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