Lesson 37 - Comfort in fourth position

When Deryn inquired about last week's practise, I explained how I felt extremely discouraged due to the comfort level of fourth position and how my finger's extra length is preventing me from achieving the desired positions, so much so it has seriously made me question my overall ability to be a decent cellist or even a cellist at all. What aggravates it even more is when each practise regime feels like a step backwards during the learning of a particularly new method especially when you thought you were closer to understanding it the previous day. Even to this day, I am still learning and relearning the proper bow hold.

Deryn assures me that this is all perfectly natural and part of the learning process but we will first and foremost tackle the left hand comfort issues on the fourth position. I mentioned to Deryn that when I played fourth position in a slow and focused manner, the finger positions felt as natural as possible but all that disappeared when I increased the tempo. Deryn says that it's a good sign that happens as it meant I am improving even if it seemed like I was not; the progress chart will not be a gradual slope. Instead, it will resemble a jagged one but an uphill slope nonetheless.

We started with slow up and down bows on open string with the metronome, 8 beats per bow starting on an up bow and increased the number of beats up to 16. I really do think this is a great warm up as it forges good contact with the strings and promotes a bold, confident tone before you start playing your pieces. It seems I am still bowing at an acute angle when I should be aiming for a nice 90 degrees, especially on the higher strings. This will definitely be addressed more during this week's practise!

We then proceeded to slow scales with the same settings as before and I chose the F major as the basis of this exercise. I noticed that due to the very focused practise I've been doing on the fourth position, my fingers suddenly seem to forget that the spacing between them on the first position is further apart than they are on the fourth position. This made for a rather hilarious playthrough of the F major scales as my fingers compensates for their lack in spacing with considerable shifts. Deryn says I should go easy on them as it is a cold day (-1°C) and they have only just begun to wake up :}

After sufficient warming up, we went on to extended positions on the fourth position. The fourth position is the first time I genuinely felt really challenged by the cello in terms of actual comfort and also the first time I felt almost defeated in this endeavour. However, all is not lost!

With Deryn's persistence, patience and ingenuity, she has devised a way for me to overcome my finger's extra length; by using extended fingering instead of the suggested fingering, ie. 1-2-3 instead of 1-3-4. Deryn says men or people with larger fingers usually choose this path over the traditional one and due to my situation, I might find this direction more comfortable as in the end, the fingering does not matter as it's purpose is to serve the music which is top priority. Of course, one needs to know the basics first.

This has definitely put my mind at ease and has made me gain more confidence in playing the cello again!

We then went through 2 new chapters from Langin book 3, combining first and fourth position with different bowing styles. From this, I am now able to play the G major scale using both positions. I am to practise the exercises found in these chapters for the upcoming week and incorporate vibrato to the notes after I land on them. This will be fun :}

Finally, we went through Popper's Etude No. 5, a piece I have had a considerable amount of fun time on from the first playthrough. Of course, nothing beats playing it as a duet with an awesome teacher!