| Author |
Subject |
Joe
S
Registered
User
(2/15/01 1:25:06 am)
Reply |
Great
lesson tonight!
With all that life requires of my
time, I have had very little time to practise. (Cello that is. Had
to make a video of myself playing an original piece for my daughters
school report. I sure do look fat on video.) But tonight while sight
reading duets, I sounded great. I was so busy reading that I could
not think about bowing or fingering, and my hands finally went into
automatic. I know that I still have a long way to go, but I have
made progress.
Happy Valentine Day! Joe Getting There S
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Betsy
C 
Registered User
(2/15/01 6:01:42 am)
Reply |
Re:
Great lesson tonight!
Joe, thanks for the Valentine's
wish. Same to you! I am happy for your good lesson. That feels so
great when it happens. I hope my life slows down just a bit soon so
I can practice more. I am working on a project for our church now
that is keeping me really busy; and job interviewing, too. It ought
to get easier a little after this weekend. Whew! Aren't duets
fun?
|
Ellen
G 
Registered User
(2/15/01 8:35:18 am)
Reply |
Re:
Great lesson tonight!
Count me in. After some major
backsliding, I am returning. Hardly in full force, but I'm playing,
improving, and having fun. A few changes. I moved to a 7/8 cello. It
is only a 1 cm difference in reach between the 1st and 4th finger in
4th position (if such things exists) but it matters!!!! I couldn't
believe the improvement in my intonation. Now that I'm not berating
myself over remembering to go that extra distance on my C# and f#
and always hating the C-E stretch on the A string, I can focus some
of that energy on other things in my playing.
Spent one
night on nothing but pieces with dotted rhythms -- my nemesis.
Daughter sitting in the background telling me, "Mom, they sound like
triplets. One-e-and a two-e-and a...." I wish I had her ear.
Obviously I will never win the audition for CSO since you have to be
able to do this well in Beethoven 5. (Hee hee)
And I am
revisiting an old book, Charles Krane New Book of Cello Studies, II.
I used this book a few years back and had issues because at the time
it seemed to be so demanding of my left hand shifts AND right hand
bow control at the same time! So I moved to Schroeder and had
preferred his approach, a little more in isolation. How encouraging
to revisit Crane now and find I'm approaching the same exercises (to
get my sea legs back) with a totally different perspective. I have
learned something over the past few years!!!!! The left hand can do
more than I thought it could, now I'm looking at it as reinforcing
my knowledge of what notes are available to me across strings in the
same position, half step intervals. A few years ago this was just
too much information for me to realize and absorb as I was just
reaching for notes and trying to figure out how to play so many of
them on one bow. Ack!
So I'm a happy camper cellistically at
this instant in time.
|
Joe
S
Registered
User
(2/15/01 9:12:29 am)
Reply |
6/8
Time
It was the 6/8 time that stopped me
last night. I have no problem with it on my other toys, but the
bowing and the different grouping of notes under the same bow
directions ie slurs, was new to my right hand. So something else to
practice. I do look at 6/8 time as a waltz in cut time. This might
help when you slow it down.
Joe S
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Nico67
Registered User
(2/15/01 10:38:31 am)
Reply |
Re:
Great lesson tonight!
I also had a great lesson, albeit a
little too short.
The Valentine's Day craze created a mess of
traffic in NYC so I got to my lesson 1/2 hour late, so we really
only had 1/2 lesson. But I had gone to the lesson with a list of
questions (written down so that I wouldn't forget) about issues that
I had encountered while practicing during the week. I decided to do
this after reading something that Paul Tseng said in the other
thread about "why do you like your teacher". He said that students
often don't ask enough questions, and I realized that I was one of
those.
In 1/2 lesson I got out more than I usually get in a full
one.
As for rythm, oh boy, I am working on this Schumann thing
from Suzuki 2 (did he really name it "The two grenadiers"????  ) and I
can't get the rythm right!!!!
Rosario
|
Ellen
G
Registered User
(2/15/01 11:45:52 am)
Reply |
dots,
double dots
I love 6/8 time. I don't like 3/2
time. But it's the double dotted notes and dotted notes and 16th and
32nd notes and rests that get me. It's difficult to stop the bow at
the right time, get my ear to adjust to when I've stopped bowing
versus when the cello has stopped ringing, and all the breakdowns of
fractional beats. Definitely time for the metronome, slowing it
down, and having someone in the room qualified to coach. Thank
heavens I have that sometimes. Otherwise I would practice it
incorrectly all week. When I have a recording in a quartet, I get
help that way. But obviously student literature and exercises aren't
going to exist on tape. Besides which, I can't rely on parroting
what I hear. I need to know how to figure it out and play it.
The other nightmare for me is notes tied into the next
measure. Somehow I would just lose my sense of time, especially if
there was anything cute going on with tied notes starting on the
half beat and continuing. I was absolutely pathetic. "Was"? Probably
still am! It is a mental game, to be sure.
|
ruthann
Registered User
(2/15/01 12:44:54 pm)
Reply |
Re:
dots, double dots
I tourture my kids with this kind of
stuff. There are all sorts of tricks to help you. One is to mark
where each beat is with a light pencil mark in troublesome measures.
Anyone who has played a Beethoven slow movement of almost anything
will tear their hair out trying to figure out how the rhythm is
supposed to go. It's a combination of his habit of writing things in
3/4 when they would be easier to read in 6/8 and his habit shifting
the beat emphasis from measure to measure.
As for just plain
figuring, I like to use the approach of "saying" and clapping the
rhythm. The actual words are probably not important, but we use the
following:
Whole note - hold the whole note
Half note - half
note
Quarter note - quarter
Eighth note pair - two
eighths
sixteenths - four sixteenth notes (for 4) or sixteen (for
2)
For dotted notes, mostly you just add the word dot. Like
half note dot. For dotted quarters with eighths you would use
quarterdot eighth.
Triplets are tri - pl - et or strawberry
or pineapple.
I prefer the ones that use the note
names.
An eighth followed by two sixteenths would be eighth
sixteen, and so on.
This doesn't work for the double dots,
but perhaps a combination of marking where the beats are in the
measure, a metronome, clapping, and a little divine inspiration will
help you out.
cello_suttonr@hotmail.com
|
Bobbie
Registered
User
(2/15/01 2:20:11 pm)
Reply |
Re:
dots, double dots
Ellen, I'm probably just as bad at
these as you are, but one thing I do is to play the dotted rhythm as
all separate notes. For example, for a dotted eighth-sixteenth
rhythm play three sixteenths instead of the dotted eighth. When I
teach, I will play the three 16ths against the student's dotted
eighth so she can hear what she is supposed to be counting.
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MaryK
Registered
User
(2/15/01 7:19:26 pm)
Reply
 |
To
Ellen re 7/8ths
Hi Ellen, you having any trouble
adjusting to a 7/8-size instrument? I love mine, but there are times
I still revert to a 4/4-size shift or extension. Oh well. It just
takes time to get the brain and hands in synch.
MaryK
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