Lesson 70 - Last lesson of year 2013

We've had to reschedule my lesson a week earlier otherwise my next lesson would have fallen on new years day. This means I've only had about 3 days of practise since my last lesson due to 4 of those being spent away from the cello and with family and festivities instead.

Of course there was also the frantic housecleaning and redecorating for the parents' arrival so I managed a measly couple of hours a day at the most. Still, I tried my best to get in as much practise time before seeing Deryn to make it worthwhile.

For today's lesson, I requested that we focus on the techniques specifically on the thumb during shifts. We played one octave of the C major scale on the A string with focus on really slow audible shifts between notes that change positions, ie. C second finger first position to D first finger third position.

We did this for a while before purely focusing on getting the thumb off the back of the fingerboard and plonking it down on the top of the fingerboard over two strings, keeping in mind the shape of the hand when driven as a whole unit from the back during position changes.

During this strange acrobatic balancing move of sorts, never letting the right hand slack with the bow as that forms the basis of a solid foundation for the left hand to follow (gripping the bow will cause tension on the left hand and shoulders). Relax and let gravity do her job.

Deryn says that a lot of teachers leave out this very crucial thumb exercise and awareness so their students have had to figure it out for themselves where you'll find many stunts pulled on the fingerboard due to this lack of guidance, her being one of those students when she was younger.

We then proceeded to Feuillards for the next half hour, mostly going through the exercises for position changes (page 4 and 6) before ending the lesson with a duet playthrough of the slower first movement of the Marcello Sonata, the Largo; a wonderful way to end the last lesson of the year :)

Thing to focus on: Scales to include new positions (C major 3 octaves).