2.5 weeks

Two and a half weeks without a cello. I love traveling but I need to find a way to have it with me. I'm gone for over 3 weeks this month and could go for longer if I had my baby with me.

I miss my cello!!! And I even miss struggling with Popper #19. The agony of Popper would really balance out all the fun I'm having.

Popper #19, continued

This is meant to be the post from last week but in a scramble to get out of town for vacation, I didn't get it out.

Two weeks into Popper and I'm still struggling with it. Memory issues but I think most of it has to do with the bow. The spiccato is really starting to mess up my memory which sounds really odd so I have to reevaluate whether I really know it. In a push to finish it, I think I have glazed over the whole thing a bit too quickly. Lesson learned that the so-called 'short cut' is really a waste of time. I should just spend more focused practice on smaller sections and get it really solid in my mind as well as fingers.

And then I had to leave for a vacation so the whole thing needs to go on hold. I'm currently on vacation and was catching up on my blogs when I saw that I got a mention on The Cello Etudes blog. Thanks to you for the inspiration. I am not an undergrad at Georgia though although I wish I was. Just an amateur cellist who has a cello obsession. My pace will be much slower than the cello etudes blog so I hope it won't be too boring.

More on the Popper when I get back from a 3 week vacation. Basically means I need to start over. It's just as well because my last attempt at #19 before I left for vacation left me feeling like I need a do-over on this one.

Popper #19

Still trudging through Popper #19. I've been working on this etude for a couple of weeks now. Spiccato definitely adds to the difficulty. I started learning this etude the same way I've been attacking the other Popper etudes - learning the notes slowly and then incrementally building up the speed. After a week, I started reading a blog of a cellist's study with the Popper etude (http://celloetudes.tumblr.com) and decided to change my approach a little bit. Mainly, I decided that I was going to memorize the etude. It's been very enlightening to add memorization to my etude study. Here are the things I noticed:

1) Firstly, I memorize music pretty easily. I've been working on the Brahms E minor sonata and I pretty much have all three movements memorized. Not intentionally but it just gets in my ear and not before long, it is memorized. However, the Popper etude has been a pain! I'm about 3/4 of the way through the etude and I have it in my memory but it's pretty shaky.

2) Making myself memorize it changed my approach to learning the etude. I was forced to learn the 'road map' of the etude rather than just read the notes. The surprising thing is that this is a quicker way to really learn it. Having the pattern in my memory took away the extra step of reading the notes and then getting my hand in the position to play them. This makes the speed of this etude a lot more doable.

3) I made a lot more marks on these two pages than any of the other etudes. This was because I was making notes to myself of the patterns so that I could remember them. With the other etudes, I just read it. This time, I circled the patterns to give myself variously landmarks so that it helped me know what came next.

I'm almost done learning the whole thing. I've been playing it at a slower tempo- about 72 for the quarter note. By the end of this weekend, I hope to have the whole thing memorized and playing it at 84 or so.

Shaky and nervous

I've always known that my vibrato is shaky and nervous but I had very few ideas on how to correct it. I'm ok with a few slow notes but it starts to get very jerky when the tempo goes up and it involves shifts. This video by Alan Harris is the best I have found on Youtube. I'm pretty excited about incorporating some of this.

The Etude Project

Yesterday, Mike posted a link to the blog of cellist who is documenting his practicing on etudes for the next few months. Check it out: http://celloetudes.tumblr.com/

Very interesting stuff and I wish more cellists would do this. This guy (can't seem to find a profile on him) is far beyond my current playing level but I was able to get some very useful ideas from his experience with his practice of the first etude, Popper #8.

This Etude Project has him performing an etude every 2 weeks with practice every day limited to 45 min. on each etude. By the 4th day, he had memorized Popper #8. I was pretty shocked by that. I've worked through about 6 or 7 of the Poppers now but the thought of memorizing any of them was never a possibility in my head. It was always hard enough for me to play them well much less try to memorize it. So as an experiment, I started the task of memorizing the current etude I was working on, Popper #19- the Lohengrin.

I'll document the practice I've done in the past 2 weeks on this etude as well as the results of the memorization effort in the next post.

The broken record playing in my lessons

My lessons as of late focuses on a few select things:

1) Keep bow *in* the string. Sounds logical enough but so hard to do. When I sound bad, I can almost always pick it out to be this particular problem. I used to think that keeping the bow in the string should be an easy enough task but I think it's actually harder than it sounds. It takes a certain amount to strength to keep the bow in the string...strength that is built over years.

2) Related to #1 - don't pick up the bow when crosing strings. Sounds obvious enough but I cheat on this in the most subtle ways. Just the tiniest of lifts when crossing strings will throw the sound off. arrrrrggghh

3) Slow down the bow changes. If your left hand needs to move fast, it doesn't mean that your bow changes need to be fast as well.

There you have it! The three things on the broken record playing in my lessons. I'm happy that I can pick out three things to correct whenever I sound bad. What about you? What's on your broken record? Do share!

My poor neglected blog..

So much has happened! Italy was a great trip for musical growth. My playing has changed a lot since coming back. I'm not the only one who has made this observation...my teacher as well as friends around me has commented on how much better I am playing.

I'm still trying to figure out what it is about the trip that changed me. I think it was being in the company of student musicians and working with them for a week towards a concert that made me realized that everyone has their struggles (with intonation, with rhythm, etc). As an adult amateur, we rarely get that group environment. Being in this environment gave me so much inspiration to really practice. My goals didn't seem so lofty anymore...almost attainable.

Since then, the way I practiced changed. I learned to do a lot of the things that I've been reading about..slowing down to really learn the notes, practicing with a metronome, patient repetition. If you throw these three things into anything you want to learn, it's impossible not to reach your goal one day.

Yesterday - I got to perform the first movement of the brahms e minor with a pianist. I was pretty relaxed on stage (a first for me!) and it turned out to be one of my best performances. After studying this piece for what seems like forever...I finally see some improvements.

Anyway- these are some thoughts that I wanted to write in my neglected blog before they get too far away from the present.