Lesson 43 - A scale a day, position familiarity

When asked about the progress I've made since last week, I mentioned that I found second position harder to settle into than the 3rd position. Deryn finds that this seems the norm for beginner cellists and with diligent practise, can be tackled successfully.

I have spent last week mostly with reacquainting myself with the new bow hold along with the new positions and the new studies accompanying them. Most of the time, I was really digging into Bunting's Portfolio of Cello Exercises, specifically the bow regime which I can't recommend enough of. Just one play through of the regime and every bow stroke afterwards feel like a hot knife through butter; the ease and more importantly, no muscles or limbs hurting. Everything suddenly falls into place and cello playing becomes the most natural thing to do with all those limbs and ligatures.

Of course, the regime is to be done before each and every practise as warm up lest the body forgets her relationship with the cello. I find that with just one day without practise, I lose a lot in terms of comfort and body position; as if the body has forgotten all those previous months of playing as a result of a sudden loss of memory. This was a painful lesson to learn!

Now if I find that I haven't allocated enough time to practise or if work has left me too exhausted or even if it's too late in the night to serenade the neighbours, I will still force myself to spend time with the cello doing simple things like fingering exercises, open string bowing, plucking scales or just holding the bow just to remind the body of this cello familiarity. So far, this routine has made me more confident in my approach during practise.

We played through the second position exercises where Deryn went into more details about the technique including target practice exercises from Rick Mooney's Position Pieces which, along with Deryn's own crafted exercises, should help me on my way to tackling those second position blues.

Later, we moved on to scales using Feuillard's Daily Exercises Chapter 19 where I am to learn one scale a day utilising the very effective universal fingering pattern on all neck positions that I am now familiar with. Deryn says it will be about 22 days till I cover all the scales - A month of scales it is then! :}

Finally, Deryn helped me through that fiddly end bit of Popper No. 5 which has left me in tatters due to horrible string crossings and vague fingerings galore. I realised that I was approaching the problem in a less effective way so the results were not as desirable as it could have been. With Deryn's assistance, she's helped me clear up intonation issues which was caused by a fourth finger that kept extending when it shouldn't and a second finger which pretended it was a third. My phrasing was also horrible and in dire need of assessment or rather, in dire need of attention! I kept hearing this horrible end to the piece and never thought for once that I could have changed it musically; blaming it instead on my weak grasp of the bow and fingering.

Just now when I got home and practised the phrase again, I remembered what Deryn adviced in class and applied it to my playing. That natural feeling came again and suddenly, I was at peace with Nameless again and she wasn't fighting me when I played her! I even tried it at a ridiculous speed and it was flawless. I can't wait to play it as a duet next week!