Vibrato with Emily

Gottago asked, so I have an excuse to tell.

Emily feels my vibrato tends to be too fast. Yeah, true, I sort of wind up and let 'er rip, Boioioioioioinnng, just leaving it boing on automatic pilot.

Emily had me do a chromatic scale (Duport-style: 3 fingers-to-3 fingers) with very slow, very wide vibrato cycles. I guess it was about 30 or 40 cycles a minute, if I remember right.

The important thing is to keep the motion always constant at the same boringly slow speed; neither speed up nor go into turn-signal mode. That's when you just flip from one side to another, pausing on a side: High...Low...High...Low... Not good, that's cheating. Ya gotta keep it in constant slow motion like a sine wave. Requires patience, it's so tempting to just flip-flop or speed up to get that bounce.

With a metronome, one can then take that slow vibrato pulse and double it, triple it, and quadruple it.

Another point is to maintain good forearm motion. Emily said I had good forearm motion, so that wasn't an issue. But at home, I found my forearm motion is not so good on the 4th finger. At the lesson, we didn't do 4th finger with the exercise, that I can remember. You know me, always finding some way to not do exactly as I'm told ;-). So now I'm trying to incorporate 4th finger in the exercise to see if I can cultivate the same motion I can get on the other fingers.

My lesson with Emily

Last night after work I drove cross-town (LA) and had a lesson from Emily Wright, cello blogger and teacher in residence here in our cello blogosphere.

I took much away from it. Mostly we worked on shifting, but also some vibrato, breathing, and process. Now much to work on to absorb it. Emily wrote down the major points, which I reviewed at practice today.

And you you can probably guess what I found out at practice today: It sure is harder to have the patience to go slow when the coach is not around. But still, I'm convinced practice at glacial speed is what I need more of. I heretofore resolve to thoroughly embrace shifting and vibrato practice at glacially slow, terminally dull, mind-numbingly boring tempos (Oh yes, and all the while to BREATHE!). Y'know, how often is it that our teachers tell us to go faster? Pretty darn rare, so there's no need to hurry, anyway.

The lesson was well worth the trip and effort; I feel re-energized in certain areas. Thank you Emily, hope to see you again soon!

Folkworks: 2005 The Year of the Cello

I read Maricello's recent post concerning playing in a band. I guess I'm pretty lucky. I'll be performing this weekend on washtub bass, cello, and recorder, at a local sandwich shop with a couple of others who play hammer dulcimer and guitar (We wish we could find the right fiddler to join us).

Given the comments that followed Maricello's post, I thought now might be a good time to post a link to the Jul/Aug 2005 issue of FolkWorks magazine. Scroll down to Larry Wine's article on the "Acoustic Renaissance" in which he declared 2005 The Year of the Cello. Not that I'm saying it's too late now, just that cello-awareness has been building even in non-cello folk players. Also note the featured Klezmer band, Warsaw Village Band, has a cellist.

However, I don't think that the typical way cello is taught is conducive to getting an adult ready to play in a band. That may change some in upcoming years.

But I'm not a good one to express and explain that point of view since I came into the game with a pretty solid idea of how I could fit into a folk-ish band, and I had the washtub, and experience on trombone, such as in Dixieland music, to fall back on. For those of you that would like to play in a small group something other than pre-printed classic chamber music, what do you wish a teacher would teach you?

New Years Camp last week

Wife, daughter, and myself had a great time at the annual New Years Camp conducted by the California Traditional Music Society, in Malibu CA. I hope I made a some sort of tiny contribution toward bringing cello awareness back into the traditional music fold.



No, that's not us. That's a photo of the Swannaonna String Band, taken in 1895. I saw it at New Years Camp, but we weren't all that much different. More women. More casually dressed. Nicer buildings. More vegetation. Anybody know the name of the cellist?

I saw some old photos of Klezmer bands with cello, too, that I hope to find online.

I was surprised that non-cellists are starting to know the names of some of the cellists in the field. One woman who plays in the San Francisico Scottish Fiddlers club told me years ago they were no cellists; now, because of the popularity of Natalie Haas and Rushad Eggleston, they have more cellists wanting to join than violinists.

Track of the Wrist

Uploading an image for future use.

The kid's got a lot on the ball

Here's the sitch: He's now in his second year of elementary school orchestra. Tomorrow he auditions for elementary honors orchestra which, I gather, is school district-wide. There's 4 cellists in his elementary school orchestra, he's the only one trying out for honors orchestra.

Besides scales, the piece he is to play is the cello part to an orchestral arrangement of All The Pretty Little Horses. While it doesn't go above D one leger line above bass clef, I was has surprised at how hard it is rhythmically (This is for elementary school kids?!). A couple of meter changes, syncopation, 16th note runs, some portado, some pretty tricky stuff, considering. And he was told they want the A's longer than 16th notes on the D string.

Too hard for him (and me!) to just play through, so we did the Julius Ceasar thing in quite a few spots: Just a few notes several times, then just a few more notes, then put them together several times, then add a few more notes....

For a kid who hasn't had lessons, he doesn't seem to have 1st-position-itis. He just zips up to 2nd and 3rd position easily, likes it's no big deal. Hits that A to match the A string pretty well. There are other areas, though, where lessons will become critical. My opinion is that he needs to get the left arm higher for lower strings, a higher right arm to keep the point-of-contact from creeping up on the long down bows, get further back on backward extensions, take care to keep 2 finger from going sharp --- the usual suspects. But that's for a possible future teacher to decide.

I gained an increased appreciation of how hard it is to put directions into words, especially on the fly in the middle of things. Like with the syncopated rhythms, one can try to explain 'hold the A until after beat 1, then on the 'and of 1' play the Bb, then on the 'and of 2' play the C,...", or one can just say "It's: bah bah bah..." I get too tongue-tied. I'm more suited to the bah-bah-bah method (I think he was more comfortable receiving the bah-bah-bah method, too).

I certainly could see how, to be able explain things, one should not just know how to do it, but rather observe other teachers explaining things at that particular student level.

I hope he does well tomorrow.

Asked to coach a 12 year old boy

My sister-in-law called last night. She wanted to know if I’d be willing to come by on Saturday for a coaching session with a 12 year-old boy who’s auditioning on cello on Monday for a school “honors” orchestra. My sister-in-law has known the family for a long time, likes the boy and has “baby-sat” him often in the past, and the boy has apparently been playing cello for some time, but has never had a lesson.

Well, what could I say? Of course, I’ll come by. Naturally, I hope to motivate the parents to get the boy private lessons with a real teacher if the boy shows genuine interest. I’ll stress that I’m not at all qualified to teach.

Still, I’m quite looking forward to meeting a fellow traveler, even one 42 years younger than me, seeing how he does, and talking cello. I think it will be fun.

But since he’ll be meeting me, of all people, maybe some prayers for his cello-istic soul would be in order here.