Lesson 132 - Bow notes

I've decided to return to having weekly lessons as the fortnight ones seemed bad for my focus. Switching to fortnight was a decision made for me due to redundancy - I decided that cello was better for my sanity than food was and the sacrifice was totally worth it.

My current budget is able to stretch back to weekly lessons, thankfully so I'm looking forward to not slacking away to procrastination-ville.

We started the lesson the usual way - Deryn asks what I've been working on and I respond with current struggles. Recently it's been my bowing arm - a very much neglected appendage and when I think about it, unfairly so.

Apart from the usual Bunting exercises, the variations on page 40 of Feuillard's (1, 2 & 3 for now) should arm me with sufficient finger dexterity and bowing exercises to tackle the difficult passages from Elegie and Tarantella. Playing through the notes slowly with separate bows before going through the variations without the left hand is a great way to get the bow arm familiar with the many string crosses that appear under one bow stroke. We did this several times before increasing the tempo; the fastest I got was under 60 on the metronome. Deryn says I should double the tempo each time I have a run through until I'm comfortable at hopefully 120 or so. Or at least before it becomes infeasible for my fingers to manage.