Lesson 67 - 6th Position, Movement 2

Today's cello lesson came off as a bit of a surprise. Fortnight lessons instead of weekly ones do that to me apparently. It also does not help that I get terribly excited the night before lessons so I tend to suffer great bouts of insomnia unless I force myself to bed usually at 6am and then getting up at 9am for lessons! Although it has to be said that the routine has definitely made the learning process more casual than the previous schedule. Now I can pace my practise regime generously and without even putting in too much of an effort, I can easily chalk up 2 to 3 hours of practise per day instead of the condensed hourly sessions to show my efforts in class each week.

Apart from focused discipline which I truly lack, I am finding it less difficult to make my cello sing; at least more so than the caterwauling it used to do. Even the small nuances are detected now with my biggest contender being intonation - I tend to play too flat. I also tend to play without the aid of a metronome and instead play by "feel" which I found to be not as accurate if a piece is unfamiliar. It hasn't gotten me into trouble yet but this habit definitely needs a good seeing to. Whether that will happen any time soon is another question!

So today we revised all 5th position techniques before heading in to 6th position exercises. Oddly, I found it easier at 6th than 5th and then Deryn tells me this is due to the notes being closer together in the higher registers :)

We went through the Langin exercises where paired positions really help consolidate the target keys for the new positions. Now I am also able to play the scales with added octaves that were not accessible before.

And finally, the second movement of the Marcello sonata of which I had no guide or recordings to refer to. Even with Deryn playing through it for me in class today, it still did not give me a sense of the whole piece until we played it as a duet. My goodness, what a lovely, lovely tune.

I was playing at a really slow speed mostly due to the unfamiliarity of the piece but during class today, I had the luxury of Deryn playing it with me and increasing the tempo as we go along and now I feel positively confident to tackle it on my own at the proposed speed.

When we were done, Deryn asked if I was at all comfortable with memorising my pieces or if I was doing it anyways which I was. I find it more freeing to not be tied to a music stand and most days just pick my cello up, plonk myself somewhere in the apartment (usually in the room with less people) and just play to my heart's content. Some days I would play all the tunes I'd have memorised - my favourites being the romantic ones like Saint Saens and Grieg - or just the ones with many movements so I can play with the cello for longer. And I would pretend to play it to an audience of one - my favouritest person in the entire world; without fear of judgement. This is absolutely my preferred way of practising and the method has proven itself to be a huge stress reliever and possibly the only thing in the world to cheer me up when future seems bleak.

And some days I would focus entirely on techniques and exercises especially scales. Scales that I'm still struggling with especially when it comes to recognising the geography of the fingerboard.



Here is the first movement with Deryn playing all 4 sections :} I'm lucky to have a teacher who cares to record entire movements and pieces for her students so that they can practise and play along at their own terms.