinist's Nirvana...intonation; I practice tunes for gig coming up; I learn new repertoire; whenever time allows I delve into my Kreutzer studies and unaccompanied Bach sonatas and partitas and I do the odd bit of transcription.

I also improvise freely - I'm not going to call it Free Improvisation with a big 'F' for fear of falling into a vortex of  stylistic/ genre-based discussion about what exactly is Free Improvisation?
What I do is a I close my eyes, play a few notes and see where they take me for the next few minutes. All kinds of technical, musical and stylistic elements might pop up, which is fun, relaxing and therapeutic for someone who spends so much time striving for specific, stylistic accuracy!

I've often thought it would be a good idea to record some of those sketches, doodles, musical jottings as they sometimes (not always) are fresh and exciting - and who knows, someone might like to listen to them. So in the spirit of 'recording practice' warts and all, and hopefully capturing spontaneous musical moments I am going to try to record a series of these little improvisations as the year goes on.

Here is the first jotting from this evening's session, recorded on my daughter's i-pad voice memo software in the spirit of impatience; so a bit like that Facebook craze last year of posting yourself with no make-up on.