And The Guilt Goes On...

Lost 5 days to being "under the weather". Must have picked up a bug from the airplane trip back from Baltimore. I have to focus on accomplishing SOMETHING, ANYTHING rather than feeling guilty. I only have two weeks to practice before I leave on my trip to Russia.
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Received feedback from one of my teacher friends yesterday on the M3 Video.

OK...there are many measures where you are getting a nice cello tone . The weakest measures are those bars with 4 (and sometimes 2) eighth notes. Play those short runs slowly in practice trying not to “swallow” any of the eighths...you may be rushing some of those runs. See if those shorter notes can be initialized from the fingers and wrist, not from the arm (right hand). Watch particularly your attacks on the quarters...not accents but they need a good and defined start which comes from the fingers and wrist, too. We used to work on articulation by exaggerating the motion with the grand detache’ in order to refine the smaller motions. Those grand detache’s are awful to play but the method actually works.

The first measure’s dotted quarters and the 2nd dotted quarter in the 3rd measure is too short and stacatto....make them rounder. Don’t swallow the last quarter of the 2nd measure, either (the c). In measures 5 and 6, but especially in 5 you are running a bit... hold back on the 8ths with out slowing the tempo....refer to the first 3 quarters in the first measure for timing.

The first line of the second subject is really very nice. In the 15th measure, the quarters are a bit too legato for my taste. Watch the half note f in measure 15...it’s flat (well, it’s “natural” but it’s sounding a bit flat!).

You're playing amazing well after only a short time which makes this kinda fun to do. - C

29th day

I'm back in Miami after being up North for a two week Spring vacation with friends and family. There's this whole reality shift thing going on. I wasn't ready to leave for vacation and now I don't seem quite ready to come back to real life. Did a lot of warming up on scales. Let's see if I remember how to read bass clef.

28th day

Well thought I'd post this progress video before running away for two weeks.

Also, that same friend who asked for a video at day 14, asked when the next video would be up.

Could be better, could be worse.

I think the bowing's improved. Notes need to ring more and be more articulated -- more fingers and wrist work.

OOPS...what's with hitting two strings at one time :)

So here it is folks, the 28th day - less two days off for good behavior???



Link
M3

Vid Advice

Thought I'd share the advice I received from my string teacher friends re: my videos M1 & M2.

Bravo! Bravo! No kidding, very impressive.

Left hand looks very good. Sound and intonation very good, too.

The slant of the bow hand (technical term, "pronatian" defined as positional rotation of the hand and forearm) is not necessarily an incorrect position for the hand, although the standard way to hold the bow does have the hand positioned so that it is perpendicular to the bow. You might consider practicing using both approaches alternatively, sometimes using this standard way and sometimes using a pronated position of the hand.

There is another issue concerning the bow. The standard way of playing would have your bow tilting the bow stick away from the bridge and the bow hair closer or tilting into the direction of the bridge. This is the opposite of how you were tilting the bow. The standard tilt of the bow is better. You may also want to consider playing with no tilt of the bow with the bow stick and bow hair positioned perpendicular to the strings, a non-standard way playing that Suzuki method uses for violin and that may well apply to cello.

Anyway, you seem to have made a lot of progress. It appears that you have greatly benefited from having played the violin first, as I expected.

Practice, practice, practice. - R

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I’ve listened a few times with the music in front of me...at least the Bourree. Still, really amazing for two weeks! The eighth notes need to come from the fingers and wrist so they sound more articulated, especially in the 5th and 6th measures. In the minuet: on the um-pah-pah measures (2nd & 4th meas). The pah-pah’s are too stacatto. They need to be separate, yes, but they need a little more bow and “ringing” so the sound don’t die as quickly. Maybe more of a pah-pah instead of a det-det. So much easier to do in person where one can demonstrate then over e-mail...this is a first for me! The first note of those measures can be “rounder”, too (the “um”!)

... The ear can easily detect the difference between notes where the attack is generated by the arm or forearm and those notes which are articulated by the fingers and/or wrist. It’s the tell-tale difference between classically trained string players and fiddlers...well, that and acute pitch discretion. The bow articulation comes from the right hand but the left can help in regards to keeping a tone “ringing” helping make shorter notes “rounder”

... Still, many measures on the video show thoughtful shaping of phrases. On the minuet make the first quarter in measures with 3 quarters longer than the the other 2 (2nd and 4th measures, etc, and opening of the 2nd section [17]). I don’t like the printed slurs in 17 and 18.

...Also leave retards to the penultimate measure in music of this period. Don’t forecast the end of a section by slowing down measures before the end (the Bourree). It stuck out only because you controlled the tempo so well in the rest of the Bourree as well as the minuet. - C

Fun With Midis

Finally got my photoscore program to work and scanned the Suzuki Cello Book 2, page 8 Minuet into a midi. Changed the tempo to relatively slow with Finale 2006. Converted to mp3 then burned 10 copies onto an audio CD. Will have fun playing along with that. Great when the computer cooperates. The only thing I need to do next time is add starter notes before the beginning measure as a ready, set go.