Solfège

At my lesson today we talked about slurs and hooked bowing.

On cello (and I assume other stringed instruments) a slur indicates that the notes should all be played with a single movement of the bow. As my teacher put it, changing bow direction creates a consonant, it cuts off the sound however briefly. A slur, or notes played with a single continuous bow movement create a vowel sound. The two techniques combined allow the cello to articulate music.

Hooked bowing is really a convenience technique, it allows the cellist to produce the proper musical sound with a minimum of bow movement. The notation is a slur that ends with a dot over the note. The bowing pattern for hooked bowing goes like this:

Up – Down – Down – Up – Up

With one slur connecting the two down bow notes and a second slur connecting the two up bow notes. Frequently these notes involve a string change as well, making this a complicated pattern to learn.

My assignment for the next week is to practice my scales using hooked bowing to learn the mechanics of the pattern, to developed the muscle memory necessary to make playing this way automatic. Additionally I am to practice slurs by replaying the first line of a couple of earlier pieces using slurs in place of individual notes.

My difficulties with note durations continues. I tend to cut off half notes and dotted half notes. Verbalizing the rhythm pattern helps, but not always. I need to develop a better sense of pulse so that I intuitively know how long notes should be played in relation to other notes in the piece and in time with the tempo.

Having not played for 10 days while we were traveling did have an impact on my sound. I’m a bit rougher and more hesitant this week than I was the week prior to being gone. I know the smoothness will return quickly, but it was interesting to observe the fragility of this skill. It is perishable, if not maintained it will be lost.

As Sibylle and I were in Germany for 10 days, last night was the first cello practice I’ve had since January 22nd. It felt like there had been some deterioration in my sound, and there were some passages in a couple pieces that weren’t as memorized as I’d thought. Cello, like many other skills, is perishable.

That I was exhausted certainly didn’t help; I only managed 5 hours of sleep the night we returned from Europe, and it was hard to think much less play coherently. Still I managed to work through a couple of older pieces and work on the newest etude I’ve been assigned.

Each practice session I try to finish with something I play well, something easy that sounds accomplished. Last night I choose Twinkle, Twinkle. After I played it in G Major, Sibylle asked if we could do a duet. So we played it together. It was a beautiful end to my practice session.

Tags: time off

For the first time since I started cello in early November I am going to miss a day of practice. Actually several days as we will be traveling. I find that I am of two minds about a break like this.

One the one hand I will miss playing. I don’t view my daily session as practice as much as I view it as something I get to do. I enjoy playing and learning new music. Sure there are frustrations (dotted half notes are a lot longer than I think they are) and there are night’s when my tone is less listenable. Regardless of these little challenges I look forward to playing and I am going to miss it while we are away.

On the other hand I am starting to develop some bad habits and I hope a short break will help me to break them. I tend to squeeze the neck/fingerboard between my fingers and thumb which is causing my thumb to be quite painful at times. I need to pull with my arm and upper back rather than squeeze with my hand. All of my practicing the last week or two has been focused on less thumb and more arm. I’m hoping that not playing for 10 days will make it easier to play correctly when we return.

Finally there is a part of me that wonders what I’ll forget, how ragged will I sound upon returning? Or will the past 70 days of practice tide me over the next week without too much lost ground.

Tags: breaks

Last Tuesday in my lesson my teacher, who is the director of the Kansas State University String Fling, asked me if I would like to participate. String Fling is an annual weekend long rehearsal and concert for 5th through 9th grade string players. Students from all over Kansas converge on Manhattan for the weekend to rehearse and then perform for their families and friends. This was the 37th annual String Fling.

While I am obviously not a 5th grader, my teacher felt it would be a fun experience for me, and that the kids would get a kick out of having a beginning adult in the orchestra with them. Since I’ve only been playing since November, I sat in with one of the 5th grade groups for the weekend.

It was great fun. At one point on Saturday two of my fellow cellists, a pair of girls, approached me after a break and asked how long I have been playing cello. I said since November, to which they replied they had started in September. When I told this story to Sibylle she remarked that their question was no doubt preceded by a lengthy round of, “You ask him.” “No, you ask him.” “I’m not going to ask him!” “I’ll ask him if you do.”

We had two rehearsals yesterday, narrowing in on five pieces, two folk songs, an arrangement of Ode to Joy, a piece that featured the cellos in “solo,” and our finale, Fancy Fiddles. The finale was 79 measures in total, considerable longer than any of the other pieces. This morning, after a final rehearsal, we moved to the main stage in McCain Auditorium and played our pieces.

For me today’s concert was the first time I had been on stage performing music. Ever. In high school I had a small walk-on-walk-off part in a play, and in grade school I performed once in Your A Good Man Charlie Brown. I found playing on stage to be exciting and very satisfying.

I am looking forward to the 38th Annual String Fling next year. And I am starting to think it will be fun to play in a group on a regular basis, perhaps a quartet or trio.

Tags: orchestra, rehearsal

My cello practice regimen typically sees me playing for an hour or so every day. I don’t set a timer or try to track the time, rather I play through several of the pieces I know two or three times each to warm up and then work on the newer pieces I am still learning. I try to end each practice by playing something I like and can play well so that things end on an up note.

In Injury Free I talked about pain in my left thumb. This pain has continued and at times is quite severe. It rarely hurts when I am playing, however my thumb is quite lame and sore in the mornings when I get up. So painful in fact that I can’t pinch or grip with my thumb. It has all the earmarks of a classic repetition stress injury.

The pain first became noticeable during the three-week holiday break. At my lessons this week I asked about potential causes and learned that I have been using my thumb improperly. In order to firmly stop the strings I have been using my left hand to grip or pinch, stopping the strings solely with the strength of my hand. I should be using my arm and back to pull my fingers into the fingerboard. The thumb rests on the neck but isn’t used to provide gripping power.

Poking around the Cello Heaven forum I found a thread about left thumb pain that also said proper technique is less gripping or pinching and more pulling the left hand back against the fingerboard. Here are some quotes from the thread:

This is actually quite a common problem. The main thing to remember is that a cello is your friend, so don’t squeeze the neck trying to choke it to death. It just does not work.

Instead of squeezing to play the strings, think pulling. Imagine you are dangling off a cliff and your are holding on for dear life using your fingers. This is what you should feel. You should be pulling the instrument towards you. Actually, pressing the instrument is a better choice of words.

The thumb should not be pressing or anything. Some will say that the thumb should stay curved, but I disagree. The thumb should be doing whatever is natural for the person. Shake your hand out and take a look at the thumb. Is is curved or straight? Remember how it feels when thumb is relaxed and keep that feeling in your playing and you should be fine. Another trick I use involve marshmallows. Place a marshmallow between the thumb and the neck of the cello. Play for a bit (without shifting, for obvious reasons), and then look at the marshmallow. Is it still puffy and round, or it is flat as a pancake? This is some indication of whether or not you have tension, as well as a means to remind yourself to keep the thumb loose. Word of caution: do not try this in humid or hot weather, as it could make your instrument very sticky. Cotton balls could work, but I find them too lacking in mass to keep them present in your mind.

This week I have been very conscious of my left thumb and whether or not I am gripping the neck and fingerboard or pulling against it. Having practiced with a grip it is surprisingly hard to play without gripping tightly. I haven’t tried the marshmallow trick (don’t have any at home) but I have played without using my thumb at all.

Also, it seems to me that playing further down on the fingerboard, beyond where the thumb can be behind the neck of the cello means the stopping force will come entirely from pulling against the cello rather than gripping or pinch with the fingers.

The amount of energy required to pinch the stings sufficiently to get good tone is far less than the amount of energy required to pull the hand back against the finger board sufficiently to get good tone. In other words, it takes a lot of strength to grip the strings with just fingers, but pulling with the large muscles in the back and shoulder requires less energy. What is difficult is trying to pull with just enough force to get good tone and not trying to pull with the same apparent force as was needed with fingers alone.

In the martial arts we broke even the simplest physical moves into smaller parts and practiced them slowly and repeatedly to teach the proper, injury free technique. Most, if not all, of the early practices performed by new students in a dojo is done under the watchful eye of a more experienced practitioner. Music lessons and practice are different. The student has the teachers eyes for 30 or 45 minutes a week, and practices multiple times each week on their own. The ratio of guided practice to unguided practice is far lower; which creates more opportunity for the student to incorporate bad habits.

My diligence in practicing daily is good and has resulting is rapid progress in my playing. However, three weeks of unsupervised practicing allowed me to develop an incorrect technique for stopping the strings. Hopefully it won’t take another three weeks to unlearn gripping the strings and learn pulling against the fingerboard.

Tags: injury, technique

A big piece of my martial arts experience was learning how to execute a punch or kick correctly so as not to injure myself. For example, with a roundhouse kick (mawashi geri) you must turn the base foot so that it points to opposite direction as you are aiming the kick. This allows the hips to release and prevents your base leg knee or ankle from being torn apart by the torque of the kick.

Sibylle is very careful in her piano studio to teach her students an natural technique that is aimed at preventing injuries. Tension, improper hand shape, and hundreds of repetitions can (and unfortunately do) lead to tendonitis, stress fractures, and other preventable injuries.

In my cello practice I am trying to be very aware of places of tension, or awkwardness in my playing. My teacher has already corrected a couple of things I was doing, both for ease of playing and to prevent injuries as a result of long-term improper technique.

The one area I am struggling with this week is the thumb on my left hand. Ideally the tip of the left-hand thumb should be placed against the neck of the cello, not the pad of the last joint. In trying to firmly stop the strings I am playing I have tended to allow my thumb to slide away from the tip and onto the pad. This creates a backward arch to the thumb, and puts considerable strain on the musculature on the inside of the thumb. In a word, I wake up with a sore thumb after practicing with my hand held wrong.

This injury is telling me that I am not holding my hand correctly, or, if I am holding it correctly, that I am using too much force trying to stop the strings. Concentrating on proper thumb placement makes all the difference in the world. Not only does my hand not hurt later on, the notes sound better.

The other area I notice physically is my upper back. It is easy to crouch over the cello with poor posture, which makes my upper back sore and tense. Since I have a desk job and sit all day, I’m well aware of the warning signs of poor posture. Getting a “hot spot” under one of my shoulder blades is a clear sign that I’m not sitting correctly – whether I’m playing cello or using my laptop to write about playing on my website.

Playing attention to physical cues is as important as playing attention to the aural cues that let me know that I am sharp of flat.

Unfortunately, there isn’t much I can do for the tenderness in my fingertips, especially after an hour of playing. They have developed some callus, but they are still toughening up to the task at hand.

Many years ago, when I was actively in karate-do, we had a saying that went like this:

Practice doesn’t make perfect. Practice makes permanent. Perfect practice make perfect.

It doesn’t take a big stretch to see that the same holds true in the study of music. Most nights when I practice I can see some improvement over where I was, say, three weeks ago. But on any given night one or more pieces sounds much worse than they did just the day before.

I’ve now been playing the Twinkle, Twinkle variations for close to two months now, and there are still occasional squeaks and squawks in the notes. The trick, it seems, is not to become too comfortable with the playing of a piece just because “I know it now.” Sure, I understand the tune and I know which fingers go where when (usually), but that’s only the barest beginning. Am I using the right amount of bow pressure? Am I up-bowing when I’m supposed to be up-bowing, and vice-versa? Am I fully stopping the string, producing a clear, resonate tone, or only half stopping it, giving off a weak tone? Am I stopping the string in the “sweet” spot for the note, i.e., F# and not a little bit sharp or a bit flat?

Playing even the simplest pieces in my repertoire consistently is my greatest challenge. It helps that the pieces are relatively short, and can be further broken down into sections. Many follow an A-B-A pattern allowing me to practice the A bit and then the B bit and then put the whole thing together. Of course it isn’t as much fun to play the same four measures over and over ignoring the rest of the piece.

Lately I’ve been trying to set a goal for each practice session. Focusing on a goal, or maybe two complimentary goals, makes it possible to achieve something within a practice. There is simply too much to learn, to many nuances to fingering and bowing, to try and play everything correctly every practice.

The past couple of sessions I’ve been focused on my left-hand thumb. In 1st position (which is the only one I know so far) the left-hand thumb provides opposing pressure to the left-hand fingers stopping the strings. My teacher would like me to use the tip of my thumb against the neck of the cello rather than the pad of the final joint. It is easy to let the thumb slip until the pad is doing all the work. Only I’ve discovered it required more effort to properly stop a string when the pad of the left-hand thumb is used against the next. And, generating enough pressure in this position actually makes my thumb sore.

Using the tip of the thumb helps to keep a good curved hand and finger shape, and allows for better application of pressure to the finger doing the stopping. All of that results in a clearer note. The complimentary goal I’ve had the past few sessions has been to use enough bow pressure. My teacher pointed out to me that using more bow length allows for more pressure with less chance of getting a crunchy sound. Using more bow length forces the bow to move faster in order to play the notes the correct duration, which has the effect of spreading the pressure out over a greater amount of bow hair, eight inches instead of three.

The trick to perfect practice is to be mindful of everything you are doing, pausing frequently to assess and evaluate. Mindful practice brings everything along together, whereas mindless practice simply cements everything into place. And once a technique is incorrectly cemented into place it will take far more work to relearn it correctly.

For Christmas I received a copy of the book The Cello Suites: J.S Bach, Pablo Casals, and the Search for a Baroque Masterpiece from Sibylle, along with Pablo Casals seminal recording of the pieces. Both are simply outstanding.

The Cello Suites is one-third biography of J. S. Bach, one-third biography of Pablo Casals, and one-third journal of the author, Eric Siblin’s journey to discover the history of these suites of ‘cello music. The book is well written and mirrors the music in its presentation of the story. Each suite has a prelude, followed by five dance movements: allemande, courante, sarabande, menuet I & II or bourrée I & II, and finally gigue. In the book the author divides the two biographies and his own story between the prelude and movements of the suites.

Just from a historical perspective I am finding the book fascinating. That I am a beginning cellist only adds to my enjoyment of the story. Having the music as recorded by Casals to listen to periodically as I read about its birth and later rediscovery is delightful. Sibylle even download copies of the sheet music for me so I can follow along as I listen.

I thoroughly recommend the book and the CD.

Tags: book, cd

Today’s lesson, my fourth since starting with my teacher, focused on smaller details, primarily those that lead to better tone quality. The art in playing cello, and I would imagine any bowed instrument, is using the right amount of pressure and bow speed to get the desired tone.

Windows

Some passages are more difficult than others and there is a certain feeling of panic when confronted with a measure that changes strings twice and fingering three times. This panicky feeling leads to tenseness which makes it all the harder to play the passage. Trying to play a piece all the way through that contains a difficult passage leads to frustration. So my teacher has me eliminate all but one measure or even a part of one measure and play only those notes. By imagining a window that only lets me  see a handful of notes I can focus just on the part that is troublesome. Since I’m not playing the entire piece the panic is gone; it’s just 4 or 5 or 6 notes and done. Once the difficult section is sounding a bit better, he had me add a note or two that leads into the difficult section. This allows me to practice the transition from the rest of the piece into the hard part. Once that is sounding pretty good he has me add the notes that follow the difficult passage, the transition out of the section. In just a few minutes this windowing style of practice nets several iterations over the hard part, including the notes leading into and out of those measures.

Going back to the whole piece now it is far easier to play through the formerly difficult passage. A variation on this is to start with the last measure, or even the last note in the last measure. Play that note or measure, and then add the second to last measure  and play through the end. Then add the third to last measure, and so on.

Many of the pieces I am learning now have whole sections that repeat, an “A-B-A” pattern for example. Working on just the “A” part until it is smooth, and then the “B” part until it is smooth, is far easier and quicker than trying to play the whole piece through.

Push Ups

Getting good, consistent tone requires consistent pressure of the bow hairs on the strings. Playing near the frog end of the bow it’s easy to apply plenty of pressure to the strings. Playing near the tip of the bow it is much harder to apply the same amount of pressure. The exercise I have is to place the bow hairs against any string and gradually press the bow into the string – making the bow emulate a push up. Too much bow pressure generates a gritty, crunchy sound, whereas too little pressure makes a wispy or glassy sound. The bow push up helps to show you how much pressure you can apply to a string.

The next step is to slowly move the bow back and forth just a tiny bit. With the right amount of pressure the string will flex back and forth with the bow. In other word there is enough friction between the bow hair and the string to allow the motion of the bow to push or pull the string without letting go. Once this wiggle has been accomplished my teacher had me play a up or down bow. If I was using too much pressure I’d get the crunchy sound, too little pressure I’d get a wispy sound. Practicing the push up, wiggle and bow stroke several times rapidly showed me how much pressure was just enough.

Double Strokes

Another trick I learned today was using double bow strokes for passages with lots of finger changes. By playing twice as many notes you give your fingers more time to change position. After a few repetitions with double strokes, going back to single strokes seemed easy. The only analogy that comes to mind for me is the image of the baseball batter on-deck. He swings two bats at once, or a bat with a weight added, to warm up. Then when he’s at the plate, swinging his single, unweighted bat is easy by comparison.

Finger Exercises

All of the Suzuki pieces I have been learning so far have been in the key of DMajor, and played on the D- and A-string. My F# on the D-string, and my C# on the A-string tend to be wispy, even with the correct bow pressure. My teacher explained that I’m not getting my third finger set firmly enough against the finger board. I know from my martial arts studies that the musculature in the hand makes the ring finger the weakest, so I’m not surprised that it fingers the weakest too. My teacher wants me practice pressing my fingers one at a time into a desktop or table top several times a day. Keeping a good arch shape to hand and finger use the forearm to press the finger tip into the surface. Over time this will reenforce the proper finger shape (curved) and strengthen all the fingers, including the ring finger.

Progress

Overall I am pleased with my progress after just five weeks of playing, and after four lessons with Dr. L, he said he is pleased with my progress too. I find that I am able to pick up new pieces fairly quickly, and I am enjoying the whole process immensely. This evening at the end of my practice session I told Sibylle that has been since I started karate-do nearly 20 years ago that I felt this good about a new activity. Moreover this feels very much like that experience as I am progressing without being aware of the effort involved. All of which makes me feel good to say, I am a cellist.

As infants we all learned our native language through imitation – we heard our parents and older siblings speaking over and over again and we learned to imitate their sounds by ourselves. Word definitions, language semantics, and overall syntax happen after the individual has learned to vocalize on their own.

Suzuki Shin’ichi developed the so-called Suzuki Method after observing that all children taught themselves to speak by listening. He reasoned that if children could learn even difficult dialects by imitation of what they heard, that they could also learn music by listening and then imitating.

In my study of cello the first method book my teacher is using is a Suzuki book. There is an accompanying audio CD which contains all the pieces of music in the book in two forms: solo instrument with piano and piano accompaniment alone. Since the idea behind the method is not to initially teach the music language constructs (notes, staffs, clefs, et cetera) the student must listen to the CD in order to learn the tunes.

In my case, as an adult, I am  fully capable of learning what a quarter note is, or what the various notations on a piece of music indicate. However trying to take in all that information while playing is too much complexity for a beginner. Knowing the tune, the melody, from the CD allows me to focus more on play and far less on reading the music. Knowing the tune actually allows me to read the music, especially when I have the book open in front of my while listening to the piece.

And I am discovering that having heard the piece only a few times even allows me to recreate it in my head when I look at a piece I haven’t yet played. In other words, some of the time now, I am able to audiate the written music – I’m able to hear it while reading the music. Kinda cool, actually.

Obviously at some point in my music instruction I will need to learn to read music, and be able to play along with my reading, even if I’ve never seen or heard the piece before. But for now, being able to make music with relatively little (apparent) effort feels absolutely fabulous.

Tags: method, suzuki