A Chart Decline

Boring cello stats:

Cello practice weeks 53-60 (35 days)

Total of 24.5 hours. Avg 3/4 hr per day.

Bow, left hand, thumb, trill, vibrato exercises every day

Suzuki pieces 4x

Chamber music pieces 32x

Romantic pieces 1x

A drop from the last stat report in February where I was averaging 1.5 hours a day. Tax Season took its toll.  I also switched to a two week planner exercise page which seemed to lose the visual incentives I had when I was using a monthly.  I'll switch back.  Maybe I can get some good practice in before I run away to Europe May 17th.  

First Cello Lesson

I was blessed today with a visit from Emily Wright. She graciously showed me a few things and suggested that I move away from the violinistic right hand position. She showed me an exercise to help with the switch.  R would disagree but I think I shall make the attempt. She thought my bow hand looked pretty good. We also covered thumb position and breathing. She suggested humming or speaking the notes to help with breathing out while playing.  Thus went my very first cello lesson. Who knows, maybe I'll see her again when she does her Northeastern tour.  

Emily's overview on thumb position. Note: Play close to the bridge. First finger can actually stop the string from the right side of the string rather than just pressing down.  She showed me all this is in slow motion.  This video was taken afterwards just as a memory aid.

Computer Crash and Boring Stats

I really should have known better than hit "update" on my desktop computer. Windows Service Pack 3 tried to install and the computer refused to boot up afterwards. Had to do an HP system restore. At least I didn't lose any data.

Boring cello stats:
Cello practice weeks 49-52 (25 days)
Total of 40 hours. Avg 1.5 hrs per day.
Bow, left hand, thumb, trill, vibrato exercises every day
Suzuki pieces 18x
Chamber music pieces 10x
Romantic pieces 6x

Schubert, Schumann, Breval, and No Shows

Our violinist canceled at the last minute for chamber music this evening. Normally, if I know a violinist will be out, I can tap hubby to fill in. But this happened too late. So we had a pianist play the violin part for the Schubert Trout and we limped through it. I had marked up a score without measure numbers and that proved to be a hindrance as well.

Since we didn't have the violinist, we skipped rehearsing the Schumann for the second week in a row. At least this time, I hadn't been practicing it all week.

At the end of class, the violist was working up a Bruch piece, so I grabbed a pianist to try out the Breval in super slow mode. The run through wasn't too bad. Only missed a few notes and the mordents. I knew the piece well enough that when we got off track, it was fixable. Who knows, maybe I'll get to play it for this term's recital.

Progress Report on memorizing Suzuki Book I. I'm having my usual issue with remembering which notes are slurred.

Caught Cheating

R had me play thru etude on Book I today with one of the students. Unfortunately, I did forget a few phrases on a couple of pieces and had to look them up.  R came in and closed the book on me. Also insisted that I leave 1 down while playing ext. 4 for the last piece in the book. That's gonna hurt!

Short Term Goal

Now that I've overwhelmed my senses reviewing 500 years of art history in two days.  I'll try to focus on a short-term cello goal.  

January 31st will mark a year of cello practice for me.  Yeah, yeah, I know I started the cello and this blog April of 2007 but after discounting time off travelling, I'm just now coming to the 52 week mark.  

Anyway, my goal is to be able to play the Suzuki book I with the CD from memory by the end of the month.  I have about two more songs to memorize.  Wish me luck!

A New First

Last month I started timing my cello practice sessions.  When I first started playing cello I could only play about 10 or 15 minutes at a time.  Last night I managed 3 hours!  Whee.

Countdown 37 and Boring Stats

Cello practice weeks 44-48 (out of 35 days)
57% Minuets 20
54% Bow exercises 19
28% Lully 10
22% Left hand exercises 8
20% Thumb 7
20% Book I exercises 7
20% Bouree 7
14% Brevel 5

Started using timer
Week 46: 4 hrs
Week 47: 2 hrs
Week 48: 4 hrs
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Humanities Studies
Philosophy: Ideas that Shaped Mankind
Lecture 7 Age of Sages
Religion - Ideas of Creation, Matter arising from pure thought, One Universal G-d, Divine Love, Man as Master of the World

Lecture 8 Ideas about Religion
.William of Ockham 14c - denounces advocates of reason for forcing G-d's behavior into channels permitted by logic "necessitarianism" /
.St. Augustine of Hippo (4c) Mysticism - Doctrine of Illumination

Lecture 9 Renaissance and the Scientific Revolution
.The Columbian Exchange - separated continents are re-seeded with plants, animals, etc. carried with people across the oceans.
.Hermes Trismegistus (Greek patron of magic) Hermetism - humans could do magic and influence nature - alchemists, magicians, hermetists.
.Sir Francis Bacon (scientific method - experiments and observations with consistent results).
.Rene Descartes (rationalist tradition -- I doubt,therefore I exist) People believe in their own realities but deny the reality of everything else.
.Niccolo Machiavelli - The Prince "The State exists only for its own ends"
.Bartolome de las Casas Dominican Friar (16th c)- mankind as a single moral community -- the family of man: Universality of mankind.
.Hugo Grotius - doctrine of international law and state sovereignty


Literature: Harlem Renaissance Tie-together
Nicolas Vachel Lindsay (The Congo/Prairie Troubadour) claims to have discovered
Langston Hughes (Soul is a River / Dream Deferred)
Lorraine Hansberry's play - "A Raisin in the Sun" about an African American family in Chicago.

Literature: Poetry Devices

spondee consists of two stressed syllables one after the other, as in the first two syllables of “ripe apples.”

Iambic pentameter consists of ten-syllable lines in which unstressed syllables are followed by stressed syllables in a regular pattern.

Alliteration, the repetition of consonant sounds

Assonance, the repetition of vowel sounds

Enjambment, in which a pause or caesura occurs naturally in the middle of a line rather than at the end.

Synaesthesia, the description of one kind of sensation in terms of another kind (as in “a delicious vision”)

Literature: Novel technques

Indirect discourse is a technique in which the narrator mimics the voice or thoughts of a character without actually quoting the character or using the character’s voice.

picaresque is the novel form used to describe journeys whose aim or destination is unclear from the outset. Tom Jones by Henry Fielding is a picaresque novel.

Fine Arts: Music
Beethoven describes his first movement of the 5th symphony as "Fate knocking on the door"

More Than A Year

Looking over my practice sheets today made me realize that even though I started the cello over a year ago I'm only on week 45 of practice. I've got a long way to go to reach my 10,000 hours. Played a concert with the Suzuki Music Academy yesterday. Didn't feel confident enough to play without my scores as I hadn't played any of the pieces for over a month. Maybe next time.

More Suzuki

Made a trip up to SMA yesterday and practiced the bass accompaniment for the 3 Minuets with the kids. Still shaky playing Minuet 3 from memory but it's starting to gel. Hope to get those polished plus "O Come Little Children" before the holiday concerts. R asked if I'd like to play the Lully for the concert but I passed -- cluck, cluck, cluck.

Practice ....Practice....Practice

I'm back to the up and down method of practicing. Do exercises until tired (approx 15 minutes). Put cello down, play on the internet, go back and some more exercises until tired, repeat.

I understand from the Pimsleur language method of graduated interval recall that when one learns a phrase, it goes into short term memory and fades. If repeated at the proper interval it can swiftly move from short-term to long-term memory. Let's hope it works for cello as well.

Called Out

Well, I got slammed yesterday for not practicing all week. Teacher threatened to remove me from the recital. Anyway, I promised to practice everyday until the recital next Tuesday and to use extensions rather than shifts to get the B flat (A string), E flat (D string) and A flat (D string). Thanks Emily for that timely video.

Back to School Recital

SMA had their "Back to School" recital today. I played two easy pieces and managed not to flub. There must have been about 70 people in the audience. Maybe I'm finally getting used to playing in public.

Boring stats:
Cello Practice Weeks 41 - 43
Bow exercises 9
Thumb 2
Trill 2
Vibrato 2
Bach Minuets 4
Breval 1
Piano practice 3

I'll be out of town from 8/23 to 9/11. First to Baltimore and New York City, then back to Miami for one day before I run off to Bulgaria with hubby for a week.

Practice Week #40

Boring stats - 7 days (Sunday 6/15- Saturday 6/21)

Bow exercises 4
Bach Minuets 1
Vibrato 2
Suzuki 1
Sight reading 1

Didn't do so well this week, only got 4 days of celloing and no keyboard, two days of trying to get some web work done and a day going over Peru travel arrangements interfered. I did make it up to SMA Saturday. The interstate was still screwed up but I gave myself 90 minutes to get there this time. I was able to get off the interstate and take an alternate route after spending 1/2 hr in virtually nonmoving traffic.

Excitement for the week was finalizing my Southern Peru itinerary with friend, Rusela, and my hubby. The airfare had gone down so our tickets ended up costing $514 each which is pretty reasonable. Also booked Pay Purix hostel 3k from the airport for the days coming and going from Lima for $28 a room.

The netflix experiment has gone well. The instant video is fun but hubby is finicky and hard to please. The problem is we currently subscribe to blockbuster. Don't want to do both. May put blockbuster on hold for three months and switch back and forth with netflix for a while.

Hubby is feeling better but stamina is low. He still wants a ride to work and back. Normally, he'd take the metro. Also, South Florida has been having a lot of thunderstorms, no fun getting drenched. Still it's a dangerous commute driving the 3 miles into downtown Miami. There's always a strong chance of getting one's car bashed by some frustrated SUV.

For fun, I've been budgeting our grocery bill. Hubby tends to buy impulsively but since he's been sick, I've been in charge of getting groceries. My goal is to keep our total grocery bill under $300 a month based on this estimate: $3 a meal x 3 meals/day x 30 days = $270.

Practice Week #39

Boring stats - 7 days (Sunday 6/8- Saturday 6/14)

Bow exercises 5
Bach Minuets 2
Swan 2
Thumb 2
Vibrato 3
Trill 2
Suzuki 2
Sight reading 1

KB Hanon 4
KB Marche 3
KB Scales 2
----
It's a start -- at least I did the 20 minutes of bowing exercises 5 times this past week. I was hoping to make it up to the Academy last Saturday. Despite traffic being light thanks to the gasoline prices, the powers-that-be decided to block all traffic lanes except one heading northbound. Decided that I'd be best off running errands instead of sitting in traffic for two hours and headed southbound.

Life's starting to get back to normal. Have to focus and try get some client work done this week. Found some new lovely distractions. Discovered online zynga free poker texas holdem. Very addictive. Will have to limit myself to playing only once or twice a week. Tried out Netflix's online streaming video today. The technology seems promising. I hooked up my laptop to our 26" TV and the video quality is similar to VHS. I've been dreaming of downloadable movies on demand ever since broadband first arrived.

Summer movies have begun. Managed to catch "The Visitor" (worthwhile), "Indiana Jones" (good for 10 yr olds) and "Iron Man" (extremely good for a comic book movie) while I was in Baltimore. Hubby wanted to see "The Happenning" yesterday. He thought it was well done but it left me dissatisfied. I've always liked M. Night's Shyamalan's movies but thought this one to be his weakest.

Buckling Down, Saddling Up, It's Summertime

OK, now that hubby is on the mend, this is the week to get back in some sort of routine after being off games since chamber music class ended.

Summer goal is to work up the first movement of Breval for chamber music class in the fall.

Boring stats for the last 99 days (3/6 - 6/8/08)
32 days on, 57 days off
Bow exercises 32
Corelli 30
Bach Minuets 26
Swan 26
Thumb 18
Vibrato 18
Trill 17
Suzuki 17
Sight reading 9

Oops, noticed I didn't log (1/15 to 3/5/08) 49 days
18 days on, 31 days off
Bow exercises 18
Corelli 8
Bach Minuets 12
Swan 4
Thumb 4
Vibrato 2
Trill 3
Suzuki 6
Sight reading 6

Visualization

Old style vs. new:

Something about filling in a box has made practicing more fun.

Some of these exercises only take a minute to do. When I look at the chart, one thinks, despite being tired, "ah what the heck, let's do the darn exercise so I can fill in that box."

First Quarter Check

Reviewing goals for 2008:

• Hold off further work on the Swan until I get vibrato down.
  ... Chamber music teacher wants to see me use vibrato. He's happy with my sound and intonation.
• Work up Allegretto movement from K.564, Mozart Piano Trio for chamber piece.
  .... Haven't looked at it.
  
• Work on Bouree (M1) for solo piece.
  .... On and off, my husband says my Swan sounds better than my Bouree at this stage. I can't tell if that's a compliment or an insult. Probably the latter :(
  
• Memorize Suzuki Bach Minuet accompaniments so I don't have a stand in front of me when playing SMA concerts.
  .... Minuet 1 and 2 are memorized, 3 is still shaky.
  
• Start work on Suzuki Book One.
  .... Next solo scheduled: Rigadoon
  

You might think it strange that I'm working on really hard pieces and really simple pieces. The trouble with the simple ones is they have to be spot on -- like little gems RC says.

One Month before R-Day

April 15th will be the recital for chamber music class. Having the "Swan" forced upon me certainly has lit a fire on my practice schedule this week. My teacher wants to hear me play it next Tuesday so I'm trying to at least get the notes and rhythm in place by then. I've also been trying to do vibrato exercises. I hated vibrato exercises when I was doing them on the violin. On the cello they don't sound so bad.

2008 Musical Challenge

Received my assignment for chamber music class tonight. Beethoven Piano Quartet, opus 16, Grave and Allegro in E flat Major. It's going to be lots of fun shifting for the high G, A-flat and B-flat notes. I can find the notes when I look at the fingerboard but I won't have that luxury sight reading.

This week officially marks a half year of cello study. I couldn't have imagined when I started six months ago that I would even attempt playing something as hard as this assignment by now.

Boring stats:
12/17-1/14/2008 (4 week period)
1 x Weiner Exercise
3x String crossing exercise
3x Thumb exercise
1x Trill exercise
1x Vibrato exercise
1x Prelude exercise
3x Work on Bach Bouree
1x Work on Swan
3x Scales, thirds, octaves
3x Suzuki exercises
1x Scales with drone
1x Upper bow exercise
3x Silent bow exercise
5x Long bow exercise
5x Circle bow exercise
6x Work on Bach Minuets
4x Double stop exercise
1x Reading Suzuki Cello Book I