Lesson 96 - Comfort in a new position, double stops

3 weeks come and go. The new sitting position, along with a slightly lengthened end spike, has made a huge difference to playing the cello. Such wonders how you can still learn from such rudimentary things that are taken for granted. "Comfort" in the cello sense is not quite the same as it seems, in normal circumstances. It involves a more thought-out process; working within the body's limit by being thoughtful and considerate.

The new approach, albeit unnatural and somewhat uncomfortable at first, brought great ease to placing weight (from above) on the strings as one was taught.

Facing towards the cello instead of just twisting the upper torso, both feet firmly planted, head straight and above the shoulders, arms and shoulders relaxed - this all came more naturally in this new position.

Today's new technique came in the form of double stops scale. Feuillard's daily exercises expects the student to already be well acquainted with the method so they are too advanced for me to learn from. We looked to the ABRSM exercises instead and played through C Major in broken steps first and then slurs. A useful thing to do is figuring out the differences between Major 6th and Minor 6th intervals for fingerings. Major 6th is 1-3 on the next string and Minor 6th is 1-2 on the next string. There's always a pattern to these things but more useful than just memorizing, one should always firmly plant the knowledge by doing.

Oddly enough, the smaller interval of 3rds apart involved much larger stretches and finger acrobatics on the fingerboard.

Finally, I played through Supplication. Gracie really shone recently. It could be the weather or maybe she's more inclined to my playing but she seems easier to bring out her voice. Deryns advises to play strictly with the metronome before Rubato, listen and anticipate shifts and intervals. We played together with the metronome to figure out the really tricky passages where off-beat tempos were aplenty, slowly and then with increased speed. I think it's finally fixed the problems I had with it!

Now to play it on my own and not fuck it up too much :}