Lesson 89 - Fast fingers

Today was focused mostly on the new piece, Tarantella by Squire and how to effectively play the piece at the speed it demands.

One of the ways to do this was to know the ins and outs of scales. D minor, 3 octaves both melodic and harmonic played with the universal and non-universal fingering for the fingers' muscle memory to familiarise the sequences as well as the ear 'sense' to know which fingering to use next by knowing which note to play in that sequence and what it should sound like.

I found that by saying the sequence of notes out loud, one becomes more prepared to accommodate the fingering and position a set of notes should be played under. This then fosters a good hand shape as one isn't fumbling around the fingerboard for the note.

Speaking of which, urgent need is required to return to Langin's 6th position exercises :}

Squire was a cellist and so knew the instrument intimately. This resulted in really effective and musical pieces that was challenging and fun to play which doubled as solid exercises for the learning cellist, Tarantella being one example.

Contrary to previous lessons where it was advised to play the piece slowly at first before increasing the speed, Deryn instructed that short phrases were played analytically until they were so fluent, they could be played at the tempo desired. This method proved very tedious and challenging as one needed to be extremely patient and methodical; neither of which were traits I possessed! At least not at this stage of cello playing. I'm unsure why but I had a tonne more patience when I started out and kept at it even when things seemed dire. Nowadays, I feel I have taken the instrument for granted especially more so after the upgrade.

In any case, we went through small sections of the piece and played each of them until I was able to perform to a satisfactory speed before proceeding. What was especially effective was figuring out the fingering of each section way ahead of time; to anticipate where the note is on the fingerboard and along with this, I was also saying the note I was playing out loud. Surprising, this helped me visualise where my finger should be on the fingerboard and suddenly it didn't feel like I was playing a non-descript, mysterious note that kinda sounded like a "B" but probably isn't!



I recently got a cheap usb mic as an upgrade from the crappy inbuilt laptop one and so did a "quick" run of The Swan. I recorded this using my Android phone and am pretty impressed with the quality of recording, considering the setup; clipped it to the music stand and played the cello towards it. The only extra bit missing was an OTG (On-The-Go) cable adapter to connect the mic to the phone.

Oh, and please don't mind the crappy playing :}