Lesson 39 - Second Position, New piece Grieg

We began today's lesson with a playthrough of Chapter 32 of Langin Book 3, first to fourth position exercises as both a warm up and reminder of where we left off since the last lesson 2 weeks ago.

I've not had as much practise as I'd had hope to have due to being poorly all of last week and a half which severely disrupted any futile attempt at productivity. Still, I managed a meager half hour to an hour when my body allowed me.

Apart from my bowing shoulder rising to the occasion when it shouldn't and my left wrist collapsing to compensate for the extra length of my second finger, all seems well. I'm still juggling with both habits but I foresee this getting better when I focus on either but not neccessarily at the same time; an ongoing thing that needs attending to constantly.

We then proceeded to the interesting bit of the class - the second position. Another position means previously inaccessible parts of the fingerboard has now been revealed to me. This only means I will have a lot more alternative fingerings at my disposal not to mention more pieces :)

There are more landmarks to check for second position than the fourth position. The first finger of the second position goes to the third finger of the first position which makes the fourth finger of the second position the same note as the next open string.

Deryn says along with the audible part of intonation checking, there is also distance learning for each new position shifts. When both instances are learned well, that is when playing through all the positions become natural to the cellist.

After a brief playthrough of Chapter 33, we proceeded to Popper to apply the newly learned second position to the parts available and oh, did that change the entire piece for me! I found that playing on different positions forced me to "think quick" and pay attention to the actual note playing than when I was on that comfortable "first position phase". Now I'm looking at all my previous pieces in a totally different light but most importantly, this will hopefully be the end of those awkward string crosses.

Before the end of class, Deryn thought it time for a new piece for me to play and one that incorporates both fourth and second position and all the other techniques that I've learnt up to this point.



Solveig's Song by Edvard Grieg is such a lovely song and I've been looking up so many different interpretations on youtube so that the piece sounds familiar enough to be played musically when I sight read. The new positions are challenging enough and for some odd reason, I can't help but sneak in vibratos whenever I get a chance to.