It's been a few weeks but I am officially out of 'I hate cello week'. I guess it wasn't a week...it was almost a month.
I've had some good lessons during this time though. Here's some notes on the breakthroughs:
1) I picked up Popper #2 again a few weeks ago to see if I made any progress since working on it 2 years ago. Not a hard piece but the etude has long bows. During the lesson, D noticed that I was pushing and pulling throughout the entire draw of the bow creating excess junk in the sound. He told me that once the bow is drawn, I need to let go and not keep drawing throughout the phrase. The action is at the beginning of the down bow or up bow but after I start the initial draw..I need to let the bow move without forcing it. This worked wonders for me! (I'm not sure that I'm explaining it very well)
2) Still working on Bach 3 Prelude and had a major breakthrough here too. This month...I focused on not clunking down on the string when I changed bows..to get as even of a legato sound as I could. At the last lesson, I played the whole thing for him and he said that I was torqued the entire time I was playing it. I needed to find places to release tension. I am still having bow issues and working too hard at it. D had me pick out certain spots in various phrases where there was an increase of tension with the bow and then we picked out where I would release that tension in the phrase. This increase/decrease in tension sets up my phrase. He used the visualization of a top spinning. I would draw the bow (similar to pulling a string to get a top spinning) and once the bow moved, let it spin on its own (decrease of tension) for the rest of the phrase. I tried it with a few phrases and the change was astonishing. It's funny how visualizing something like this can help. Not only was my tone better, I felt so FREE. I haven't been able to get that feeling back this week in practice but I feel like I'm really close. I understand it much better now. I see how the breathing plays into it. The breath in is really the increase in tension and the breath out is the release of that tension.
Geez...I hope one day I don't have to think about it so much. The visualization helped a lot! I asked D if he had think about it like this all this time. He said he used to but he doesn't have to anymore..it's second nature now. So..there's hope for me yet! I hope some of this is helping somebody else out there. I felt so good when I nailed it in the lesson that I threw my arms up in the air and exclaimed, "Yay!!!!"
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This month...I focused on not clunking down on the string when I changed bows..to get as even of a legato sound as I could.This is one of the things I've been struggling with too, after years between teachers and a bad habit formed of lifting the bow to avoid clunky sounds. So now my teacher has me remembering to put arm weight on the bow... which makes clunky sounds when I change strings. So I have to think about maintaining weight on the bow, but making controlled string crossings. Argh! It feels counter-intuitive somehow. Her image of draping the bow around the string helps; your teacher's idea of pulling the bow like the string of a top to start the phrase and letting it carry on is interesting too.
I used to do the "lift and place thing" with the bow as well. I have not completely purged this habit yet and it comes back in sneaky ways. The other thing I've done to make bow changes more fluid is anticipate the change (before you actually change) and then follow through with the arm. Of course - I KNOW all this. Actually getting my arm and bow to do it is a whole another issue!
Great image of the bow draping over the strings. My teacher has also talked about holding the bow as if you are trying to balance it on the surface of a big tub of water. LOL My poor teacher! Struggling for the words to help as I scream out in frustration. What would we do without good teachers???
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