Lesson 18 - Kinetic touch, vibrato preparations

Today we spent most of the lesson going back to the basics when I conveyed my concerns of tensions and frequent cramps of the left arm. We began with good ole' Christopher Bunting's Kinetic Touch exercises which I tried doing previously but was unable to fully understand the instructions nor achieve the objectives; my left fingers were not strong enough it seems, to "hum" the tones as needed. Of course, the very purpose of these exercises are to strengthen those fingers which I have only come to realise today.

These excellent exercises are definitely going to make a repetitive occurrance in my daily warm-ups as just by doing them today, I was already able to almost simulate what Deryn does to check her tuning; sort of a pecking motion on the string on the note desired. I also noticed that the horrible aches and pains from the tension I experienced previously were not present at all during the entirety of playing these exercises.

Next Deryn suggests I start preparing myself for vibrato exercises, mostly because they also apply as very good basic preparatory means for the left hand position. The exercises from Viva Vibrato! starts by making sure first and foremost that you have the correct sitting posture, that you have access to flexible joints allowing you to move freely and that your cello is in the right position so that you are able to move around (forwards, backwards, left, right and in circles) without your cello slipping away from you.

These were fun and had unforgettable names like, "Swingplop", "HappyTappy" and "Shake Rattle and Roll" which literally explained the physical motions of individual exercises, if you were wondering :)

We ended the lesson with backwards stretch positions by playing exercise 20g - ÜBUNGSSTÜCK in B-Dur mit 2. Cello ad libitum (Exercise in B Flat Major with 2 cellos at one's pleasure) by B.Romberg. I like this piece a lot as it was rather challenging to play all the backward stretches which featured prominently throughout.

As per usual, I do a search for any youtube videos of this being played so that I could perhaps learn from the perfomance be it applying dynamics, proper bowing and/or tempo. Search results usually end up empty possibly because these are just short exercises.