Lesson 54 - Bunting works

I was much calmer and relatively more confident when I arrived for lessons today. For that, I will thank Mr. Bunting and his Bowing Regime. Notice how I wax lyrical about this routine yet hardly practise the preach. It is only till recently when I observed little to no progress whatsoever on my bowing arm along with the video of myself struggling on the cello that I decided, enough is enough!

And so, with great deliberation, I pursued the task of finally listening to my teacher and practising the regime daily irregardless of my day-to-day obligations. This meant dragging myself to the practise room even when I was dead tired or "not feeling up to it".

Have I mentioned the effects yet? Well, I'm going to stress again the benefits of Bunting's Bowing Regime - get ready for it - it is imperative that one includes the regime if one wants to be better at the cello irregardless of one's cello playing level. You can be a grade 8 or a veteran of 30 years or just a meager beginner like me, the regime will do wonders to your overall cello experience.

And that it has done for me, thus far. I realise that all this "nagging" is purely for my own benefit; for those moments I come back to this post, but you never know :}

Today's lesson started with some position change exercises from Langing Book 3 Chapter 35. We played through most of the examples as warmups before tackling some lovely sight reading of excerpts from various concertos and sonatas found in the later exercises that also focused on position changes. There are some really beautiful pieces here by Handel, Bach, Mozart and many others which would benefit me as practise; especially in terms of expression and interpretation.

This was when Deryn noticed that I had a "tell" when I was concentrating hard on the cello - my head tended to move away from the cello! Finally, the mystery of my aching neck each practise session has been solved. It's funny how it didn't occur to me that I was doing this at all. Still, I guess it's better than making funny faces; apparently a sign that a cellist is tense! When we played through more of the exercises, for each time I felt like I was moving away from the cello, I moved my head towards the cello instead. Surprisingly, Deryn said this minor adjustment now ensured that my head was correctly in balance with my body by being on top and not tilted to the right.

We then had a brief introduction to spiccato on Chapter 36 which involved playing off as opposed to being on the string. This was new to me. Since day one of learning the cello with Deryn, she has always stressed the importance of keeping full contact between bow and string. This taught and conditioned the learner to achieve a good tone and correct bow angle approach. Now it seems I am able to learn playing "off" the string, along with other new bowing techniques; the first being the spiccato.

To achieve this, I first had to find the balance point of my bow which was neither too close nor too far from the frog. Bowing then begins in the air and on to the string from which a natural bounce would occur; always with a loose hand and flexible wrist. This is when you have achieved a correct spiccato.

Finally, I played the study by Sebastian Lee from the New School of Cello Studies Book 2 by Percy Such. This was a rather challenging study as it was mostly made up of slurred string crosses over 8 quavers and my bowing arm was not as fluent as my left. Still, a very enjoyable and beautiful piece to play as it is technically demanding.

Deryn stressed the importance of playing the piece on open strings as that conditions the bowing arm to learn its journey through the piece itself which should decrease the times of uncertainty when the left hand is included. We bowed the first 4 bars more than a few times, just on open strings and then with dynamics, before playing the notes percussively with the left hand and then both left and right together; the effects were immediate. We went through 8 more bars using this same method and the overall tone improved from raspy, whispery uncertain notes to confident, bold strokes.

The piece below is Recorder Sonata Op.1 No 4 A-minor by George Friedrich Handel, one of the many excerpts found in Langin Book 3 to be played as a position change exercise. You may download the piece edited by Norman Schmidt here.