Lessons Learned

This blog is not defunct. Perhaps a step beyond sporadical, but I'll never say never again. I have closure issues, you see. And I note that this appears to be my 600th post.

It's a rather lengthy post, as I've taken videos that in the past I would have strung out over a week, and instead posted them all together. I expect only the cello-hardy to remain until the end.

This experiment was inspired by Owldaughter's serendipitous discovery that playing her recital piece over and over, instead of concentrating on the tricky bits, resulted in marvelous improvement. I wish I could remember who next mentioned Burton Kaplan's Technique of the First Try, (if it was you, speak up and I'll edit in an attribution), but that inspired me to use that technique to prepare for my recent recital, on which I performed the D MAJ Mendelssohn "Song Without Words."

Parenthetically, my preparation of this piece was hampered by a semester of pain in my bow arm generated by a neck condition, and on which I had a surgical procedure done at the beginning of the month. Let's just say I haven't been practicing very well this semester.

So here's the gist of the technique. Each day I warmed up for 10 minutes with a martele rendition of Long Long Ago (may have to make a post about that as well - it's a great warm up). I then set up the camera and the music and recorded my first play through of the day - no prior preparation. I played through a couple of more times while the recording uploaded, reviewed it, and played through 4-6 more times with attention to a trouble spot or two between. That's it. About an hour of practice each day.

Three days before recital...


The biggest changes were after this recording. I changed many bowings, and really started working on getting my elbow down (releasing tension) on my up bows. I'm listening to the accompaniment on my iPod, BTW, which leaves little room for tempo manipulation.

Two days before recital...


Still need to get those facial tics under control!

One day before recital...


This was the day after my dress rehearsal, which went very well. It was suggested I focus on how I wanted to shape the music. The problem I began having at this point was that the music was nearly memorized after so many repetitions (much to my surprise) and I was beginning to have difficulty following it on the page without getting lost.

Day of recital...


I didn't bother with the accompaniment for this run-through, partly because I was short of time, and partly because I wanted to play a little more freely.

Recital...


The problems with "near memorization" really came home to roost. In addition to being cold and playing cold, I kept losing my place. The worst problems were in the B section, where my accompanist did a wonderful job of helping me when I entered a loop, and with many places where my bowings were simply, shall we say, unplanned.

On the other hand, I think you can see how much improved this was over my 1st recording only three days before, as well as how I lost that predicted 20% from the "best" I'd done so far, under the stress of performance.

I think my primary take-away is that this is an effective technique, but should be started well before recital, not just three days. Ideally, this would be the prelude to a studio class or mock recital for friends, and the recital would be performed from memory. In fact, that's what I plan to do. I am so inspired by my imperfect success that I plan to do exactly that at an upcoming all adult recital in a month or two. Then I'll really feel like I've done the best I can with this piece.

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.

End of June

My, that month went by quickly. It's already time to look back and see how I did with my practice goals this month. Drumroll, please...

And the answer is, very well, and very badly. I practiced 18 hours and 5 minutes over 19 days, which means I reached my total time and frequency goals handily. But I had a deuced time with the sit down behind the cello for 5 minutes before noon goal. I did OK for the first 6 days, missed a couple, tried again, and just gave up.

Turns out I am completely unable to sit down behind the cello without a goal. What I found myself doing was getting to the cello at 11:55 to start an hour's practice, not my intent at all. The biggest question I am left with is why I thought I wanted to do this in the morning.

Good reasons to practice in the morning.
1. If I practice in the morning, well, then it's done. Works for exercise, so I thought it would be a good idea with practice.

2. Morning is both an introspective and a focused time for me (but do NOT talk to me before 9am OR before coffee, whichever comes later). Seems like the energy requirements should coincide.

3. I used to practice for 30 minutes before work, with the benefit of starting the workday feeling relaxed and virtuous.

Possible reasons it didn't work.
1. I also got back on the morning exercise bandwagon this month. Ran every day (but 3) for 10 minutes with 10 more minutes of walking, PT, and stretching. Doesn't seem like much, but a huge breakthrough as I am still trying to recover from knee surgery.

2. I like to sleep late, now that I can. Thirty years of being up and at 'em before 6am was plenty long enough, and since retirement I have resumed my more natural night owl rhythms.

3. I love to spend my first barely-conscious hour drinking my coffee and catching up on the overnight blogging and Twitter activity. After feeding the cats, of course.

4. I don't have to, and no one can make me.

Sleep late + coffee/blog time + work out + breakfast and the morning's over.

I guess that's the bottom line. There are other ways I would rather spend the morning, and much as I like practicing, it just gets squeezed out. And you know what? It's not really important. I reached my time and frequency goals with no problem, and the practices I had were of good quality. So I guess I learned an important lesson this month. Just because a goal seems like a good idea doesn't mean it's right for me.

June practice goals

That last post has been up on top 'way too long. To move it down a notch, I thought I'd post my practice goals for this month, as per my CelloBloggers Practice Club commitment:

Lots of things changing in my cello life right now - new teacher, new piece, fewer things in active progress, (which simplifies my practices and therefore seems to make me less resistant), integration of physical focus and learning music (which makes practice more pleasurable). But, though I have some intermediate performance goals, my primary practice goal for June is practice consistency.

My resolution: at least 15 practice days AND 15 hours of practice in June, PLUS at least 5 minutes of sitting behind my cello in playing position and doing *something* every day before noon.

There is method to my madness. I know I will face incredible resistance if I try to "practice every day." This allows me to take off on lesson and performance days without guilt. Plus I can plan practice lengths day to day, with a shorter practice on one day compensated for by either a longer practice later or an extra day of practice during the month. And I'm sneaking up on the goal of more frequent practice days by that very innocuous sitting behing the cello every day thing. Tee hee. I'll let you know how it goes.

[My first 5-minute deadline was very successful. Today I sat down at 11:53am, with time running out, and proceded to practice for 80 minutes.]

No-cello practice

When I first became an over-the-top obsessively-committed beginning cello player, I bought a Prakticello so that wherever I went, for business or vacation, I could take my cello along to practice while I was away from home. There was no way I was going to backslide because I couldn't practice with no cello available. I became quite good at setting it up and breaking it down, and it provided endless fascination for TSA checkers. But I gradually came to resent the extra hassle of flying with it, and finally, when DH and I were living in separate cities for awhile, I left it set up at "his place," and used it for practice while I was there. That was (so far) it's last trip, as when I moved out to join him I broke it down, packed it in its box, and stashed it in a corner of the new house. I know it's there if I need it.

As a more experienced intermediate-level cello player who still travels fairly often, I have gained confidence that I won't lose all of my hard-won skills and revert back to the beginning if I don't play the cello for a few days. But practicing is part of my life, something I do, and am, and I practice every day, whether I have a cello available or not.

I don't mean to write an exhaustive treatise on no-cello practice, but thought I'd list the things I brought along on my current trip, by way of answering Ten Northern's question, "What do you mean by 'no-cello practice'?".

1. String quartet by Alexander Glasunov, op. 26. I'm not actually playing this, but a friend asked me for some fingering recommendations, if I had time. Marking a part with fingerings and bowings is a great thing to do when traveling. This quartet has lots of little chromatic puzzles to work out those fingerboard geography muscles.

2. Brahms sonata no. 1 in e. I am preparing the first movement to play for T4- at my lesson in 2.5 weeks.In addition to marking fingerings, I'll totally mark this part up for memorizing, with bowings on almost every change and fingerings at the beginning of phrases in addition to on the shifts, where I usually mark them. That's so I can start anywhere on the right bow and finger when I am practicing tiny bits at a time, later. I will also survey the movement for structure and work out which parts are alike, and how the alike parts are different. Then I'll start memorizing it by singing it.

3. Duport #7. I have already re-written this etude as chords, changing it from it's written-out arpeggios into something I can see the structure of more clearly. With this, I'll mentally practice chord changes as coordinated movements. I find this quite fatiguing, so I'll only do a few measures at a time.

4. A chair. OK, I didn't bring that with me, but plan to use one here in the room. I'll tip it back toward me as I sit in another chair and practice one of my new motor skills. My directive is to develop more flexibility in my thumb mcp (left hand), particularly in thumb position. So I will pretend I have a fingerboard, and with thumb and one finger at a time observe what I need to do to vibrate with a flexible hand while keeping equal weight between thumb and finger. This is also something you can do with arm cello, but since I have a wooden chair handy I thought I'd use that instead.

I also have two books with me: Mastery: The Keys to Success and Long-Term Fulfillment, by George Leonard and Set Your Voice Free: How To Get The Singing Or Speaking Voice You Want, by Roger Love.

Here's a quote from this morning's reading from Leonard's book to inspire you:

...the essence of boredom is to be found in the obsessive search for novelty. Satisfaction lies in mindful repetition, the discovery of endless richness in subtle variations on familiar themes.

Weekly practice review

Yesterday, I welcomed Daylight Savings Time by sleeping all afternoon, after being up early to play for church, then succumbing to insulin toxicity induced by the carbohydrate load of the apple fritters I consumed at a local dining emporium.

Why do I mention that in a post about practice review? Because I slept all day, I didn't start to practice until after 8:30pm, which is fine for me, but DH has a weekday 4:30am date with the alarm clock, and our house is very open. So I didn't want to practice more than about 30 minutes. I did that, however, instead of skipping it because it was the last day of the week and I wanted to report a good practice week, 5 days out of 7. Thanks, Practice Club.

The funniest moment of the week happened just as I came to the end of my 30 minutes. I was playing the first four bars of arpeggiated chords from the Sammartini Sonata in G (Suzuki Book 8, 1st mvmt, p3) with my eyes closed so I could concentrate better, when DH stopped by on the way to bed and kissed me on the top of my head. Oh, my! I nearly jumped out of my skin! Then dissolved into laughter as my heart rate returned to normal, and asked him to please, never kiss me when I am playing the cello with my eyes closed.

How romantic is that?

Summer schedule

Piano class. Done.
Vocal Ensemble. Done.
Orchestra. Concert last month, and done for me since I am not playing in the July concerts.
Cello lessons. Last one yesterday, until October. T- suggested another teacher I might like to take lessons from over the summer, but I'm not thinking seriously about it (yet).
Flute trio. We'll still rehearse, but not more than 1-2x/month.
String quartet. Monthly, maybe, depending on whether we can work out schedules.
Cello trio. Last rehearsal last night, and recital is tonight. Still thinking about whether to resume in the Fall, but done for Summer.

I do have my first opportunity to be a "ringer" next weekend, joining my old orchestra for a concert. I rehearsed with them once about two months ago, just for fun. They're playing Schumann's Symphony #2 in C, and the von Weber Overture to Beherrscher der Geister. I'm kinda looking forward to the challenge, now that some of my other stuff is winding down.

No music camps planned for this summer. My main goal, believe it or not, is just to practice for the sake of practice. I've picked all of the low-lying fruit, concentrating on specific changes to my technique, and what I need most now is Butt-in-Chair time. I though it could be avoided, but have been forced to conclude that the only way to really make progress at my level is through repetition. So I'm switching my focus from variables helpful in learning new skills to the variety of ways one can make repetition palatable.

More Bach practice

I was thinking this morning, lying in bed, half awake, that it is interesting how similar the minuets in the first two Bach Suites are, and how completely different. No, maybe not different. Opposite.

For instance, the Minuets in Suite 1 were the first dances I learned, being relatively accessible. In Suite 2, they are the last, and thanks to the chords in Minuet I comprise the most difficult music I have played to date. In Suite I, the Minuets are major, then minor. In Suite II, minor then major. The predominant three note motif, a dancy, rising arpeggio, begins Minuet I in Suite 1, and is buried later in Minuet II in Suite 2.

Anyway, I decided to spend part of my practice time yesterday afternoon recording my current progress on the first Minuet in Suite 2. Though far from ready for performance (this is actually take 3 of 4), I am really quite pleased with my progress. Progress, heck. Two months ago I couldn't string two chords together.

Practice update

There must be a bunch of immunologically non-overlapping viruses going around this winter. I feel like I've barely gotten over one when another knocks me flat. This last was especially bad - two whole weeks and I'm just returning to activities and I still have a snotty nose. Grumble.

I canceled a lesson last week, as well as orchestra and cello trio rehearsal and, well, pretty much everything else. I also took two days off from practicing, and would like to say I practiced lightly on many others but it was pretty much my usual. Lightness, that is.

For the past couple of days I'm trying a new approach - blocking out several hours in the morning, and doing all of my practicing in that time, with a few minutes break after each half hour. I had gotten into the bad habit of spreading things out over the day with other activities in between practice blocks, and the even worse habit of never getting back to practicing, or occasionally not starting at all.

With more actual practice happening, I have been changing up the order of things every day - I get too bored doing the same routine, day after day. I've also added something new to my scale practice. A few years ago I bought a Mel Bay book by Daniel Morganstern that talks about his technical development, and what he learned from Leonard Rose, Luigi Silva and Channing Robbins. Parts II and III (of VI) are about scale practice, and he lists a number of ways to practice, using the E Major scale as an example. You will remember that E is my main scale buddy, the first one I learned in order to apply the general fingering pattern 1x24 1x24 124 124 134 while avoiding open strings. (I call this the Duport fingering, since his was the first treatise to advocate its general use.)

The point of the exercise I added this week is to learn to do the (downward) shifts between strings as old finger, old string, old bow shifts, to counteract my natural tendency to do new finger, new string shifts. The resulting high-to-low mew is not what I want to hear. This is the section of the exercise notated as quarter notes:



It can be done as an acceleration exercise, starting with 2 half notes, then 4 quarter notes, then 8 eighth notes per bow as coordination improves. I'm encouraged by my progress this week, and hope I can keep this schedule up.

Rant

The kind of practicing I hate the most is learning difficult orchestra music. A bunch of amateurs, struggling with difficult passages, no bowings, let alone fingering suggestions, each alone in our respective practice rooms, or wasting our lesson times asking for our teachers' help. (I don't do that anymore. Since T1-, my rule is no orchestra music in lessons. I have much more important things to do.)

The best orchestra I have ever played with was a local university orchestra that needed a few community players to round out the sections. We rehearsed twice a week, and had sectionals... I don't remember exactly how often, but it was at least monthly. The principal cellist was responsible for marking bowings in the parts, with assistance from the faculty section advisor, and additional fingerings were discussed in the sectionals. It was heaven, and hard work. But productive work.

At my last orchestra I was principal cellist for the last number of years, which meant at least I had some control over my/our destiny. We formed a cooperative within the section and hired a local pro to mark our parts (actually to mark a master part, then we did the copying) and to run two or three sectionals for each concert cycle. That was worth every penny; we learned so much, and it made the performances so much more enjoyable.

My current orchestra is a typical, small amateur orchestra with limited resources. Our principal cellist is a very competent player, and personally a very nice guy. But he doesn't mark bowings, and frequently changes them from week to week. That leaves everybody else playing tensely, ready to change bow directions at any moment to stay in sync. And we're all on our own to figure out the fingerings.

Tchaikovsky and Brahms. Who has time to practice? I'm too busy figuring out workable fingerings to bring anything up to speed or make it sound beautiful.

</rant>

Practice blog

Still searching for a good way to replace my practice journal with some sort of on-line equivalent, I've set up a sister blog for recording those nitty-gritty lesson and rehearsal notes and time logs. For some reason I find myself resistant to posting those here. I think maybe I feel a little too much desire to please my few readers, and not totally bore you with the details.

However, in the event that some one of you is interested in following along, my new blog is actually entitled gottagopractice. At least I followed the rule of reflecting the blog name in the address this time. You'll notice that it's on Wordpress instead of Blogger, and the only reason I did that is that it's relatively easy to make a grid in a Wordpress post, and extremely tedious to do that here. (I like the Blogger widgets much better, though.) I'll put a link to the feed in the feeds section of my sidebar.

Bach Suite 2 Sarabande Take 1

Found time. T- called to cancel my lesson yesterday due to illness (get well soon, T-), and while I hate to miss a cello lesson, with the roads as bad as they are right now it meant an extra three hours to... what?... yes, practice. At least part of it.

So, feeling happy that I can finally play through the Sarabande from the 2nd Suite, and since I haven't posted a practice clip in a long while, I thought I'd record it once through without repeats and do my own lesson this week.



OK, the obvious stuff. I really, really must do something about that facial tic. It has improved so much that I thought it was completely gone, but IT'S NOT! No wonder T- has me grinning and doing other distractions while playing at my lessons. I also notice that a few head tossing mannerisms have snuck in now that my hair has grown a little longer and is getting in my eyes and under my left fingers occasionally.

I moved the stand far off to the right side (since I don't have this memorized) to be out of the way of the camera, and I wonder how much extra tension is induced just because I am turning my head farther than it should be. It will be interesting to compare another recording after it's memorized. In a few weeks, maybe. (Hah!)

I'm not too unhappy with the playing. Could still use some intonation work, and would like to improve the sound quality of the chords. Maybe make them a little longer so they ring more, which I can probably do by relaxing and convincing myself psychologically that I have more time than I think. I'm still not landing the upper notes right on the beat, so need to look at timing for the chords, too. I think my rhythms are correct, finally, but please correct me if I'm wrong.

Other than that, it's just more of the usual. Shifts, string crossings, vibrato, yada, yada.

The cello sounds much, much better than it did in my first recording. I broke three strings in the past month, having never broken one since I started playing. The original D stretched by breaking the core on the peg, and I replaced the A and D with Jarger mediums. The original G broke the same way, and I replaced it with a Pirastro Permanent. Sounded kinda wussy, so I wasn't too mad when I broke it stupidly by cranking it instead of the C string after a pre-concert peg-popping incident, when I was in a hurry and not paying sufficient attention to what I was doing. Replaced it with a Jargar medium, which had a smooth sound but seemed to make the whole cello tight and muted. So changed it out for a Prim a couple of days ago. I still have the original Spirocore chromesteel C. Sounds good now, so I'll leave it alone until I break another string.

Don't worry, this is just a short diversion. My next practice log post is under construction.

Practice Journal

It's snowing (again). I'm sitting in the office, surrounded by lights (this winter thing doesn't really agree with me) and cats (mostly sleeping on the desk and surrounding chairs). I'm just about to finish my (first, large) morning cup of coffee, looking at my schedule, and wondering what (if anything) to write about today. This post has been percolating in the back of my mind for a while now, but I had no idea of how long until I took a look at my drafted (but never finished) posts. Wow, a whole page-worth, and I started this one on December 7, 2006. I suppose I should write it today, before it celebrates an anniversary in limbo.

My original idea when I started this blog was to use it as an on-line practice journal. Nine months after the idea was conceived and I set it up, I finally began, not with practicing, but with foster kittens. It's been a duality since then, schizophrenic in common parlance, though that is a completely inaccurate use of the word. But it works for me.

I played the 'cello off and on (and mostly off) for a decade before the 'cello-bug bit me and I decided to get passionate about learning to play it well. Along with finding a new teacher (T2-) who was willing to do some serious technical work with an adult, I started a practice journal to organize my goals and my work. After surveying all of the commercial products available at the time (not nearly as many as now), I pronounced them all inadequate and made my own. Thanks to some nifty plastic ring binders I found at Staples, I made up an official-looking journal for each year of study.

This is a random page from the third year:


You know what? If I write everything I want to about the elements in this journal, and my thoughts about what I am in transition to, well, lets just say it exceeds the standard scope of a blog post. So consider this the inauguration of a series. Tomorrow I'll describe the sections for you.

Or not. That's the nice thing about a blog. No commitments <g>.

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.

Scales and arpeggios

I came across a link to an awfully cute video while catching up in the Internet Cello Society forums, and it inspired me to write a bit about how I have changed my scale practice recently. If you're a 'cello person, read on. If you are a cat person, go straight to the video. If you're neither, why are you here?

Anyway, my inspiration was in a comment on Jason Heath's Double Bass Blog, later featured in a separate post. You can read the whole comment over there, but the meat of it was a description of Rabbath's recommendation for how to practice scales using a system of 282 bowing and 130 fingering permutations, with increasing practice lengths to build endurance. I don't have access to the Rabbath method, but I do have the Galamian scales transcribed and edited by Hans Jorgen Jensen. This includes two sections, one of scale patterns, and one of bowing permutations. I would imagine they might be similar.

For the past two years I have practiced 4 octave scales with uniform fingering patterns and accelerating notes under one bow: MM=88, 4 beats/bow, first linked half notes, followed by quarter notes, then eighth notes in three patterns, then sixteenth notes until I crash and burn. I was beginning to feel a bit uninspired, and admit to skipping scale practice on more than one occasion.

So I adapted Benjy's advice to the Galamian scales. For the past couple of weeks I have set a timer for 30 minutes, chosen a scale of the day, and after a run-through with linked half-notes to make sure I have the fingering down, am loosened up, and my vibrato is working, I play quarter notes, up and down, using a different bowing pattern each time, just moving sequentially along. At the end of the day I place a check mark next to the last variation I did, and the next day start with the following one.

It does keep things interesting, especially now that I am into variations that have five notes under the bow with various patterns of legato and staccato notes under the slur. I told T- what I was doing, and he heartily approved any plan that gets me "more time in the saddle," and also pointed out how the uniform fingerings for the scales facilitates the bowing variations.

So anyway, if you're bored with your scales, there's another inspiration. And here's a little song:

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.

Chunky Bach Update

You may recall that 'way back in August I undertook the project of learning the Bach two-part invention in C Major on the piano, inspired by Josh at Joshua Nemith's Cincinnati Pianist Blog. He went to the very great trouble of outlining a practice approach for the early intermediate student who was facing this piece as their first can't-tame-it-in-one-gulp project.

It's a little over three months now, and yes, I am still working on it. The first month was very hard going, initially at a pace of two measures/practice hour. After the two-week break of my vacation it was memorized, but not reliable. I started playing it for my teacher in group lesson, frustrated, as usual, at my inability to recover when I screwed up. I think she thought it was in worse shape than it actually was for quite some time.

Three weeks ago I added the ornaments, which engendered another learning curve and regression in progress. But I am pleased to report that I played it entirely through in class today, recovering each of the half-a-dozen times I faltered. Go, me!

Our piano teacher would like for me and my fellow student to perform a piece for the class of less-advanced students that meets before us, perhaps two weeks from now. Next week we'll perform for each other. (This week was separately for the teacher, using earphones. It's a piano lab with e-pianos.) So today, after class, I sat down and recorded my first performance practice. I was still relatively warm from class, so I recorded my first attempt. I would expect to perform slightly worse than this if I had to do so right now, as I find performing in person more nerve-wracking than playing for the recorder.

One thing I have found, now that I can play through pretty well, is that that's all I want to do. I love playing this piece! So for the next week I'm committing myself to one play-through per day. That's it. It can be the first thing, or the last thing, or something in the middle, but only once. I'll spend my actual practice time working on starting each bar independently, from the end of the piece backward. I need more rescue ramps. Plus I'll do extra repetitions of each of the ornaments and getting into them, where most of my falters occur. I should probably do some slower metronome work, too, to help fight my tendency to rush when I am playing it under tempo like this.

I'll check back in in a month or two.

Mobile post sent by gottagopractice using Utterz.  Replies.  mp3

BTW, that cute little skinny bar is the mp3 player. I'm liking Utterz.

Little Black Book

Well, big black book. Or, big but not-too-thick black book. Actually, it's a 3/4" black 3-ringed binder. It's my practice partner.

I don't exactly live in two cities. I know this because I have cats in only one city. I do, however, have cellos in two. And I frequently visit the one without the cats, and have chamber music play dates there, and want to practice while I'm there. To facilitate that I photocopy all of the pieces I am working on, punch holes, and put them in the notebook. To go city hopping I throw it in a backpack and go. To go to my cello lesson I throw it in a music bag and go. To look up anything I am currently working on I grab one book and it's there. Takes a little up-front work, but really simplifies things.

Until... the notebook gets full. Like now. I should have done this at the start of this academic year, but I didn't. Because I wanted to do this, which I'm doing now. The changing of the book.

To mark the next era in my cellistic development, and remember the last, I'm going to list the contents before I remove them (or not). This is what I worked on last year. I'll mark the stuff that stays with +, the stuff to be filed elsewhere with -.

+ Directions to Studio Class location as many times as I've been there, sometimes I forget
- Excel spreadsheets with a log of Cello Gym exercises for left hand, right hand, and third hand (brain) a failed experiment
+ Bach 2nd Suite this will take at least another year
+ Faure Elegie started over the summer, this year's project
- Tchaikovsky Chanson Triste move to review
- Breval Sonata in C Allegro move to review
- Yampolsky E MAJ 4 octave scale and arpeggio variations
- Sevcik Op 8 I, II, VII, VIII, XXIII-XXVI I'll use the book when I'm here, and make up shifting exercises elsewhere if I'm so inclined
- Jensen Fun in Thumb Position preparatory exercises and 5 lessons
+ Saint-Saens The Swan I use this as a thumb exercise (swan on the thumb) and rarely need to look at it anymore, but it's nice to have it there when I do
+ Grutzmacher 13 first thumb position etude, will stay in the book until it's memorized
+ Grutzmacher 14
+ Duport 4,6,10,19
+ Grutzmacher 1 can't complain I don't have an etude to practice
+ Lee Op 31 1-8 still do these periodically, will probably stay here until I move beyond #8
+ Popper HS 6 for extra credit
- Goltermann Concerto #4 1st year project, move to review
- Romberg Sonata in e 1st year summer project, move to review
- Bach Suite #2 Prelude, Continental ed. I'll look it up if I need it
- Grieg Sonata Op 36 will pull it out if I need it again
+ Bach Arioso my first piece with T-. I like to beat my ahead against the wall.
- Schubert Trio in B hard. But I'm not working on it right now.
- Schubert Song Cycle I was supposed to use these for thumb position practice, but that never worked out

In the back pocket
- some cryptic notes about a piece with sections and patterns, but I have no idea what it is toss
- a copy of the famous Leclerc/Ramaeu duet move to duets folder
- Gabrielli Canon a due return to duets folder
- an uncompleted financial disclosure form for a journal article what's that doing in here?
- yet another Bach 2nd Suite, I think the Icking downloaded version
- Previn Vocalise score and cello part was I going to work on that with someone here?
- two pages of something in Eb beginning on m 104, with one line of treble clef and one marking: lamentevole. What on earth is this from?
+ de Swert 25 a nice warm-up exercise from the T2- era

In the front pocket
- A few pages from a Duport Sonata in G another huh?
- a copy of our wedding arrangement of All You Need is Love file
- a few pages of master class and lesson notes mine for blog topics, then file
- a music school tuition receipt or two file
- assorted concert flyers toss

Plenty of room now for another year of celloing.

October Practice Month

I wonder why September marks the start of new seasons for musicians. Yet another holdover from summers off for harvest? Or preparation for amusement during the long dark days of Winter? I surely appreciate the latter. If we have as much snow this winter as we've had rain this autumn, I'll be suffering from severe cabin fever shortly.

Now that my own musical activities are back in full swing, I find that I am again looking for a little tune-up in the practice department. More efficient = more activities I can participate in, you know. So I am delighted to find a couple of blogs that are focusing on practice, one for the month of October, and the other as its raison d’être.

If you haven't already, join me in studying Chris Foley's The Collaborative Piano Blog and Ben Clapton's Music Practice Tips this month.