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Winning, eight bars at a time

In many areas of my life these days I've had to adjust my goals. An unexpected half an hour of quiet time while the monkey sleeps outside the local Waitrose that coincides with having three-quarters of a latte left? Absolutely brilliant. 

In cello terms, the first eight bars of the Bach Prelude sounds more like music and less like hesitant chicken scratching through unfamiliar fingerings? WIN. 

Even though I talked up my 15 minute practice sessions, I had a voice in the back of my head saying, 'yeah sure, it will take you three years to get anywhere'. And yes, it will take me a long time, but changing the finish line helps with that. I sat down with the first 16 bars of the Prelude today (In the Night Garden on mute for monkeypants) and those first eight bars I have been working on floated by. For the first time I was thinking about things other than 'holy crap I hate this string crossing'. 

And I experienced that little frisson you get playing those opening bars of the Prelude that feels like every cellist in the world, past and present, is sitting in your chair with you. I love that.  

 
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Posted by on 25 June 2010 in Bach Cello Suites

 

The Better Technique Fairy

This morning I managed 15 minutes of practice on the Bach whilst Elliot watched Postman Pat on mute from his playpen. 

What was sounding downright okay during my lesson was woolly and wimpy this morning. I got distracted by messing around with my wolf eliminator, which of course has nothing to do with it – but that's an adult amateur's favourite activity. Why deal with the hard questions of your technique when you can fuss about equipment? Ha! 

So, a precious moment wasted fussing. I played through those beautiful first eight bars again. That nice sound still had not appeared. I have to say, I am the queen of stopping playing and spacing out, and then playing the same section again without doing any actual thinking about what I can do to make it better, like the Better Technique Fairy will sort it out. 

Said fairy didn't sort it out however. 

I looked down, and my bow had inched itself back up over my fingerboard. Hmmm. Forcing my way back down towards the bridge (close your eyes! It's kind of scary down there! No hiding!) and running through those eight bars again… still messier, but gutsier too. So that's good. 

 
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Posted by on 17 June 2010 in Bach Cello Suites

 

Bad habits transcend instruments

When you've had some time away from the cello, coming back throws into sharp relief all the things you were good at and the issues you glossed over. This is something I know well – my fourth finger extensions are not magically better after having a baby, even if my allergies have miraculously disappeared (knock on wood). My F-sharp on the C string is just as dodgy and crap as it ever was. 

What is rapidly becoming apparent is whatever bad habits you have a musician visit you no matter what instrument you're playing at the moment. For me, it's swallowing notes mid-phrase/run and rushing off before finishing notes properly. I have it written all through my flute music from when I was 12 and ran up against it (again) in my cello lesson yesterday. Hilarious! 

The swallowing notes mid-phrase is fairly easy to sort, and I don't do it as often as I abandon the ends of notes. That's a bit harder to rectify as I've never managed to consistently sort it out. I suppose as a lover of ensemble playing in orchestras, you don't tend to hear the ends of your own notes much – and if you do you've screwed it up and likely have the baleful eye of your section leader on you and WILL NEVER DO IT AGAIN I PROMISE. 

At the moment I'm not playing in any ensembles, so don't have the time pressure of learning orchestral music on top of anything solo I'm doing in my lessons – nowhere to hide, in a different way. 

Emily had me play a single note to represent the three note slur, so I could concentrate on ending it properly. I'm finding I have to take phrases out of context entirely so I'm not tempted to read ahead and lose concentration. Mindfulness, you could call it. 

Take this as a reminder to go practice something you hate for awhile, just so it doesn't come back and get you later. 

 
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Posted by on 15 June 2010 in Technique

 

Structuring very very short practice sessions

I am only practising for 15 minutes, three or four days a week right now, with a half hour lesson with Emily weekly. I wondered at first whether it was even worth picking it up again until I could devote more time to it. But for one thing, what is 'more time' and where do I get this mythical substance? It's all relative, and I can make excuses until the end of the world about having enough time to do this 'properly'.

And I desperately needed to have something to do for me, just me. Especially as I quit my job the other week to stay home with Elliot full time. Elaine Fine mentioned this in a comment awhile back, after Elliot was first born, that I would be grateful for something of my own. She was very, very right. 

Even though sometimes those 15 minutes aren't even 15 together minutes, I'm managing to get work done. Emily helped by devising very short, very focussed goals each week: one scale, working on two difficult measures 10 times in succession, Breval first section play through, one shift to get a three-octave C scale in the works. Shockingly, I feel like my practice habits are better now than when I would spend an hour or so rambling through things, flitting from one piece to the next, getting frustrated, spending too long just playing and not enough time working on issues. I don't have time for faffing around now.

That do something 10 times instruction is interesting. I realised I never really played anything 10 times in a row much. At about the sixth repetition my mind starts thinking: 'Surely that was enough. You can't possibly need to do this again.' Around the eighth my mind wanders entirely: 'Chicken for dinner? Or maybe if I go to the shop I can get some of that fish…' By the ninth and tenth times I am being strict again, and the notes are no longer notes but just muscle memory and I can get to the meat of the problem. Or if the mechanics of the notes was the problem, it's very often nearly solved. Ten times works for relatively simple things, I suspect that number goes up when we're talking Haydn concertos or something. 

One step at a time there girl. 

 
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Posted by on 3 May 2010 in Breval Cello Sonata No.1

 

Bow hold redux redux

So. Remember THREE YEARS AGO when I was lamenting relearning my bow hold? I told you the story of having to relearn my flute embouchure a few times due to braces messing with my mouth. 

Guess what? I'm at it again. Not an entire relearning episode, more of a refinement. I think I'm finally understanding what tutors, private teachers, chamber music coaches etc have been trying to explain. No, that's not right either, I understood, but getting the meat to do what my brain was thinking took some doing. Maybe I needed to be forced into 10 minute practice segments by a well-meaning but bored small person. Who knows. 

Pivoting at the thumb was the starting point. Watching the pros, you can see that beautiful snap of the wrist as they change bow direction. Watch the man-of-the-featherweight-bow-arm Steven Isserlis for a minute or two:

See the way he leans into his index finger on the upbows? Emily kindly phrased it: 'You don't much like upbows do you?' Ha. Downbows I get, they are like notes you blow into a woodwind. Upbows are this weird other character of note I've never totally got onboard with. As usual, the cello Knows when I don't feel comfortable with something and telegraphs it to the rest of the world.

Thanks for that.

But, by the same token, as soon as I got my hand and wrist moving a bit more, pivoting around my thumb, the sound improved loads. I suddenly had much more to work with, there's more richness and depth. 

This is one small step, but such a palpable one. 

 
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Posted by on 30 April 2010 in Technique

 

A Skype lesson

Yesterday I had my first lesson since Elliot was born. It wasn't a regular lesson though, it was a Skype lesson with Emily Wright of Stark Raving Cello blog. We decided to test out this idea of a long distance lesson, and I think it worked pretty well for us. There are some drawbacks: Emily can't grab my arm to demonstrate a bowing issue, or feel if my left hand is tense. I don't think you could start from scratch this way, but for someone who has taken many a music lesson before it's quite good. For me, I didn't have to search out someone who was willing to come to me, and put up with an adult student with limited practice time. I knew I would get on with Emily and I like her approach, so for me this is the best of all possible worlds. 

We worked on the Breval, and Emily identified a bowing issue that has been hanging me up for awhile. Too much speed, too much bow. You've got to be kidding right? Every amateur orchestra director ever tells you 'More bow! Stop being afraid! Get in there!' and I did the classic thing of applying that to everything but not really realising that instruction was probably to the desk behind me squeaking along using two inches of bow for everything. I finally got the pivot motion with my bow hold moving around my thumb – I watched pros do this all the time but could not for the life of me sort out how to replicate it. My pinky on my bow hold is tense as well.

I felt energised after that lesson, which is down to the loveliness of Emily, because I just as easily could have felt stuck about the work ahead. But I am excited to get back on the cello horse again. Slow slow bows of Breval, here I come.

 
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Posted by on 20 April 2010 in Breval Cello Sonata No.1

 

Back to Breval

Yesterday I had the best practice session I've had since I was pregnant. Instead of banging my head against the wall with a Bach Suite I had been working on before, I stepped back a bit and pulled out the Breval Sonata.

I closed my mind to all the thoughts of boringboringboring, you're going backwards, you will never get any better, etc etc etc and just played slowly through the first section of the first movement. I slowed down the triplet runs, and cleaned up the accents to avoid the falling down stairs feeling, and indeed, sound, when I would get going with the wrong emphasis. 

When I was studying flute, I remember one of my recurring issues was swallowing notes, clipping staccato ones too short, or not holding a note for its full value. Not in a way that made it wrong, strictly, but would make it easy to rush a little bit. Revealing the impatience in my nature I suspect!

Anyway, as with all personal tendencies, they transcend instruments. The easy dotted crotchet quaver rhythm going into the triplet runs where was the problem lay – I was clipping those quavers too short in my impatience and anxiety to get the runs over with. The accents on the beginning of each triplet is what keeps it anchored, and entering into it that millisecond too early was pulling me off balance, by the second set of triplets it was already sounding unstable. 

I slowed everything down and restarted every time I cut that initial quaver short, and sure enough, the triplet runs were immediately smoother and easier. And the true test, Christopher came into the room and said, 'Oh that's sounding like music now, not like I Am Playing A Scale Run'. 

 
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Posted by on 21 March 2010 in Breval Cello Sonata No.1

 

Elliot & the music stand

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 Today, Elliot and I went down to Wigmore Hall for the second of their baby chamber music concerts. The first half featured a flute soloist who managed not to play any Fauré (incredible!) and had beautiful full tone – none of that breathy anemic stuff I can't stand. It was a pleasure to listen to. I felt motivated to practise when I got home. I set Elliot up with some toys at my feet, however, the best toy is the one he can't have, in this case my music stand. In the photo above, he is just about to start chewing on the leg. I tried sitting him up next to it, but he just dragged it over and kept shaking it, making playing music at the same time a bit of a challenge.

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Thirty seconds after this photo was taken he tipped over backwards, taking my lightweight music stand with him. No damage done except a bonk on the nose and some dented pride, but there were some tears and whimpering nonetheless. No more practising after that though!

 
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Posted by on 10 March 2010 in Mum cellist

 

Be a soloist with the Vienna Symphony – or get them to play your new work

I had an email through today from Talenthouse about one of their creative collaborations. The deal is you subject an audition by uploading your audio file, which is then voted on. There's a final selection round at the end, not voted on by the general public. They're also looking for new work to perform as well. This reminds me a bit of the YouTube Symphony concept, in that skipping the whole hothouse of competitions, etc – though here you're expected to do a fair amount of footwork yourself in getting people to vote for you. Interesting, maybe this functions as a lesson in PR more than anything else. Not necessarily a bad thing for those trying to get careers as private teachers, chamber musicians or whatever else off the ground. 

Hear more about the project from Vienna Symphony Orchestra's Principal Conductor:

 
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Posted by on 9 February 2010 in Orchestras

 

January

My friend Pete is a cellist as well as a composer, and as a personal challenge attempted to write something new for every day in January. As someone who can't even begin to imagine what writing music would entail, I am very impressed. Take a look at his January Pieces, though read the first post there to get a sense of the project – it's not a finished set or anything. 

I can't think of a better thing to start the year with.

 
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Posted by on 1 February 2010 in Uncategorized

 
 
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