Cello Practice Log #10: Perpetual Motion Prep Bowing & Doubles

As you can tell from my Practice Log it was a real struggle for me to practice last week after I removed my penciled frets. I wanted to practice but every time I picked up my cello and played it, I was turned off by how bad I sounded because my intonation was off. It was really frustrating - to the point that I couldn't practice more than 2-5 minutes at a time!

I made it through the first week without frets and I think I'm ...s l o w l y... getting it down...

I think I'm getting used to it (I hope), so I'll continue leaving the frets off for now.

However, I did manage to figure out the prep. bowing and doubles for Perpetual Motion in D Major. It's still a work in progress, but overall not too bad. Lots of scratches during my string crossings (it's that darn elbow being too low again), but I finally got the rhythm down so now I can start fine tuning it more.

Things I still have to work on:

Prep Bowing

• String crossing - lots of scratching from hitting the other string. Lift my elbow and watch my bow angle 
• Cleaner sound - watch my bow angle, especially coming back from the A string to get a cleaner sound

Double bowing 

• String crossing - I either drop my elbow too much or don't lift it high enough. Also, I need to reset when I get back to the D string and make sure I'm properly aligned, sometimes I'm still rotated slighted towards the A string
• Increase the tempo - I couldn't quite keep it at the same tempo in the beginning, my brain shut down half way through, so I had to re-start at a slower pace

Once I get this cleaned up a bit more, I'll start practicing on Perpetual Motion in G Major!


Overall, I guess it wasn't too bad... ;).