Lesson 131 - Goens' Tarantella

Today's lesson started with me forgetting to bring my bow :/

Deryn says this is normal and it even happens to her. Once for a performance, she had to borrow a violin bow where it almost ended badly - never use a violin bow to play the cello, with the force needed to play on one, you might break it!

I've recently been practicising 2 octave scales on one string and slow vibrato so the higher registers on the fingerboard has been more comfortable.

Also noticed that my bow tend to scrape the left side of the cello as well as the outside bit of my thigh when playing on the A string, especially whilst playing on the higher registers. Turns out I was letting the angle of the bow slack instead of being parallel and staying on the point of focus. Actually, to be honest, this has been happening for quite some time except I've been far too focused on the left hand to give it any notice!

The new piece, Tarantella, should be played delicately. It starts off soft, not loud like most tarantellas even if most videos on Youtube are performed that way.

When learning the score, I realised that the deceptively simple notes were paired with really advanced bowing. It took me a tonne of tries just getting the first two bars comfortable enough to proceed. There were also many long slurred phrases favoured by upbows so physical stamina was one of the things I needed to tackle urgently.