Emma
12.02.09
Hi Emma,
This is your webpage; designed to help you remember all the things we’ve talked about in our lessons. I’ll go over all of the subjects one by one. If you have any questions either you can email me or have your mom email me.
Bowing:
We talked about two studies with the bow on Wednesday, the first was the wrist movement study in order to do this study:
1. grasp the bow with your thumb and middle finger and then let the other fingers fall as they do in your normal bow grip.
2. let your hand rotate back and forth as you take a down bow and then an up bow.
3. Think about bouncing the basketball sideways liek we talked about to keep your wrist loose and very flexible.
Here are some pictures and a video to help:
these are examples of good bow holds, see how the thumbs are bent and the fingers are slightly curved, nobody is gripping they are simply holding the bow
This is an example of a bad grip, his fingers are not relaxed mainly because he has paws instead of a hand:
So practice the two bowing excercises for the first 10 minutes of your practice time every time you sit down to play.
Music:
We worked on the variation of long long ago with all of those crazy string crossings. Remember the key to practicing is to start extremely slowly. So in this piece you are going to let your right hand move into position before you actually move it, so each not has three things to think about in it:
1. get left hand ready (make sure the right finger is down or if it’s an open string that no fingers are down)
2. get the right hand ready (make sure it’s on the right string and that you are going the right way, either up or down)
3. play
once you’ve finished playing the note then stop the bow and go back to step 1, eventually these steps will happen so quickly that it will look like you’re not doing them even though you are.
We also looked at the May Song. Remember that crazy bowing where you go three beats on the up bow and three beats on the down bow. Again you have to start slow in your practicing in order to be able to do it fast. So repeat those same steps that I just wrote out above with each note.
December 18, 2009
Hi Emma,
So let’s talk about what we did yesterday. So you have two things to work on this week right:
Number one is the bow and the bow grip, so you are going to work on always keeping your thumb bent no matter what and to help you gain some flexibility in you thumb so so that you can do this, you are going to do the exercise where you straighten your thumb out and the bend it back in while you take nice long bow strokes. When you do this you are going to play a game and see if you can make it sound like you aren’t changing anything and next week you are going to try to fool me into thinking that you aren’t doing anything even though you will be straightening and bending your thumb the whole time.
Number two is the may song and watching how much bow you use for certain note lengths. So we are going to think about this from a mathematical perspective right? So in the may song everything is divided into thirds:
one quarter note=2/3 of the bow
one eighth-note=1/3 of the bow
and you only change bows after you’ve gotten from the frog to the very tip, except when you only have one eighth note, so just really watch the bow slurs to make sure you are always going in the right direction.
Here are some more video links to some awesome cellists:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0DJQmagTTk&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUAPf_ccobc&feature=related
this one is kind of cool, she has a computer that records her and plays it back while she continues to play, so she ends up playing cello with herself and it sounds like there is an orchestra of just her.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYrcXX4nWOA
January 13, 2010
Hi Emma,
So yesterday we talked about the etude variation piece and how we need to always prepare before we play. Here is a check list for you to go through before you start your practice:
Before you play ask yourself these questions:
- Which direction is my bow going?
- How much bow am I using?
- What string should I be on?
Once you’ve answered these questions then you can move the bow and eventually you’ll get so good at this that you’ll do it without even knowing it.
We also started on the Bach Suite yesterday. Just make sure that you apply the questions from above while you practice it this week and you’ll make improvement before next week. It’s a difficult piece but you do have the talent to play it.
You are doing really good work so far, keep it up 
Here is a link to a video of my teacher’s teacher playing the Bach Suite he is something like 90 years old when he recorded it.
