The sound of one hand practicing

Just getting in under the wire - one more day, and August 2009 would be the first month without a post in almost two years.

August was a funny month. Between my travel and T4-'s I had half the expected number of cello lessons, plus I was building back up in practice time in fits and starts after my longer travel period in July. I'm up to an hour pain-free, but still lack the desire to work daily. I think it's coming, though.

Two weeks ago I initiated the "what am I going to do this semester?" chat with T4-, and I'm excited about the plan:

Repertoire
Set Allegro Appassionato aside in favor of Squire's Tarantella. I'll have many of the same bowing and fast-playing issues to be worked out in a slightly less complex piece of music. That was a relief, as I had reached the point of discouragement with AllApp. Now I can look forward to revisiting it with a new and improved skill set in the future.

Bach
Suite #3, beginning with the Prelude. This will be my first pass through this suite with a teacher, so I'm excited. I love the expansive joy of the 3d prelude.

Excerpts
We're going to spend some time on orchestra excerpts, which are important both as rep (I'm far more likely to play in an orchestra than to give solo recitals) and as an etude substitute. We're starting with Mozart Symphony #40 and Beethoven Symphony #5, which are the usual audition pieces for amateur orchestras in this area. Fun.

Etudes
This is still a little up in the air. I'm continuing to work on Popper High School #1, and may look at the pre-high school book. Not sure about thumb position stuff yet, but for now I'll use the scales in Offenbach Grand Duo Concertante, which I am working up outside of lessons.

Scales
T4- doesn't seem big on scale routines and checking on them in lessons, so I'm a bit on my own. I can play all 12 major and 12 natural minor keys in 4 octaves at the drop of a hat, using Duport fingerings, so I've been choosing a key of the day and practicing elements of articulation or bowing from my pieces using either a standard 4 octave or Galamian 3 octave scale as the substrate. That seems good for now.

The impossible dream
Haydn Concerto in C. Yes, I'll probably get to start it later in the semester, and I'm thrilled.

I spent three years with T3- developing flexibility in my bow hand, so it's a nice change to focus more on left hand flexibility in order to play fast. At my last lesson on Tarantella we discovered that when I finger the notes without using the bow I make no sound. My project for the week is to observe my left hand while playing without the right hand. When I achieve the right degrees of flexibility, floppiness, unrestricted expansion and contraction, and balance the notes sound as I play them.

Very cool.

Concert

The hairiest part about last night's concert was getting there.

I had planned well, I thought. I went to my 4pm lesson in concert black attire, with dinner (Zone-friendly string cheese + 2 slices luncheon ham + medium honeycrisp apple + walnuts and roasted squash seeds) packed in my bag. I figured if I left by 5:30 I could make my 6:30 call, as it is usually 30-40 minutes in rush hour.

Lesson was great, BTW. The student before me ran over, by design, I discovered. There was no student after me, as T- planned on running over with me on the other end. So I had a half hour of observing one of T-'s old students who had come back for an advanced brush-up on Haydn C. Then I had a little over an hour for my lesson, G major scale concentrating on intonation in the upper 2 octaves, and revisiting Lee #1. I've been working on memorizing it, a topic for another post, and it is amazing how much new technique gets overlaid each time I have a lesson on this etude.

Anyway, I left the lesson room at 5:20, and was exiting the parking lot by 5:30. Then I ran into one nail-biting back-up after another. The details don't sound as exciting today, but I was sweating, and grateful to end up only 10 minutes late for call. We have had horrible traffic since the snow started seriously falling last week. I surely hope people remember how to drive here again, soon.

The concert was anticlimactic. DH caught this pic, so I can show you the set-up. The orchestra is in a pit formed by surrounding elevated walkways, where speakers, singers and dancers moved above us. You can see the front row of cellos on the big screen - my head is in the leftmost corner.

I know where I'm going

...and I know how to get there.

Sounds existential, doesn't it?

Actually, it's the key to shifting. I've mentioned this lesson point tangentially on several occasions, and thought I'd fill in the details for easy referral in the future.

Where am I going? What note is it? What is the interval between where I start and where I end? Where is the note located - what position am I going to, and which finger am I going to use to play the note after the shift?

How am I going to get there? Whenever I muff a shift in my lesson, T- barks out "finger, string, stroke." ????????? That's shorthand for "describe to me exactly how you plan to do that shift." And there are exactly three possible answers to each component of that question - new, old, same.

As in...
Which finger are you shifting on? Old - the finger that is already down on the first note. New - the finger that will be playing the second note. Same - the same finger plays both the first (before the shift) and second (after the shift) notes, so the shift is made on that finger.

Which string are you shifting on? Same - the easiest one, when both notes are on the same string and you are shifting up or down that string. Old - shift on the first string, then cross to the new one to play the second note. New - cross strings first, then shift on the second note string.

Which bow stroke are you shifting on? Same - again the easiest choice, and the correct answer whenever the the two notes at each side of the shift are slurred. Old - shift before changing bow direction, which means the finger is in its new place and ready to play at the beginning of the next stroke. New - shift after changing bow direction, which results in a little "mew" before the second note that can be milked for an expressive slide or masked by slowing the bow speed.

Early in my sight singing study I used to whine that I could hear the note in my head, but I couldn't seem to get it out on pitch. When my teacher told me again and again, with more than a little amusement, that the reason I couldn't sing it was that I was not actually hearing it, I argued. Fruitlessly, as it turned out, but it helped pass the time until I could finally hear the note, and then sing it. Now I know that whenever I can't sing one of my pieces, it's because I don't know the notes well enough to hear them.

My shifting journey has followed a similar path. Whenever I am having difficulty with a shift, the solution is clear. If I'm missing the destination note, I make sure that I truly know where I am going by singing the note and describing it's location by position and finger. Then I make sure I know how I am going to get there - finger, string, stroke - and practice those elements slowly.

It works every time.

New Year News

I really didn't mean to take off a whole week from blogging over the holidays. Events conspired against me.

DH was off from work the whole week, shades of things to come should he ever decide to retire. It's good to be forewarned that there are adjustment problems ahead. I will have to get over feeling like I need to keep him amused, and he will have to learn how to amuse himself when he is not occupied with professional projects.

Speaking of professional projects, the biggest reason for my lack of blog time was that I did four hours of continuing education each day for the week. I hate it when I arrive at year end without having gotten all of my hours, and am very glad that there are reasonable options now for studying on-line. And also that I realized early enough that I was short 24 hours so that I could break it up into four-hour chunks and still finish on time. I'd make a resolution that this year I'm going to get done earlier, but I did that last year and it didn't work, anyway.

Like many others, I felt the "clean up the nest" urge as the new year approached. "You can have 30 minutes," DH said, when I suggested we organize his professional journals, stacked willy-nilly on five 7-ft tall bookcases in the office. I admit to an ulterior motive - I wanted to completely unload the center case so I could pull it away from the wall to check whether Holly, our Christmas visitor, was hiding behind them. But that's another story. The end of this one is that eight hours later he was still jokingly saying "30 minutes." It's not done, but we left the remaining shelves for another day and congratulated ourselves on how much better the 80% we finished looked.

Most of my lessons and rehearsals are curtailed until next week, but cello lessons continued, and last week's was exceptionally good. I had planned to play the C Major 4-octave scale, but T- asked for f# minor instead. Other than a momentary mental lapse moving from the D to the A string, that went well, good intonation and overall sound. Hah. Then I played the second half of Lee's melodious etude #7, again with nary a comment. We touched briefly on #8, which I have done once before, then went on to #9. Red letter day, as I haven't gone beyond the first eight in 2 1/2 years of working on them. As the next student had arrived and we were wrapping up he asked which concerto I was working on. I said "Saint Saens," half in jest but also because I have been exploring it for a few weeks, encouraged by Emily Wright's interest in using it as material for a podcast on slow practice. T- did not take it as the least bit of a joke, but, obviously delighted, launched right into a mini demonstration on approaching the double stops on page 2. So that's it - I'm committed now. Thanks, Emily.

And now for the weather. It's up to 12 degrees F today, and it's not snowing. Woo hoo!

Cello lesson 11/29

Yesterday's lesson was all about bowings. We're working on a theme here.

My scale for the day was g minor, 4 octaves, using our standard fingering so I start with 1st finger on the C string and play no open strings in the harmonic minor pattern, same fingerings both up and down. After the usual linked half notes at qu=88, we focused on the first four notes, then the first octave, eighth notes then sixteenth, up and down. T- is trying very hard to help me feel faster notes as groups and gestures, but it seems as though right now I can do either the notes OR the gestures, but not both together.

I noticed in orchestra rehearsal afterward, as we were reading Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet Fantasy, that I can keep up with the fast notes quite fine, I just don't actually play them. It's like my eyes go out of focus when I see all of those black note heads grouped together. My bow goes on autopilot, while my eye tries desperately to grasp at least the highest or lowest note in the group and get that in sync.

Anyway, we applied some of my rhythms and accents to playing the fast one octave scale gestures, and as usual, when you add one new thing one of the old ones flies out the window - in this case, the shifting. The two shifts in this part of the scale are a whole step between IV and III and an extension between III and II, and the faster we went the more randomly those shifts were happening. I laughed, but it was in frustration.

We also looked at the first exercise in Sevcik Op. 2, Part 2. This is an etude in triplets covering the fingerboard through 4th position (it looked like on a quick glance), with 105 bowing variations. The idea is to learn the notes very, very well so that the bowings can be experienced in one-measure gestures. That's something I will enjoy, and can substitute for some of the Galamian scale bowing time I have been putting in. I can also use the myriad scale passages in the Tchaikovsky to practice chunks and gestures and rhythms, and maybe will gain the benefit of actually being able to play the right notes in orchestra.

And finally, we took a quick look at two more variation in my chord etude, the ones that have two or three down bow, then one quick note up bow, and then the next down bow is either up the arpeggio again, or down. There are several ways to get back to the frog for the down bow: 1) a fast martele stroke, so that the bow is moving faster on the up bow than the down, 2) a quick almost spicato up bow at the same bow speed as the down bow notes then move the bow through the air back to the frog, and 3) jump back to mid bow and play the up bow like a hooked note. #2 is the best approach, not only for these variations, but also for the one where the arpeggio up is slurred followed by 3 short notes up-down-up. Application: this bowing is found in the Saint-Saens concerto.

I like when I leave the lesson with a clear idea of which are the core elements I want to focus on for the next week.

Chords redux

So, the second step in my lesson on chords, after learning to play them in the standard broken fashion, was to tackle the first bowing variation. This was simply playing each half note chord as four slurred eighth notes in the string pattern G-D-A-D, whatever the stopped notes on each string were.

The key to playing this pattern fast, and I assume all the others, is to learn to anticipate the changing bow levels across the strings with the upper arm leading the change. None of these patterns are played at the wrist, a common beginner mistake. The most entertaining part of the lesson was when T- had me pursuing function rather than notes, and I was flapping my bow arm like a goose trying to take off from the water. I had a good laugh, but that was definitely helpful.

So what's the trick? For me, it was dropping the arm downward from the shoulder before I moved the bow from the A to the D string. You can practice that slowly with the metronome to get the feel of it. On a down bow, put the beat on quarter notes (about mm=60), play open strings, and think: G and D and A drop D and, so the upper arm drops on the "and" of 3. Then, when changing the bow on the G string, be sure to drop to G before changing the bow direction.

This was the practice that made the most difference for me in Bach, going back the the 1st Prelude and taking a quick look at the 3d, inspired by PFS. Then today I read through the Martinu flute trio and found that, instead of panicking when I came to the broken chords, I found myself thinking "whew, bariolage, I can breath for a minute before I have to resume counting." Very worthwhile.

Shortly after my lesson I came across this video while perusing the blogs of random NaBloPoMo participants. The blogger wanted to discuss dreams, but I was excited to discover that this is a marvelous demonstration of that early shoulder drop in broken chords.

Chord etude

Every once in awhile I think it would be great if my cello teacher, all-knowing and wise as s/he is, would know exactly which etude or piece of music I should be working on at any given time to maximize my potential as a 'cello player. Alas, I've had enough experience to know that, helpful as 'cello teachers are, they aren't omnipotent, and so occasionally I pull out an etude (less often a piece) that is really speaking to me at the moment, usually because it appears to my less-trained eye to focus on some skills that have been lacking while playing recent repertoire.

A couple of weeks ago I pulled this one out, an etude in chords and bowing variations. It seems that every piece of music I face lately has broken chords in a variety of bowings, and is supposed to be played at a speed that I just can't get to because, well, I'm just too awkward. This is #68 in the A. Schroeder Vol I, and #26 in the original Dotzauer Book 1. I remember T2- demonstrating the bowings to me a couple of years ago, but the chord transitions were still beyond me then. It seemed to me I should be ready to try again, and now I really need those skills.



This is what I have learned so far. Before going on to the bowing variations, it's important to master playing the chords as chords, and the best way to start is to break them into groups of two: two lower notes, then two upper notes. I was skeptical at first that this was necessary, but realized as I practiced this way I was training my eyes as well as my fingers. These are the important points that either T- pointed out or I discovered with practice:

Keep the chord ringing during the bow change. There shouldn't be a big gap between chords, and to do this you "cheat" by moving the bow away from the double stop and onto just the middle note just before the bow change. To get the large motor skill, I set the metronome on 60, 4 beats/chord, playing the lower notes double stop for 2 beats, the upper notes double stopped for 1 beat, then the middle note into the bow change for 1 beat. Next, I played the chords as half notes with an eighth note middle note transition, finally dropping to the single note transiently into the chord change.

Know where you are going, and how you are going to get there. I have a whole 'nother post to write about this, but at the most basic level and for purposes of this etude, you need to know which position you are in, which position you are going to, and how you are going to manage the shift to get there. When you notice a rough transition, stop, figure out how you are going to shift, then "double mint" it, going back and forth between the chords until it feels easy.

Read ahead. That's essential for knowing where you are going. I discovered that the most efficient way to do this was to read half of the chord at a time. Since you are breaking the chords, read the lower half of the next chord while you are playing the upper half of the current one, then the upper half of the current chord while you are playing the lower half. This organizes the left hand into two moves: shift to the hand position to finger the lower two notes, then add the finger for the upper one.

This has been very productive work. Not only can I (finally) play this etude, but I was inspired to drag my 1st Suite into my lesson, where I had an excellent session applying these chord ideas to the Prelude. T- was so pleased with my progress he assigned the Allemande for the next week. It's nice to revisit something I did a couple of years ago on a new level, plus that gives me more time to learn the notes in the 2nd Suite <g>. I feel like I'm making a couple of steps upward off of this long plateau. Thank you, Mr. Dotzauer.

Cello lesson 10/4

I'm not sure my heart's completely in it, but with the resumption of cello lessons my Fall season has started in earnest. We spent more than half the lesson talking about summer adventures and assessing where I am now and where I would like to go next. Then T- did something he almost never does, and that I have never encouraged: he went through my part in the Gaubert and worked out reasonable fingerings and bowings. My first teacher used to spend entire lessons fingering my parts, which I came to consider a major waste of time. But this was a real blessing, and saved me three or four hours of struggling.

After the marking I played for about 10 minutes, focusing on the first phrase. If I were to roughly summarize the steps we went through:
* Get the fingerings down
* Practice the bow gestures by air bowing while fingering the notes. Pay particular attention to where the bow speed changes, and where on the bow the notes are played. Play freely, with large muscular gestures.
* Play the phrase with attention to the musical elements. Focus on what I can "not do" (i.e. release tension) in order to make it sound the way that I want.

I left feeling inspired, and confident that I can learn this piece to play it for coaching in the next two weeks.

This is the agenda that I prepared before the lesson:

Goals with dates
Adult Chamber Music Weekend Oct 20/21 flute/cello/piano trio
Haydn Trio in D Hob XV:16
Von Weber Trio in g Op 63
Lully Suite arr. Cheret and Modzelewska
Gaubert Soir d’ Automne

Orchestra concert Nov 7
Berlioz Roman Carnival Overture
Elgar Enigma Variations

Suzuki teacher training audition tape – by Feb 2008
Faure Elegie

Additional Repertoire
Beethoven Sonata Op 5 No 2 (g min)
Schumann Fantasy Pieces
Gliere 10 Duets

Current Warm-up and technical baseline
Open string long bow exercise
...mm=60: 2 counts/bow,4,8,16,try 32 all strings up and down
Sevcik Op 8 one exercise/one string/day
...Ex. # based on day of month
...String based on day of week Su C, Mo G, Tu D, W A, Th D, F G, Sa C
Scale
...One scale/week, alt Maj and min
...Mm=88 acceleration pattern
...Arpeggio (I), 3 fingerings
...Thirds, first two octaves
...One additional specific goal each week (decide in or after lesson)
Thumb position
...Swan on thumb
...Grutzmacher 13 and/or sight read song or etude
...Offenbach Grand Duo Concertante Op 46
Bach 2nd Suite
...One or two phrases/week for technical elements
...Speed development outside of lessons
...Rotating review of chunks outside of lessons
Etudes
...?
...Would like to design etudes based on technical needs of repertoire in addition to or instead of assigned etudes

Adjunct schedule
MON Piano semi-private lessons
TUE Alexander Technique, ?piano trio rehearsal
WED Voice class, church orchestra rehearsal
THU cello lesson, HS Orchestra rehearsal
SUN church performance, flute/cello/piano trio rehearsal

Cello lesson 6/7 - School's out for summer

T- spends the summer at Bowdoin, then September in Alaska, fishing. Has, for many, many years. Last summer I filled the didactic void with 4 cello camps, an experiment in excess. Not entirely successful, but I learned a lot about what I like, and where I fit, and what's worth my time, effort, and money, and what's not. And how different all of those points are now than they were four years ago, when I took the more obsessive fork in the road toward cello playing excellence.

This summer will be something completely different. I have no cello camps scheduled, partly by design after last year's excess, and partly because I knew I would need lots of recovery time after my knee surgery. I had toyed with the idea of starting Suzuki teaching training this summer, but am also putting that off, mostly because of the knee thing.

So, I knew the end of the semester was approaching, but didn't realize yesterday would be my last lesson until we were half-way through it, when I specifically asked about the summer schedule. (I wonder when T- would have mentioned it if I hadn't asked? Musicians. Disgusted snort.) We had spent the first half discussing the studio class I had missed on Saturday. (It was a last minute bail-out due to fatigue, pain, and thunderstorms with 1.5 inch hail stones. I considered that I had shown an unusual amount of sense by turning around and driving 30 minutes back home rather than risk physical damage to my newly reconstructed knee.)

He offered the possibility of one more lesson before he takes off, but I'm really ready for summer to start. I read a very interesting book on Monday, The Perfect Wrong Note: Learning to Trust Your Musical Self, by William Westney,and one point that resonated was how difficult a weekly lesson can be when you feel like you need to have something prepared for the lesson, but really should be doing the painstaking work of slowly exploring the music instead of rushing to get something ready. That's the way this second Bach Suite has felt to me all year. I am so looking forward to taking as much time as it takes to learn, and hopefully memorize, all six movements without having to bring anything that's not ready into daylight for the next four months.

I told him that is my plan. He politely squelched his snort, and spent the last half of the lesson giving me an overview of the more difficult things to work out in the Menuets and Sarabande. I think the other four movements will yield to rhythms and other repetition games, but have been stumped by how to work out these two movements. My project for this afternoon will be a brain dump of those points, to retain as much as possible for later study. And that will be a post for later.

School's out, and I'm finally ready to get to work. I'm psyched.

Mary West

I received an e-mail notification earlier this week that Mary West died on June 3d. Mary was the great-grandmother of violin teaching in the Twin Cities music community, beginning her teaching career in the 1950's. I learned a lot about her when she came down to Kansas City to accept a lifetime community service award at the ASTA meeting. I was thrilled to see her, making the trip at... 94 years old? I think she was then. A tiny, elderly woman with exceptional presence.

I'm not a violinist, but it didn't take long to recognize that all of the advanced violin players I met in Minneapolis were students or former students of Mary West. I probably shouldn't say all, because there are so many other violin teachers in the area, but it certainly seemed that way. She taught a long time, with great dedication and skill.

One of the things I really loved about her career is that she didn't set out to be a music teacher. In KC I learned that when she was getting started a wise mentor advised her to just teach, and stop obsessing over whether she could.

Faith Farr is collecting teaching tips from Mary's former students to publish in the Fall issue of the local string teachers' publication. There were two in the e-mail, probably from a pedagogy session she presented in January. One was:

Start each lesson with technique. You know the students will practice the pieces. When they realize the lesson won’t get to the pieces until the technique is covered, then they will also prepare the technique well.

My first cello teacher (T1-) had just the opposite philosophy. I think we touched on a scale here and there, but other than that technique was all demonstration on his side. I think he must have been psychologically scarred by technical practice in his past. It took me too many years to realize that I was gaining nothing from that approach, and my own technical ceilings were firm. One of many reasons I love working with T- is that he obviously shares Mary's philosophy.

A lot of folks are going to miss Mary West.

Lesson follow-up

Leave it to my loyal readers to notice that I appear to be doing too much too soon after knee surgery. The surgeon said pretty much the same thing yesterday. That was partly a timing issue, partly responsibility to previous commitments, and partly ignorance of how much I was going to hurt post-op.

I chose May 22nd as my surgery date with a great deal of deliberation and schedule coordination. It was after my May 15th orchestra concert, 10 days before my June 1 chamber music recital, and at the beginning of a 2 week block where DH was going to be in town. It's also 4 months before September, when I am planning to go to Scotland, and is the minimum rehab time I can reasonably expect to need to be fully functional for such a long trip. I figured 10 days recovery before a chamber concert was do-able, so I also planned to attend my regularly scheduled (and already paid for) cello lesson, and scheduled an Alexander T. lesson. I resumed playing on Tuesday (post-op day 7), and did play the recital last night.

When I was first in the knee immobilizer back in February I presented with my stiff left leg at my cello lesson. T- took it in stride, pointing out that Navarra (with whom he studied) frequently played with his left leg extended, and didn't need a knee immobilizer to do it. I also have to credit 3 years of studying Alexander Technique. I can achieve a balanced playing stance even with my left leg out, providing a little guidance to the cello but no real support.

I'm sure my fumbling around between cello and crutch provided some comic relief at the end of the recital last night. My only difficulty was that my end-pin slipped a couple of times (grr), which I attribute to using a loaner with an inadequately sharpened end-pin, rather than to my knee issues. I will surely be glad to see my own new cello, and be able to do those little things to make it just the way I like it, and have them be the same from one session to the next.

Two other questions from the comments. PFS, every time I try to answer your question in my head the essay grows to book length. So I am going to limit myself to one paragraph, and one introductory exercise. One of Alexander's most useful observations about body use is that when the problem is too much tension, the nidus of that response happens, not when you start the motion, but as soon as you think about doing it. Probably the second most useful observation is how hard it is to notice that yourself initially, which is where a good teacher comes in handy. (I'll refrain from making the obvious comparison to cello teachers <g>.)

The exercise: use the first two notes from Arioso, (1) B, 1st finger, 1st position on the A string, and (2) C, also 1st finger, 1/2 step above the B. (Old finger, old string, new bow stroke.) Play the B with a big, sloppy, gorgeous vibrato, and the most relaxed legato stroke you can manage. Play it until the note is as beautiful as you can make it. Then THINK about shifting up to play the C. Rotate your attention from neck, to left arm, to right arm, to back, to legs. If you are a normal intermediate cello player you will feel various amounts of tension in all of those places. (Beginners are concentrating so much on everything that their sensory circuits would be overwhelmed with this attempt.) Here's the crucial point. Every bit of tension that you feel having just thought about shifting to the next note is unnecessary. The result of continuing that into the action will be things like a tight tone, non-continuous vibrato, an obvious slide on the shift, and missing the shift, usually on the flat side. And that's the simplified difference between preparation (bad) and transition (good).

Funky Smith, do you get the ASTA journal? There is an excellent article by Carter Enyeart on shifting, I think in the Nov '05 issue. He also had a session on shifting at the ASTA meeting in Kansas City last year. Though they describe it differently, his approach is similar to T-'s. My first teacher (T1-) also taught the preparation and follow-through approach. As noted above, for me that contributes to having too much tension in the shift, and particularly to difficulty maintaining continuous vibrato and having too much finger pressure. My technique is much better when I concentrate on the forearm falling.

Cello lesson 5/31 - Not Doing

The best weeks are the ones where I can't tell the difference between a cello lesson and an Alexander Technique lesson. Which I think means that the over-riding theme of my life as a cello player is that first I need to get out of my own way.

Today's lesson material:
Scale: d harmonic minor, 4 octaves, linked half-notes with 4 quarter notes on bow changes
Bach Arioso - 1st 2 measures
Bach Prelude to 2nd Suite - 1st 2 measures

Left hand things:
* bring the elbow low enough that the finger is flat without needing to either collapse at the DIP or round the fingers to keep on the tips
* vibrato mitten - feel like my finger tips form one unit, all supporting the vibrating finger
* 4th finger - rolling a bit to the outer side helps maintain the curved shape (I need more callous there!)
* imagine a weight taped around my elbow pulling the arm down and back
* shifting - the ONLY thing that needs to happen is that the forearm falls under the influence of gravity. The vibrato doesn't stop. There is no wind-up or extraneous arm motion required (a bad habit left over from T1-)
* extension - thumb and second finger fall with the arm while 1st finger remains behind

Exercise: swing left hand down to side, then up to plop onto the fingerboard. Without adjusting finger position, play vibrato on designated finger, wherever it happens to land.

Right hand things:
* watch the tendency to creep forward, excessive pronation. Keep eye of frog between 3 and 4
* the arm doesn't need the "help" of the shoulders. Watch tendency to raise the shoulders, which may be no more than excess stabilizing tension
* on up bow, feel the left elbow weight causing the bow to move sideways. This works better if the elbow remains low
* think gooey fondue, honey, peanut butter

Position note: when I move the cello straight forward (away from me), the C peg should hit me in the back of my head. If it passes without touching me my cello is slanted too far to the left.

Music is played one moment at a time. I was going to say one note, but didn't want to quibble about chords and double stops. Theoretically, if I play one note beautifully, then the next note, linking note to note, I will be able to play the whole piece beautifully.

Application: I think I need to designate 10-15 minutes of my practice time as "non-doing" time, where the only focus is going from one beautiful, relaxed note to another, inhibiting my habitual (unnecessary) preparation for playing the next note (that is the Alexandrian part). I can do that with my scale, or a couple of measures of Arioso or the Prelude. That needs to be my ONLY focus during that time, probably the hardest part of the whole exercise. Zen and the Art of Cello Playing.

Cello lesson 5/10 - Rhythms

Yes, that's 5/10, not 5/17. I canceled my lesson this week, something I rarely do, because I was still getting over being sick, plus I had practiced a total of maybe an hour the preceding week, again because of said illness. It didn't seem sensible to waste both of our times.

However, I haven't posted anything about the preceeding lesson. The most important item we discussed was a practical approach to working up music that consists of strings of notes using rhythms. I won't call it passage work, since the music under discussion is Bach, the Courante from the 2nd Suite, and heaven forbid I think of that as passage work.

The reason we had to discuss a practical approach is that, though I have tremendous theoretical knowledge about how to do this, for some reason I have been unable to apply it in practice. So we went over 10 variations, and I have explicit instructions to work one section, or even 1 measure, at a time. Ten rhythms, sequentially, 5-10 reps of each rhythm. Since my lesson I've worked on 2 measures and two sections this way.

Today during breaks in my practice I was thinking about this post, and it occurred to me that I should record the last of my reps in each rhythm and post them. It will make a lot more sense, to you now and to me later, to see/hear them than to read the following cursory description. It's a good time to do it, too. My readership falls off significantly on weekends. Plus, I'm going to post the description now and the video a little later, because it will take some time to compile the clips (Oh! A movie!) and I'll bet lots of folks won't remember to come back to look <g>.

All rhythms describe a block of 4 sixteenth notes. The 10 rhythms:
1. long - short - long - short
2. short - long - short - long
3. add quarter note to 1
4. add quarter note to 2
5. add quarter note to 3
6. add quarter note to 4
7. accent 1
8. accent 2
9. accent 3
10. accent 4

I keep the metronome set at my target quarter note value (84 for now), but for 1-2 and 7-10 I play at half that rate. The bowings are not altered, which takes some planning for bow distribution, especially in variations 3-6. T- was very clear that after playing the rhythms I should play the bit I have been working on in tempo, up to tempo. Then I slow down a bit, check my memory, and add it to what I have done so far. I recorded both the up-to-tempo (still a little too fast) and the "so far", 3/4 of the A section.

Should be more video than anyone would want to watch.

Cello lesson 5/3: Yo Yo Diet

I have been focused on learning some new bowing motor skills, and consequently am feeling less well prepared for lessons. That may also be due to a decreasing practice phenomenon, between frustration that nothing feels right at the moment, and the need to spend some of my time learning trio and orchestra repertoire. And I wasted a lot of time this week reviewing old repertoire and playing things I can already read. I think I needed a confidence boost.

In any case, we again spent three quarters of the lesson working on my bow hold and mechanics. The scale was a combination of F minor and major, and my exit assignment is to limit my scale practice this week to slow linked half notes with four short notes at the extremes before the bow change, with no metronome. Focus on using the whole arm to move the bow, extra push from 3 and 4 at the tip, the way the thumb bends with the bow changes.

We moved on to Bach, a new movement today. T- asked for the Courante. Fortunately, I did read through that several times this week. Unfortunately, I'm still playing with a different fingering and bowing each time, not sure how I want to do this. So I basically massacred it, wrong notes, inconsistent bowings, irregular tempo, lots of pauses while I figured out what to do next. Ugh.

One of the most difficult things for me at my present level of development is playing music I can't play yet. I know that sounds like a big "Duh!," but what I mean is music I can't read easily. At my advancing age, I have yet to figure out a reliable way of learning something I don't get on the first reading. After yesterday's lesson I think what I need is the Yo Yo diet.

As the story goes, Yo Yo Ma learned his first Bach at the age of 4, with his father teaching him one measure per day. That's pretty much the way my lesson went. After that gruesome read-through, we went back to the beginning and worked on the first measure, plus the chord at the beginning of the second. My assignment is to go forth and do likewise in the practice room. The process will be something like this:

For each measure + first note of next measure
* Decide on the fingerings and bowings
* Play through No Tempo with all notes equivalent until the fingerings work
* Isolate problem shifts, chords, fingerings and practice separately if needed, then reincorporate
* Play through at very slow tempo with metronome with fingerings + bowings
* Isolate problem bowings, bow distribution, and string crossings if needed
* Slowly increase tempo to a moderate rate
* If it's not coming easily, invent different ways to play the measure (double stops, rhythms, etc.) to get the necessary repetitions. No beating head against wall!
Next measure

At some point, I'll need to apply the process to phrases, and then sections. The hardest part, as always, is to fight the urge to pretend I can play it and mangle it in chunks I don't know yet. The other variable I haven't figured out is what review to do on a day-to-day basis, and how quickly to progress.

As painful as this was in my lesson (I felt so inadequate), I left feeling optimistic. I'm sure I can learn one measure at a time. Now I just need to lose the expectation that I will be able to play this movement by next week. It's got to take the time it takes.

Cello lesson 4/26: Cello #3

Yesterday afternoon I stopped at the violin shop on my way to my lesson, returned the lovely French cello I have been playing and picked up a 7/8-sized Goronok, 2001. I'd noticed that, as lovely as the French cello sounded, long practice sessions and rehearsals were causing my long dormant left elbow tendinosis tendencies to stir. And sure enough, when I finally measured the string length it was 27.25 inches. So I asked that the next loaner be 27 inches or shorter, a length that has reliably caused no problem for me. Thus, the 7/8.

It's so much fun to try all of these different cellos while I am waiting for the varnish to dry on my new replacement. This week I went from a smooth antique sound to a brash youngster worth a log less, from a longer string length to a smaller cello, had less than a half-hour to warm up and walked in to my lesson, then a strings-only orchestra rehearsal where we had our only rehearsal on a new piece (Vivaldi Spring) before we play it in concert next week.

While I may not be entirely happy with my sound, I am delighted to finally discover that I do have a characteristic sound that is similar on every cello I play, and I no longer feel like if I could just find the right cello (or strings) I would sound better. That's not to say I can't tell the difference - I certainly can, and I have a much clearer idea of what I like best. I wonder - did anyone notice that I am playing 3 different cellos on the videos I've posted so far?

Back to my lesson. This week I again spent half the time on my scale (F MAJ again) and half the time on the Bach Prelude #2. We spent a good chunk of the technical time making more adjustments to my bow hold. I have a strong tendency to change position during the course of the note, and T- really wants me to retain the same flexible hand position for the entire stroke, changing with the bow change. Yesterday we experimented with moving my hand a little more toward the frog, so that my 3d and 4th fingers straddle the eye. This necessitates a little less pronation of the forearm, and facilitates movement that feels more side-to-side. I wish changing the bow hold was easier. Habits die hard.

On Bach, I struggled a little more with intonation than I had during practice this week, at least partly because of the foreign cello. I'm also in that half-memorized place where I can't trust myself to play from memory under pressure, but when I look at the music it appears unfamiliar. However, I played well enough that we were able to address the musical intent of a couple of passages instead of the technical requirements.

T- asked again what else I wanted to play besides Bach. I told him I'm OK for now, working on the Hummel piano trio, Op 12, which I don't bring to my lesson. I really should choose something else to work on there. All Bach all the time is grueling.

Cello lesson 4/12: Intonation Day

Today we did a lot of work with only a little material. I started off with a play-through of Bach 2nd Suite Prelude, en route to working on the Allemande, but got side-tracked when the opening phrase was just awful. So we stepped back and spent the first half of the lesson on my Cossmann warm-up, only the A string. Skills we worked on:
* Know which position I am in at all times.
* Know what notes I am playing. Further, know which accidentals I am playing (Eb vs D#, for example) and adjust intonation accordingly. And even further, do this by ear, and not from the page.
* Play slowly enough that every note is in tune.
* Play quickly enough that my hand is fluid.
* Use exaggerated rolling motion of the forearm to enhance balance and relaxation of the hand with each note change.

I was pretty well warmed up after that, so played the Prelude. While happy that my fluidity is better, I was frustrated that it is still more "square" playing with an audience than playing at home. I was even more frustrated that my intonation was just off, and I seemed powerless to fix it while I was playing. Guess that's a side effect of tuning my ear.

So for the rest of the lesson we focused sequentially on the first two measures, taking the following steps:
(1) Play the notes of the measure at no tempo, tuning each note and paying attention to the finger motions required to play each note exactly in tune with the maximum efficiency of motion and optimal hand position.
(2) Play the notes in rhythm but at a very slow tempo WITH the metronome, fighting the urge to stop and fix notes one at a time. If a note is out of tune, play the excerpt again and fix it then. If you can't, revert to step 1.

The key to this exercise is hearing which notes are out of tune and remembering which notes you need to fix at the end of the excerpt. That was a struggle for me. T- advised working with a small enough number of notes at one time to make that possible, gradually increasing the size of the excerpt.

It is so frustrating that I can easily hear which note someone else plays out of tune, and I can clearly hear my own intonation at a slow enough tempo, but my ear can't seem to play in tune at normal speeds. But I was really getting excited about the possibility of improving that, especially while doing Step (1) and observing my finger motions. T-'s point was that working this way could easily fill 5 or 6 practice hours a day, and he wanted to hear no more complaints that I can't figure out what to do with my practice time .

And we never got to the Allemande.

Lesson Addendum

I almost forgot. We also discussed my frustration with the tendency of my thumb to dive in between the frog and the bow as I play. In addition to discussing the direction of the bow and possible reasons for this, T- demonstrated how the thumb should bend in response to the bending and extending of the fingers, which in turn flex and extend in response to the bow changing directions on the string. I made a quick movie of me demonstrating his demonstration, because it's a lot easier to show it than tell it.

Cello lesson 3/29

Scale: Db MAJ, 4 octaves. Scale in linked half notes only. Paused on the shift on the A string from F/3 to Gb/1. To make sure I was not playing the shift with the bow, played open G while shifting up, then back down, then bowed the A string during the same shift. Observe: there should be no extraneous bow sounds on open G. Also don't overplay the arrival note. Shifting finger releases tension during the shift, then recovers tension as the note is reached without excess tension or vibrato. Parenthetically, I am doing much better at releasing tension during downward shifts. This was a good exercise.

Etude: Duport #21, also in Db MAJ. This was not a coincidence. I had chosen the scale to complement learning the etude. Spent the rest of the time working on bow change motions, accentuated when playing short legato notes near the tip, which is where the 1/16 notes in the opening are played.
Imagery:
* Bow motion is horizontal. Think opposites. To-away, from-to, east-west, open-close. Just not push-pull, because it should be pull-pull.
* Think of bar sideways through wrist, along which wrist slides in its to and fro path.
* Thumb curved on down, straight on up.
* Hand changes in response to change of direction, not in preparation.
* Feel the breeze as the arm approaches the side during a big up bow.
I also need to spend some time with shifts across strings, making sure I am crossing strings with my arm, not my wrist, and preserving the bow change motion at the wrist. Example: from II 4/Ab to III 1/Db focus on new finger, new string, new bow and make sure everything happens at the right time. I think I could profitably work on just those 2-note string crossing + shift places.
We got to the first treble clef section today. Should have worked out the rest of the etude by next lesson.

Also discussed two more Cello Gym exercises.
1) 6 count, down p to f, up f to p dynamics. Use the "power bow" stroke, in which the arm stays firm at the elbow so that the pressure on the string is generated from the back, with primary arm motion at the shoulder. (Rather than most of the motion occurring with the forearm at the elbow in the upper half of the bow.) Use the scale. (Right hand strength.)
2) I don't think I quite got the details of this, but the essence is a trill exercise beginning on A-D in 4th position, 3,4 on A, 1,2 on D, trilling between 4-2 and 3-1. This is probably one of the first Cossmann daily exercises. Start with 8 notes /bow? /beat? Repeat in each 1/2 position down to nut. Ascend with 7 notes. Descend with 6 notes. etc. (Left hand strength, especially outer fingers.)
As with all Cello Gym exercises, each day perform only to the point of fatigue. Stop *before* there is any pain. The point is to build strength gradually over time.

T- would like me to start working on a Sonata in addition to my very slow progress through the Bach 2nd Suite. I have next week off, so my plan is to spend some time with the first movements of Grieg and Beethoven g minor and we can choose at my next lesson in two weeks.

Cello lesson 2/23

I see I haven't posted a lesson summary in a couple of weeks. I'm still trying to figure out what's useful, as I transition from my old lesson and practice log system to... something else. I played the loaner cello. It's not really to my taste, but I thought it might be to T-'s, and it was. The bigger and more extroverted the sound I can make, the happier he is. And it's interesting that after a week of playing it it sounds less harsh to my ear, and more like me with an added edge. I don't know whether the primary factor is habituation, or more likely that my physical approach has subtly modified to get more of the sound that I want to hear.

This week we worked on two etudes and several core elements.
* Lee #5. I'm working my way through the Lee melodious exercises. We no longer spend months on an etude, like we did with the first three. I now work up an etude for a couple of weeks, play it and drive on. I take the comments home and apply them to that etude while also working up the next one. Like T- says, if I can just clean up my string crossings by (1) keeping the weight in the bow and (2) making good tunnels over the strings I will have nailed all of these exercises. Just. Also concentrate on leveling off the string changes, more "bow strum" and fewer terraces.

* Gruetzmacher #13. This is the beginning thumb position etude that I've been playing for at least a year. I like it, and time and repetitions have really been key to developing strength, coordination, and good finger positions and hand patterns. I've increased the tempo from 1/8=80 then to 120 now.

I still struggle with physically backing away from the cello when I play "up there", which leads to the vicious circle of unpleasant sound, followed by more tension. Today we worked on the bow change motion at the tip, with the desired end again of keeping the weight in the string. I am to practice by making the motion with my hand for now, extending the fingers and thumb on up-bow and rounding them on down bow. T- demonstrated a good way to practice this using Duport #21, where the bow distribution leads to playing fast notes at the tip. He thought that etude is too difficult for me right now, but I can use that bow pattern when I practice scales or other etudes where I already know the notes.

After a short time working on the bow change motion I was able to get much more sound on this etude. Personally, I thought it a not very pleasant sound, but T- was delighted. He has been telling me frequently that I am trying to refine too early, a common adult failing, and that first I need to have a sound to refine. So I guess this is progress.

Cello lesson 1/25

Scale: A MAJ
T- is tired of hearing E for a year, and I had questions about the fingering, so that's where we stayed. For whatever reason, I find this to be the most difficult scale.
* Fingering: avoid open strings, so it's standard Duport
G: 1x2-4 1x2-4
D: (G#) 1-2-4
A: (C#) 1-2-4 1-3-4 standard upper 2 octaves (1212123 1212123)
* Vibrato in thumb position. I've been working on touching the thumb lightly to the next lower string. It does reduce tension, but I'm still a little awkward. Keep the motion vector parallel to the knuckles, which means angled away from the fingerboard, not parallel to the string.
* Arpeggio.
- Play at qu=66 instead of ha=88.
- All arps start on C string, most with 2
- Demonstrated Magg variation which checks location of thumb after shift
- Reviewed 3 standard fingerings
-- 2-1-3 2-1-3 2-1-3 2-1-2-3
-- 1-3 1-3 1-3 2 1-3 1-3 1-3
-- T-2 T T-2 T T-2 T T-1-2-3

Breval
I had one question. Near the end, after the trill, I have been clipping the C en route to the coda beginning on E, probably because of the 1-1 shift across strings.
* Trill
- Do not remain in extended hand position. Relax 1 while trilling on 2-4
- Think of how many times you can remove the finger from the string rather than how many times you can press it down. "Hot stove" technique.
- Then add low ceiling, keeping finger lift close to the string.
* Shift
- extend to C to finish the trill, but with finger tip long to D string
- shift old finger (1) to E but already on new string

Bach, Prelude to 2nd Suite
Played through. I can really feel where I am able to play freely and where I need to think about how to play the next notes. We discussed my cadenza, which I finally have an idea about, also memorizing, phrasing, playing convincingly, confidence, the little guy on my left criticizing my technique, and the little pipsqueak on my right criticizing my emotional content. (It's a wonder I can play at all!) I may be able to flesh out some more notes later, but for now, let me just document my cadenza so maybe I'll remember it.
Cadenza
m1: A Bb C A F E F G D C Bb A
m2: A Bb C A
m3: D A F A
m4: A G F E D
(Need to play this again. Can't quite remember.)
Memorizing: assessment
* Auditory. OK, I could sing the first phrase. But I know I need to clean up about 10% where it's not quite remembered.
* Kinesthetic: I really need to work on being able to imagine all of the motions of playing when I'm not playing.
* Visual: really weak, but also the hardest for most people

I may have forgotten to mention that T- wants me to play this in the next studio class on 2/17. Therefore I would not have mentioned that I am terrified of playing in front of all those teenage prodigies. I'll do it if I must, but more realistically I am aiming for the next adult recital on 3/6.

Watch this space. I think I might still be able to remember a little more with another practice.