Lesson #77 (07/08/12): Musette & Spiritoso and new fingering

This was a productive lesson and I'm feeling like I'm actually making some head way on the pieces! J

Musette

Some positives: This one is going fairly well, I was counting out and playing the rhythm without too much trouble (but then again it has a 2/4 time signature) and I was hitting my shifts to G#. The shifting exercises that Clayton was having me do definitely seems to be working.

Things to work on:

• Practicing the repeats – so far I’ve only been working on playing it through without repeats, so Adam reminded me to make I practice with repeats to make sure I engrain the habit of doing the repeats
• I was also having trouble finding my line when I jump from one line to the next since the score has three cellos on there. So he recommended that I highlight my line for now until I get more practice doing this. Very helpful!
• Another helpful tip, was he put in little brackets so I know where I need to repeat so it’s easier to find where I’m supposed to start

He played part I while I worked on my part (part II) and I lost my rhythm and place. I always seem to get confused when I hear other people play for the first time! This probably means I don't know my part as well as I should.

Allegro Spiritoso

I was going to purchase the music for this (which I thought I had, but didn’t) but can’t find it for the life of me! And I have fairly good Google-fu!! It’s driving me nuts that I can’t find the music for this anywhere!

Anyway, this is also in 2/4 and I’ve been subdividing and counting “1-2, 1-2” instead of “1-and-2-and” because my brain sucks and it’s more difficult sticking an “and” in there! Lol! :). 

Things to work on:

• Counting correctly for this piece
• New fingering – I try to avoid extensions as much as possible. I’m actually more accurate with shifts than extensions. Extensions just feel weird to me and takes a lot of work – probably because I’m doing it wrong! Anyway, Adam gave me some new fingerings to work on

Chant & Fugue

We didn’t have time to go over this, but I was having some issues with a slur because I couldn't get very clean string crossings. Adam recommended that if I ever had to do a slur, especially for fast passages, and was changing strings, that there is probably fingerings that I can use to have the notes all on one string (at least at my level).

Things to work on:

• Continue counting out the rhythms – this one is proving to be much more difficult for me!
• Fingering – work on the new fingerings. Lots of shifts for this one, but it's kind of fun

Adam has been really helpful and available the past few weeks which has been a pleasant surprise! Normally he's totally swamped with stuff, and I think marriage agrees with him... I really shouldn't write that, but I oh well, I promised myself I wouldn't censor anything. Sorry Adam, hopefully you don't read that! ;).