Lesson 78 - Respect the Notes

I've noticed an increasing frequency of the cello being wildly out of tune. So much so that I've had to undo the fine tuners and use the pegs to retune the strings from scratch during which the D string fine tuner seems to be giving me the most grief.

Today was the last straw as it finally gave up, letting out an ugly, audible screech. Fearing that the D string broke or was close to it, I passed the cello to Deryn for closer inspection. Looks like the threading was gone in the tailpiece so there was nothing for the tuner to grasp; ultimately a job for Jan. Deryn had to fiddle around till the cello was in tune without the aid of the fine tuner and utilised the manual solution of tugging at the string to create slack. This took a while but it worked!

A trip to Jan has been due for quite a while now. I've endured a loose rubber sleeve where bowing meant I had to pull it up from the frog every few minutes (harder to emulate in class without being too obvious), a really low (or high?) action especially on the lower strings where it was near impossible to play there without really audible string crossing accidents and really uncomfortable thumb positions. This procrastination was largely due to living 2 hours away from the luthier. I don't drive and public transport isn't very kind to large cumbersome instruments but I suppose I've put it off for too long :}

I shared my uncertainties about practising the scales; a vital part of practising that I've been largely ignoring due to my inability to differentiate the keys I'm playing because of the universal fingering technique. Deryn suggest playing the scales on open strings a few times to get audible clues for intonation before applying the universal fingering, a simple but effective routine that completely slipped my mind as I've always thought of the former as cheating. Odd, but true. We then went through arpeggios, another vital part of practise (that I've ignored because of the same reason) to promote clean string crosses and fingerboard geography. Hopefully, I'm patient enough to do this away from class.

Finally, we played through Bach Menuet I and II from the Six Suites where I received my first official "telling off" from Deryn. She's probably had enough of students playing music that they are not prepared for or supposed to as it establishes horribly, disfiguring habits that are hard to undo and I wasn't sure how it happened but it did, in my case. It was probably the first time when I was given the piece to play and I went straight for it and played through the entire piece, completely ignoring the suggested fingerings. I blame this mostly to the eagerness of hearing it in person, on the cello by my own hands and even though I only did that once (or twice at the most), I had already fostered a bad foundation for the piece. Oops.

In any case, what I struggle most with the Suites is interpretation. Not musical wise but note wise and even fingering wise. For example, there are various ways to play the A note when it starts a phrase or in the middle of one - should I be using an open A or not? Such decisions plague me and I am unable to pick the right decision. This becomes painfully frustrating when I play the piece in class to only get corrected again every week.

Nonetheless, I will persevere. I made a recording of my current progress below and it has allowed me to hear that I've improved, albeit a little, from the previous recording six lessons ago in terms of being more confident on the cello :}