Lesson 51 - The detachable thumb

After watching a video recording of myself playing a piece for Deryn last week, two things occurred to me - that my fear of playing for Deryn was so obvious when I thought I was hiding it pretty well and that I was not at all 'one with the cello' or rather, I forget what mattered most when it comes down to it and that was focusing on the techniques to serve the music instead of projecting a fear of rejection/failure to impress my teacher.

Thank you again, FerneKlang for your suggestions to overcome this. Lessons with Deryn are always a pleasure and one of the few things I look forward to on a weekly basis. Sometimes, even after many a laughter, I forget to enjoy the lessons and appreciate that she is there to teach me not judge me and making mistakes is part of getting better. In other words, I need to ease up. A lot!

Today, I somehow managed to do that. After almost a year, I am finally trying to see the bigger picture and started the lesson by confessing this irrational fear of performing for her. I suppose you could say a huge weight was lifted off my shoulders, back and sides! This definitely helped my approach to today's lesson.

We began with Langin's position changes exercises where instead of shifting to different positions on the first finger, we started with the fourth finger. This was trickier than it seems in theory due to the non-played anchor notes but Deryn provided simple audible shifting exercises that she made up on the spot to deal with this and soon, I was able to play it with confidence where previously, it was mostly a 'cross your fingers' approach with plenty of intonation issues. The 'trick' being audible shifts using the first finger to feel and recognise the distance to land on the next position also on the first finger before plonking down the fourth finger, keeping the fingers apart at all times instead of scrunching them in a bunch.

The main improvements from this exercise was recognising that my arm was lower in the first position which made me lift it slightly each time I had to move to the fourth position and my thumb was not sitting comfortably in the nook of the cello where the body meets the neck. Instead, it was trying to detach itself away from cello neck which made the whole hand shape awkward. To overcome this, I made the fourth position as the starting point of where my arm should be. This way, when I'm moving to the first position, there is no lifting or lowering of the arm as it is at it's most economical height and angle.

We did this until I was able to naturally just locate all the positions without the nervousness and uncertainty that comes to moving fast on the fingerboard. Then Deryn pop quizzed me on notes found on the extended 3rd position on the G string. Taken aback, you could definitely say I suffered from a temporary brain freeze. I've studied this so many times before, why couldn't I recognise the notes? Instead, I blurted out every key possible and none of which was the right one! Now when I think about it, it was obvious what the notes were.

From this, Deryn derived a neat trick to remembering note intervals with popular tunes for those times you weren't sure if you were playing notes a major third apart or a diminished fourth. We have yet to find a piece that describes a major seventh interval :}

Anyway, before the lesson was over, I played Marcello's Sonata with the horrible video performance in mind. This time, I pretended Deryn was invisible and not judging me but instead, I was playing for myself and my own enjoyment and it was alright to move with the cello and smile and be embarrassingly non-self conscious. It worked! I had a better tone and I was relaxed and did not rush into the notes or phrases. Now, to remember this for future lessons!