Lesson #102C (11/18/12): Left-hand and bowing

Clayton will be graduating this month so I'm just counting down the days when he'll be offered a job out-of-state or something. Bummer for me, great for him! He's just way too good that I don't expect him to be around long after he graduates! ...darn...Luckily, Adam won't be moving any time soon!

During this lesson we went some technique.

Thumb Placement 

• My thumb seems to move around a lot so we focused on making sure my thumb is secure on the neck, but of course, not squeezing! 
• I've discovered that my hand feels more secure because my thumb typically "floats" above my cello neck and doesn't really touch the back of it
• Shifting seems to be easier because I can feel my cello pass beneath my thumb which helps me determine the amount of space I've moved my hand to shift  
• For the next few days, Clayton recommended just bringing attention to the thumb while I play to see what it's doing 

Bowing

• Sustain my notes and use smoother transitions between bow changes. 
• I tend to decay my notes. Clayton provided a few ways of thinking about this:
• Think of the bow going in diagonal lines 
• Remember to feel the bow and string => this is what I like the best
• Think about releasing or relaxing the bow into the string 
• The funny thing is, I like how decaying notes sound sometimes. A legato, consistent sound is kind of boring to me... maybe it's time to start bothering my teachers about doing vibrato again! 
• In a few months, I know when I look back at the sentence about decaying notes and vibrato I'm not going to like it! ;) 

Position Pieces

• Fanfare 
• I was hitting the notes more consistently, but my rhythm was terrible. I really need to start counting instead of feeling how long a note should be! Not very accurate...Lol! :) 
• Assigned the next piece: Skating
• This is a great book - highly recommended! :)