Learning to play a string instrument means having to figure out where the left hand goes on the fingerboard in order to play the notes. Since we don’t have a GPS system for the cello, most people initially learn where the notes are by knowing the positions. The positions are like the latitude and longitude of the cello, and knowing them can help organize the grid of the fingerboard. Unfortunately many students learn just First and Fourth positions, because then they can play almost all the notes in the lower part of the cello. However, that limits the myriad choices of fingerings that can produce different shifts, slides, string crossings, etc. It reduces the creative possibilities, and it can make it almost impossible to play difficult passages that require the intermediate positions.

As students advance they often forget that the way they initially learned about the fingerboard was through the positions. Sophisticated cellists use their well-developed aural skills, including pitch memory and intervals, as well as their kinesthetic memory. However, I feel that even for advanced cellists it is always useful to go “back to the basics” and revisit our fundamental knowledge of the positions. It is an important piece of information about the cello that should be a resource for improving intonation, relaxation, and discovering new fingering possibilities for various passages in the repertoire. It is especially important for teachers to remind themselves of the positions so that they can teach it properly to the young student.

We generally divide the cello into Neck Position and Thumb Position (though in advanced playing the thumb could be used anywhere on the cello). It is really important to have a good system for identifying the positions in Neck Position. There are several good systems around, but the one I prefer in my teaching – and the one that I use in these videos is the following:

Every position has a normal and an extended variant. Knowing these positions refines our understanding of the cello geography.

I use what I call “block” positions as the initial way to treat the left hand. Block Position means that the fingers are basically perpendicular to the string, and the fingers are all relaxed but down on the string. This square shape of the hand is especially important for double stops, chords, string crossings, and fast playing. It also is a good way to stabilize intonation for the neck positions.

After the block position concept has been absorbed by the student I begin to address the other way that we use the left hand: balancing on the finger that is playing. This way of playing is preferable for expressive vibrato and for releasing more tension. In this position the arm weight is centered on the finger that is playing. This is especially important for melodic playing on one string.

For each position the elbow is in a slightly different place – it moves forward as you change positions. This becomes really important when we focus on shifting, since the elbow really is what moves first. Even in small ½ step shifts, the elbow moves first and the hand and fingers follow. And even in the extended variants of each position the elbow moves slightly forward. (Next week’s blog will discuss the extended positions).

With my students I make sure that they are very clear about the geography of the Neck Positions before moving on to Thumb Position. Even though most of my students have already played in Thumb Position – and most of them have worked on difficult pieces involving the thumb – if they don’t have a good understanding of the “cello lowlands” then we review that before visiting the “highlands” of Thumb Position. Many people have a special problem with the “Bermuda triangle” of V, V 1/2, VI, and VI 1/2 positions – and especially the extensions in those positions.

In next week’s blog I will discuss extended position and give some exercises for training and re-training this important part of our technique.

In today’s blog I will discuss two related left-hand issues: finger strength and articulation, and offer some isometric exercises to prevent the fingers from collapsing.

Finger Strength

So, actual muscle strength is probably less important in cello playing than flexibility, release of tension, and gentle power.  In Western culture one of the symbols of strength is a powerful tree, such as an oak tree or a chestnut tree. For example, in Longfellow’s poem The Village Blacksmith:

“Under a spreading chestnut tree, the village smithy stands; The smith, a mighty man is he, with large and sinewy hands. And the muscles of his brawny arm…”.

However in some Asian countries strength is symbolized by a willow tree, which flows with the wind. In a storm, it is more likely for the powerful oak tree to fall than the flexible willow tree.

Isometrics

Some people think that they are double jointed and use that as an excuse for not having round fingers. In my experience over the last 45 years of teaching, there are very few people who are actually double jointed. In most cases the tiny muscles of the fingers have just not been sufficiently strengthened to prevent the fingers from collapsing. However this can be addressed very easily through isometric exercises.

Articulation:

Casals was known for using a “percussive” left hand, which helps to insure that every note speaks, and that every note is articulated clearly and cleanly. Ivan Galamian discusses this issue in his book “Principles of Violin Playing and Teaching”:

“In instrumental music, the relationship of the percussive elements to those of the purely singing sound is analogous to that of the consonants and vowels in speech and song…The consonants (the percussive or accentuated elements) provide the articulation which can be produced by either the left or right hand…With the left hand, the consonant can be produced by energetic and fast dropping of the fingers for ascending passages. The counter-part, in descending passages, is a sidewise lifting of the fingers that produces almost a slight pizzicato effect”. (Galamian p. 10)

It is better to think in terms of finger weight (or arm weight), rather than finger “pressure”. Pressure implies muscles and tension – much like a “pressure cooker”. Weight implies relaxation and gravity.

It is really important to relax the finger once it hits the string, and not to give in to the temptation to squeeze the string down. When I first started to teach I had a very talented 12-year old girl, who played about as fast as anybody could possibly play. I couldn’t understand how she could play so fast. But then I realized that she never pushed the string down at all – in fact she played completely on the side of the string. She didn’t have a big sound at all, and what she had to figure out was how to play “forte” in her right hand but continue to play “piano” with her left hand.

There are essentially four kinds of finger weights for playing:

• “Setting Strength” – when you articulate and the finger first comes down onto the string there is a moderate amount of weight, as a result of the speed of the finger coming down on the string.
• “Playing Strength” – after the initial attack, the finger releases, and there is the least amount of weight necessary; the finger should feel spongy and relaxed after the initial articulation
• “Travelling Strength” – the finger barely touching the string, used for shifting, glissandos, slides, “preparation and release”
• “Pizzicato Strength” – when playing pizzicato one needs the most amount of finger weight in order for the vibrations not to stop when you release the finger.

Here are several warm-up exercises for articulation. I think it is really helpful to practice these on the arm as well as on the cello, as we discussed in Blog #9 on miming. For all of these exercises it is important to keep in mind the principles mentioned above.

Independence of Fingers

Double Stop Exercise

Aldulescu Exercise

Here is a great series of exercises for finger articulation by Radu Aldulescu. The notated example is with the fingers 1,2,3,4. Below that is a chart with all the combinations of the fingers :

Here are a few examples, including a double-stop version of the exercise, holding one finger on another string.

All these exercises are good preparation for trill exercises.

According to Galamian:

“The principle that fingers should not be lifted high and should not strike hard is particularly true in its application to trills…Over-development of strength in the fingers is especially detrimental in executing the trill”. (Galamian, p. 30)

Cossman Exercises

The Cossman Exercises are classics for working on articulation, clarity and intonation.

Most people know the first Cossman exercise. Here are also some variations on that exercise, and also the second Cossman articulation exercise:

Cossman 1:

Cossman 2:

The Cossman exercises test our strength, relaxation, and endurance; if we have difficulty getting through these exercises on all the strings and then back up we need to examine whether we are pressing/squeezing with the fingers. For endurance it is best to add a few measures each day – always being mindful that there should be no pain in playing.

We also articulate with the bow – by “kissing” the hairs with the stick, much as we did in the “Getting into the String” Exercise (see blog on Open Strings).

Next week’s blog will start a two-part series on Cello Geography.

We all know how important relaxation is in playing the cello – if the muscles are tight our body and brain do not work efficiently and effectively. If we are tense we can’t shift properly, we are more prone to silly mistakes in a performance, and if our breathing is shallow then not enough oxygen gets to the brain. We need to figure out how to release tension and relax as we play. As Janos Starker said, his entire life was a search for more and better ways to relax. Playing the cello is difficult enough as it is, so whatever we can do to relax will help us perform better and be able to play longer in our lives. I tell my students that I hope that they will be able to play the cello well into their 80’s and 90’s, as did Starker (88), Greenhouse (95) and Casals (96), among others.

Underlying the ability to play fast, to adjust intonation quickly, and to think clearly is the necessity to be as relaxed as possible. One of the most important way to foster relaxation is to focus on our breathing.

As a nervous performer, I first became aware of the connection between our nerves and the way we breathe in the early 1970’s, when I was a student in Freiburg. My teacher suggested a little book by Heinrich Egenolf called “Das Wunder des Atmens” (“The Wonder of Breathing”), which focused on the importance of breathing for our health and creativity. Of course, we all breathe every day: up to 40,000 times a day! We don’t really think about it. But in order to learn to breathe for relaxation, it is essential to focus our attention on the best way to use this vital tool to our advantage.

I had a similar experience to the one that Paul Katz mentioned in a recent post here on CelloBello. When I was about 10 years old I had my appendix out. As I was being prepped for the operation, the anesthesiologist told me that he was going to put the gas mask on my face to put me out for the operation. As he came towards me with the mask, he told me to blow away the mask as much as I could by blowing out – and of course the next thing that happened was that I automatically took in a huge lungful of the gas, and I was out. Like Paul, I remembered that years later when I was thinking about breathing and cello playing – I guess that anesthesiologists all over use a similar technique!

Square Breathing

The next step is to use the breathing to consciously slow the heart rate and lower your blood pressure. I like to use Square Breathing to organize my breathing when I am nervous or tense:

Practicing Breathing with Scales

After one feels comfortable with deep breathing and Square Breathing, it is useful to practice things like scales by coordinating the breathing with the bowing.

In addition to breathing, we should examine every aspect of our technique to discover how best to relax the muscles that we need to use, and to make sure that no unnecessary muscles are tight. We should be aware of some basic principles underlying good use of the body. These include:

• Good alignment of the body
• No kinks or bends in the arm or wrist
• A good rule to keep in mind: if you can move a body part, the muscle is more relaxed; if it is tight you can’t move it as well
• Be aware that you don’t have muscles fighting muscles, with one muscle trying to go in one direction and another trying to go in the opposite direction.

In my case that last point is critical. As a student I discovered that my shifting was often inhibited by muscles fighting muscles in my upper arm. So, I like to warm up with the Feuilliard exercise #16 from the “Daily Exercises”. I do this religiously every morning, and usually before performances. If I can shift easily, then I know I am ready to play. I will discuss this more in an upcoming blog on shifting.

Using Arm Weight for Relaxation

As I mentioned in an earlier blog, we like to use the word “arm weight” rather than “pressure”, because pressure implies using muscles and creating tension (think of a “pressure cooker”). Here are a few exercises for using arm weight and not squeezing with the thumb on the bow.

Dotted Rhythm Relaxation

Many cellists find that the Bach Suites are some of the most difficult pieces to play. One of the reasons for this is that it involves 25 minutes of continuous solo playing. Unlike playing a slow, romantic melody, Bach requires our brain and body to be actively engaged for the entire time – a millisecond of tension may throw off the performance in a noticeable way. One of the “secrets” to playing Bach is to find as many releases in the left hand as possible. That means not squeezing into the fingerboard with the fingers or thumb, not lifting fingers that are not playing, and releasing each finger as soon as it has touched the fingerboard so it bounces back in a ballistic motion. In other words, playing with an efficient left hand, and making sure that muscles are not fighting muscles.

In observing our own playing, if we find that we have any pain, any unnecessary tension, or if we can’t move our fingers fast enough (up to a point!) or use a fast vibrato – then the root cause is likely to be unnecessary tension which must be addressed.

Next week’s Blog (#13) will be about Isometrics, Strength, and Articulation.

Coordination Exercises

In Part 1 of this blog on “Flexibility and Coordination” I discussed the flexibility of the fingers and wrist, and gave some left hand warm-ups such as finger-pushups and some bow arm exercises such as the “box” exercise. Today we will discuss some warm-ups that are useful to improve coordination. A large part of the physical approach to playing the cello involves coordination. Whether playing double stops, timing the speed of a shift, or coordinating the left and right hands we need to be aware of this aspect of our technique. When I was a student in Freiburg, we used to go out as a cello group to a pizza restaurant every Monday after our master classes. We would sit at a long table talking in a babble of languages – German, French, Roumanian, Japanese, Korean, Spanish, English – doing wrist exercises in the air, articulating with the fingers on the table, and gesticulating wildly while vibrating on our arms. The other German customers must have thought that we had just been let out of an asylum. But what we were doing was practicing coordination exercises, demonstrating fingerings, and showing each other what we had learned. The only way to learn and improve coordination is by doing it again and again – even at a pizza restaurant. Here are a variety of exercises that focus on coordination, in no particular order. First a couple of general coordination exercises, focusing on the bow:

Here is the Tortelier bow speed exercise from his book “How I Play, How I Teach”:

Another coordination exercise for the bow is this one: “Frog and Tip”

A good exercise for working on left hand/right hand coordination issues is this “Two Note Coordination Exercise”:

Chromatic coordination exercises

Cadence Exercises

Cadence Exercise #1: Cadence Exercises #2: Cadence Exercises #3: Vibrato Coordination Exercise

Exercise for Evenness of Fingers

Next week’s Blog (#12) will be on Breathing and Relaxation.

Today’s blog will deal with the twin issues of flexibility and coordination, which are closely related for string players. Flexibility is the range of motion of your joints and the ability to move freely. Flexibility can be improved by stretching, which we discussed in an earlier blog. Coordination refers to the relationship between different parts of the body during movement.

As with any physical activity, we can improve our flexibility and coordination through practice. Since the physical aspect of playing the cello is an athletic event involving the small muscles of the body, we can improve our ability by working on our flexibility and coordination both with and without the cello. When we exercise the arms, hands and fingers away from the cello, we are exploring the underlying motions which are required in playing.

Bow Hand Flexibility

When I start to work with students on string crossings, I like to break down the motions that are involved, especially with the wrist and the fingers. Some of these movements are not things that we do regularly in our daily lives, but they are important for the fine motor control needed in playing the cello. Just telling someone that we use the wrist and fingers is not enough – for most people the motions need to be analyzed, taught, and then absorbed by the body and brain through repetition. At that point the movements begin to feel “natural”.

Wrist Exercises

Once again, the order of the wrist exercises:

• Make a box with the wrist; both directions; make a circle
• Do the same holding a pencil
• Do the same holding the bow, with the little finger on top, using the left hand to help stabilize it
• Do the same thing without using the left hand, with the little finger on the top for balance

These exercises might take a few days or weeks to master, but I have never found anyone who couldn’t find the flexibility and coordination to do this.

Finger Exercises

Now let’s do some exercises for finger flexibility on the bow, which we use for string crossings and collé strokes.

The order of the finger exercises is:

1. move fingers straight down and up so the hand is flat; then attach thumb to first finger
2. hold pencil and move fingers up and down
3. hold bow with little finger on top, and support with left hand – move fingers up and down
4. without left hand, balancing with little finger on the top, move fingers up and down

Another right hand finger flexibility exercise is doing bow rotations, in which we are changing the amount of hair on the string. I demonstrated this in the blog on open strings.

Next week’s blog will continue the flexibility and coordination exercises, including left hand/right hand coordination exercises, some bow speed exercises, and some cadence exercises.

As I mentioned in Part One of this blog on “Mentalization and Mimes”, I have found that in learning or relearning a physical task it is often very helpful to do it away from the cello. There are several ways that we can retrain our bodies, including through visualization, biofeedback, using a “phantom cello”, and with mimes. I discussed the benefits of visualization, or what I call Mentalization. Here is a practical example of how to do this: Sit in a quiet place and take a few deep breaths to relax. Then imagine the beginning of a piece you are working on. Hear, feel and see the music in your mind. Do not actually move your fingers, but imagine the coordination between the left hand and the bow arm. Feel the shape of the first phrase, and what you need to do with the bow to achieve the musical line that you are imagining. You may find that you can only do a few measures this way, even in a piece that you “know” very well. That’s fine – just take a look at the music, and then try it again. After a few days repeating this kind of work you will find that you will have built up the concentration and focus that you need to get through larger and larger sections of the piece.

Mimes

Sometimes we need to rethink the basic physical approaches to playing the cello. I have found that one of the best techniques for learning or relearning a physical task is to do it away from the cello. In other words when you are trying to figure out how to bow parallel to the bridge, or how the arm moves in a shift, or how the vibrato motion works, it is helpful to learn those motions without actually playing. By stripping away all the complexities of the music, we can focus on the physicality of the task by silently miming the activity. When playing the cello we can easily get distracted by a myriad of other factors: intonation, tone color, and bad habits not directly related to the task at hand. As a result it is sometimes difficult to relearn a task. Mimes can help us figure out how the arm or hand should move without being distracted by anything else. Once we have learned the proper physical approach we can return to the cello with new neural pathways superceding the old bad habits.

Biofeedback

Another method for training and retraining the body is through Biofeedback. This is especially effective in learning to relax muscles. Biofeedback is a technique used to control the body’s responses to physical and emotional stress. Information about tension is “fed back” to the individual immediately, thereby enabling physical changes to be made in response. As a result, individuals can train themselves to relax certain parts of the body as required.

Biofeedback is pertinent to musicians as it can help reduce tension in playing, alleviate performance anxiety, and address other serious underlying physical problems such as tendonitis. Use of a biofeedback machine, and the underlying principles of relaxation, can help sensitize musicians to understand and use their bodies better, and help to re-train them to play with less tension and more accuracy.

I participated in a study in 1981 that showed that EMG (electromyography) feedback was found to be a successful mechanism for helping musicians to reduce specific muscle tension during performance. Until recently, biofeedback machines were large and unwieldy, and few people had the opportunity to use them. They were only accessible in laboratories and for use with assistance from physical therapists. Now, however, smaller portable machines have become available. I have used these with my students, including Myotrac for EMG, and emWave for HRV. I have found them to be very helpful in sensitizing cellists to reduce tension in specific muscles.

Playing the cello is a physical activity, but we have to remember that it is also “mind over matter”. What we are really training is the brain.

Next week’s blog will start a two-part series on Flexibility and Coordination.

Although I am in China this week and next, I would like to share these two blogs on mental practice – it’s “mind over matter”.

Playing the cello is very much a physical activity. Our ability to play is in many ways governed by how we hold the instrument and the bow. As soon as we take the cello out of the case and sit down our body automatically does what it is used to doing – good and bad. How we shift, or how we do string crossings are built in by habit. We are conditioned to our habitual motions and often don’t even think about how effective they actually are. Even we decide that we want to relearn a physical task, the process is often slowed down by the fact that we keep doing the same old bad habits.

I have found that in learning or relearning a physical task it is often very helpful to do it away from the cello. In part this is because we eliminate what Casals sometimes referred to as his “wooden wife” and we can relearn the motions in the abstract. There are several ways that we can retrain our bodies, including visualization, biofeedback, using a “phantom cello”, and miming.

One of the most important techniques is what is called “mental imagery” or “visualization” This involves imagining a task or an activity without actually moving a muscle or completing the action. I like to call this “mentalization”, since much more is involved than just a visual picture. When you “mentalize” a passage of music you hear the music, feel the phrasing, and “play” every note in your imagination. You go through the music in your mind, imagining every step of the way. Your fingers do not actually move and your arms do not actually bow, but you can feel these physical motions. You go through the process in real time, or perhaps even under tempo. If you can do this accurately, you will feel confidence in knowing the piece deeply and securely.

Many athletes use mental imagery to enhance performance. The great golfer Jack Nicklaus referred to this:

“I never hit a shot even in practice without having a sharp in-focus picture of it in my head. It’s like a colour movie. First, I “see” the ball where I want it to finish, nice and white and sitting up high on the bright green grass. Then the scene quickly changes, and I “see” the ball going there: its path, trajectory, and shape, even its behaviour on landing. Then there’s a sort of fade-out, and the next scene shows me making the kind of swing that will turn the previous images into reality. Only at the end of this short private Hollywood spectacular do I select a club and step up to the ball.”

With “mental imagery” it turns out that neurons are actually firing in the same part of your brain as if you were physically moving. Mentalization builds the same neural pathways as actual physical activity, but even more efficiently because there are no wasted motions involved.

When I lived in Freiburg, Germany I used to teach cello in a school near Basel, Switzerland. It was a 40 minute trip on the train, and at first I resented the time that it took to get to the job. One time I took along some music I was working on and “practiced” in my head during the train trip. When I got back to my practice room I discovered that I knew how to play the passages I had “practiced” in my head. It was a great personal discovery about how efficiently and effectively I could learn something by mentalizing it.

Some years later I took the next step. During a summer at Aspen my cello teacher Alan Harris had me learn the Bach Fifth Suite completely away from the cello. I had never played it before, and the assignment was to decide my fingerings and bowings completely away from the cello. I had to figure out the phrase shapes and memorize the piece before I could play a single note on the cello. I could play it at the piano or sing it, or use any other technique I wanted. But I was not allowed to play it on the cello until it was learned and memorized. It was a very difficult assignment, but I ended up learning it faster and more securely than I had ever learned anything before.

The great thing about this technique is that we can do it when we don’t have a cello around – before going to sleep at night, on first waking up, or while jogging. The takeaway is that spending a few minutes warming up with some visualization at the beginning of a practice session is greatly worth the time and effort, and it is more efficient than wasting time noodling while playing. You can’t play out of tune when you mentalize!

In Part Two of this Blog on “Mentalization and Mimes”, I will show a practical example of mentalization, and demonstrate how we can use miming to learn or relearn physical tasks.

Part Two of Open String Warm-Ups will continue with exercises for sautille, bow changes, string crossings, dynamics, etc.

Bouncy Bow Exercise:

This exercise is a great way to work on sautille, building it up from spiccato to the fast, uncontrolled sautille stroke.

Before doing the “Bouncy Bow” exercise, I would recommend doing a regular routine of daily scales with a slow spiccato at m=60, using eighth notes, triplets,16th notes until the spiccato is easy to execute.  Then, after exploring this exercise, add sextuplets and octuplets. I find that if intermediate students do this regularly, then the fast sautille stroke is not difficult to learn.

“Bubble” Exercise:

This exercise fosters an easy bounce of the bow, and teaches us that the bow has its own bounce.

Bow Rotation and Wave Exercises:

The bow rotation exercises work on tone color changes and finger flexibility using more and less hair. They are also important for helping to keep the bow in the string (when the stick is facing you) and letting it come off the string (when the stick is away from you).

The wave exercises are important for string crossings, and for wrist and finger flexibility.

Bow Change Exercises:

One of our most difficult tasks as string players is to execute smooth bow changes. Here are some exercises that address this issue.

Four Basic String Crossing Motions:

Now that we have done some exercises with one string, it is useful to work on string crossings between two strings. All string crossings boil down to four basic bowing figures.

We will discuss the details of string crossings in a later blog.

Bow Vibrato:

Front and Back of the Hand Exercises:

This exercise helps with relaxation at the frog and getting a better sound at the tip.

Galamian Dynamic Exercises:

The Galamian son filé exercises (on page 103 of his book) are particularly useful for working on dynamics. As he writes in his book “Principles of Violin Playing and Teaching”,  “The son filé should be practiced on open strings, then on scales singly and in double stops: in every dynamic from piano to forte and with dynamic variations as shown in Example 93″:

Reading and Rhythm Exercise with Open Strings:

It is often useful to read the passage out loud while playing the rhythm – a great coordination exercise as well. (This passage came from Anner Bylsma’s book Bach, The Fencing Master.)

Next week’s Blog (#8) will start a two part series on “Mentalization and Mimes” – warming up the brain for a good practice session, and realizing the importance of “mind over matter” in playing the cello.

On most days I like to warm up with open strings. I love the sound of the open strings, and the feeling of the natural vibrations against my chest. I like to listen to the fundamental pitch, and then try to hear some of the overtones that make the tone color – a pure sound which connects me back to the earliest sounds of music, the aural “ur-sound” of the first stringed instrument played by a human being. I can hear the lyra or the rabab, or back still further to the plucked sounds of the lyre, or even earlier to the first time someone plucked the string on a bow and arrow. I can hear the rebec, the gamba, or the arpeggione, or a hundred other ancestors and close relatives to our cello. It’s a great way to start the day. Playing open strings can bring me quickly from the hustle and bustle of the outside world into the cello world. It helps me to settle down, breathe, focus and concentrate on the tasks at hand. It is my way of saying “om”, a kind of cello mantra that leads me into a healthy and creative place for practicing and making music. It may seem totally obvious to start with open strings, but at the risk of sounding obvious I suggest starting every day by going back to the basics:

Other things to think about while doing the open strings include: breathing, relaxation of the shoulders at the frog, the “front and back of the hand”,  and of course just listening to the sound. As I mentioned in the video,  I like to use contrary motion, or left/right motion– I discussed  that in Blog #5 on Balance. I usually do the open strings as close to the bridge as possible, but staying as relaxed as possible. We are told that Corelli used to audition violinists for his ensembles in 1700 by asking them to hold a stopped third for 15 seconds in one bow. So apparently playing with a slow bow close to the bridge was important way back in the Baroque! Of course violinists have a longer bow than cellists, but our modern bows are longer than Baroque bows. It is difficult enough to hold an open G string for 15 seconds – but try it with a double-stop third! And this is not an “idle” exercise – we often need a slow bow in order to play lots of notes in a bow with son filé technique. Many of the Popper etudes require this technique as a “given”, despite the fact that they are mostly working on left hand issues.

Exercise for Changing the Bow Angle to Raise or Lower the Contact Point:

Once the bow angle is consistently parallel to the bridge and the contact point is steady, it is useful to practice changing the contact point in order to change the volume or tone color within one long bow stroke. We can do this in two ways: either by moving the arm up or down, or by changing the bow angle on purpose, making the bow slide up or down as needed.

There are lots of different approaches to bow technique. In this series of warm-ups and exercises I am not advocating for any particular school of thought in these warm-up exercises. I think that most of the exercises will be applicable to most bow techniques. After all, our goal is to produce a good sound in as easy a way as possible. My background, through my teachers in Europe, is the French bow technique that I learned from Marcal Cervera and Paul Tortelier, enhanced by my graduate study work with Paul Katz and Bernie Greenhouse. I love Paul’s story about the fingers as sailors on a boat, describing the placement of the different fingers on the bow – I remember him telling me that story in a lesson almost 40 years ago, and I use it with all my new students: https://www.cellobello.org/cello-lessons/right-hand/bow-hold-principles-part-1/

I also like to think about the function of each of the fingers on the bow, and assign each one a special task:

First finger – transfers the arm weight into the bow

Second Finger – anchor finger

Third Finger – rotation, and centering finger

Fourth Finger (little finger) – balance

Thumb – Counter-balance; guide finger

Here are some exercises, in no particular order, that I do with the open strings – I certainly don’t do all of them every day, but I rotate around doing different ones on different days.

The “Getting into the String” Exercise: This exercise is useful for reminding ourselves that almost every stroke starts from the string:

Down-bow Exercise:

This exercise checks to make sure that the bow angle is consistently parallel to the bridge by using a fast bow speed and high contact point:

Four Basic Bow Distribution Exercises:

There are four basic bow distribution exercises that l like to do with my students. They are:

Next week’s Blog (#7)  will continue with lots of open string warm-ups, such as the “Bubble Exercise”, the “Bouncy Bow Exercise”, string crossings, bow changes, the “front and back of the hand”, exercises changing dynamics, and bow vibrato. Stay tuned!

In Part 1 of this blog on finding balances, we discussed the large body balances which are useful in playing the cello. As Elizabeth Morrow wrote in a 2007 article in the American String Teacher journal: “Balance is a necessary component to arriving at maximum energy efficiency with minimal effort, a sensation we interpret as relaxation”.

Next, we will explore some of the balances involved in using the bow.

I prefer to use the term “bow balance” rather than “bow hold” or “bow grip”, because “holding”or “gripping” implies using muscles. Just as we prefer to use the term “arm weight” rather than “pressure” in describing the way to produce sound, the words we use influence the way we think about what we are doing. In our “bow balance”, the thumb is perhaps the most important finger. It is the “counter-balance” to the other fingers, and without the thumb we could not hold the bow.

In playing the cello the thumbs on both hands should be bent outward (some teachers say a “bumpy thumb”), not squished in. The reason for this is that when the thumb is bent inward it is designed to grab onto something like a hammer or other tool. It maximizes the grip and enables power and strength from the arm to manipulate a tool. However in playing the cello we do not need that kind of force – in fact, we need to reduce tension and facilitate the flexibility of the thumb and fingers. When the thumb is round and bent out we can access the fine motor skills which are necessary for subtle nuances in playing. When the thumb is bent inward it is inflexible and leads to grabbing the bow, excess tension, and a lack of flexibility.

The other most important finger in terms of balance is the little finger. The function of the little finger is to steer the bow and to control lifting of the bow off the string. For me the little finger is really important for string crossings and for spiccato and sautille strokes.

Ballistics

Another important type of movement is the ballistic motion. As I use the term, it refers to a movement in which a muscle fires and there is a resulting motion in the opposite direction. Christopher Berg discusses ballistic motions in his book Mastering Guitar Technique: “It is the resilience of the central nervous system and the brain that allows great virtuosos to quickly replace muscular contractions with muscular relaxations. This is the final element needed to develop correct patterns of movement. Muscles move a joint by contracting. These contractions must arise quickly, last a short time, and alternate with relaxations…” Quoting from Dr. Frank Wilson, he writes: “It is very energetic and short lasting. It launches the limb in a set direction and ceases long before the limb will have completed its course of action. Because of the similarity of this kind of move to the firing of a gun shell, it was called ‘ballistic’. “

Using left/right contrary motion for balance also enables us to get back to the frog quickly and easily because the body is meeting the hand halfway.

Left Hand Balances

Balance is also vitally important in the left hand. We balance on each finger as we play, with the minimum amount of weight needed to produce the fundamental of the pitch (I will discuss this issue in a later blog on Isometrics, Strength and Articulation).

Balance and ballistic motions are also involved in vibrato. We don’t really need to actively vibrate up and down; we can conserve energy by actively vibrating in the “up” direction, with the top of the vibrato at the desired pitch. If the arm and hand are relaxed, then the “ping” produced on the “up” motion will result in a movement in the opposite, or “down” direction. Basically, the vibrato motion employs Newton’s Third Law: every action has an equal and opposite reaction. The active motion is the “up” part of the vibrato – the reaction is passive. Since the “up” motion of the vibrato pitch is really a physical motion towards the bridge on the cello, we are using gravity as well, so we don’t have to work as hard. The “down” motion of the vibrato (which is physically moving upwards) is the reaction to this. As long as the arm, hand and fingers are relaxed the vibrato motion will bounce back without any effort, thanks to Newton’s Third Law.

Other Balances

As we think about these issues, we can find other situations where balance is important in string playing. For example, in finding the right balance in playing double-stops, or in finding the balance we want when playing with a pianist or chamber group. We also may be looking for some philosophical balance in our approach to playing Bach: we are somewhere on a continuum between playing in a historically accurate “performance practice” approach, versus a highly personal, romantic approach.

 Now that we have discovered some of the balances in playing the cello, we should probably address issues of balances in our lives: a balance between work and play, or between “alone time” and social time, or between virtual “on-line” time and living our real lives – but I will leave that for you to figure out for yourself!

Next Monday’s Blog will begin a two-part series on open-string warm up exercises.