Lesson 86 - Vibrato and new piece, The Swan

Today's lesson started out straightforward enough. I had been focused on practising scales and learning key signatures to overcome the intimidation of approaching a score.

It has gone reasonably well especially from doing the slow scales over 2 octaves. My intonation has improved and I no longer feel as anxious or lost when shifting to a different position during string crosses. Something else I found was that the new strings were finally "breaking in". It took longer than I thought even with regular practise on as many positions as I could fathom in a practise session but all that effort was worth it and Gracie has opened up a lot more than I thought possible.

Changing the setup in the practise room has also played a part. Wherein previously the instrument, music stand and seat was cramped into the corner of the room due to a lack of space. They now occupy the room generously, enabling more elbow and leg space, due in part to shifting other bits of furniture around.

We played slow scales 2 octaves at the bridge and then at a faster tempo away from the bridge. This resulted in the, "hot knife over butter" effect which not only improved contact between bow and strings but made playing very enjoyable.

Of course, due to the high tension of the string at this position, it was much more difficult to achieve good, constant contact with strinf but therein lies the challenge; to be able to achieve a solid and beautiful sound under this condition.

I am to include slow scales of 2 octaves on the bridge, 16 ticks to a bow at 60 bpm as part of my practice regime.

We then played through vibrato exercises, specifically Bunting's wonderful examples that has been so effective for me.

Slowly with 8 ticks per bow at 100bpm and one wobble per tick, we played E flat major and E flat harmonic minor 1 octave starting from the D string, increasing the number of ticks slightly until we reached triplets (three wobbles per tick) at 60bpm which is much faster than it sounds. Surprisingly, apart from a little tension from my arms, there was no pain and both limbs felt largely relaxed.

And then Deryn did the most sneakiest thing ever. She proceeded to play a bunch of very familiar notes, still within the vibrato triplets technique and asked me to repeat it. At first, I was taken aback. "Hey, isn't that the beginning notes to ...The Swan?" was the only thing that echoed in my mind. After repeating the notes on my own cello, she played the second phrase to the familiar piece. "It is!" I yelled in my head, grinned nervously and mimicked the phrase before Deryn cheekily asked, "Does this sound familiar?". I wanted to burst out laughing.

So new piece time - Le cygne by Camille Saint-Saëns. Eeps!



Deryn stresses on learning the piece before playing it. As one is very tempted to play the piece as one hears it, this is a test on patience and discipline. On my part, anyways :}

So first section of the piece to be played with steady vibrato. Deryn says it's important that a cellist is able to perform a vibrato on any note, with any finger at any point of the fingerboard and at any time. And that she shouldn't use it to hide a bad note or to show off or even only use it when it's convenient. It should be see as adding a palette to my playing; access to more colours, if you would.