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