baroque bowing

Several of my cello friends blog about details of their lessons: techniques they learn or discoveries they make. I love reading these blogs, although they often leave me mystified because I’m not yet at a playing level where I can fully understand what they’re getting at to be able to apply it to my own practice (nothing makes me more aware of my own ignorance like cello does; Kermit is right – it really is not easy being green). I suppose reading these posts also leaves me overwhelmed because of all the detail – how do they keep it all in mind and active when playing a piece? That is a skill I would love to have.

I’ve avoided writing posts about my lessons and revelations because as such a beginner, I’m not sure what words to use to describe these things in a way that would be useful not only to me, but to anyone reading the entries. Pretty much all of my cello friends are way ahead of me in skill, so my learnings and discoveries would be old-hat yawns. (And we’ll take it as a given that non-cellists would want to skip these posts.)

I have been keeping a handwritten cello journal, however, at the request of my teacher. I log my daily practices and include what pieces I’m working on and any relevant notes (or more often than not – frustrations) with each piece. It’s rather sparse as journals go, which is odd for writer me. With just about any other topic, I can write volumes. With cello, not so much. I get finger-tied and only seem to manage a one- or two-line Twitter post or a vague and cryptic phrase in a journal entry. The desire to write about it is there, but the words aren’t.

And it’s annoying The Hell out of me. Something must be done about it.

So I’ve decided on an early goal for 2011 – more blog posts about my cello lessons and practices. If only for the sake of a personal need to better articulate what I learn so as to, er, learn it better. Or something. Anyway, they may be clumsy and vague and oh-so-obvious, and I apologize in advance for that, but hopefully, they will get better and more interesting.

Here’s my first go at it, because Michael asked:

I’ve been working on Handel’s Bourrée for a couple of weeks now. A light, skip-hop-jump piece with some position shifts and slurs to make it interesting. I’ve got the rhythm fairly accurate, and I can play it at a decent pace.

I’m slightly off with the fourth finger in the position shifts in the second half of the piece, especially after coming from a first-finger extension from second position. I tend to want to keep my first finger down (and with my long fingers, I can very nearly get away with it), but I’ve figured out that if I lift it as the fourth finger goes down in second position, the fourth finger is more accurate since my hand has more range of motion to go further south, which it can’t have if I use my first finger as an unhelpful anchor. (Go ahead and yawn here if you need to.)

I’m at a point in my cello studies where I’m starting to pay more attention to the layers of a piece instead of focusing solely on playing the right notes at the right time and calling it a day, which results in only really half-learning a piece that doesn’t sound very musically satisfying.

One layer of the Bourrée is volume. There are a number of sections that go from piano to forte. My teacher pointed out that the obvious thing to do to play louder is to put more weight on the bow with the right hand. However, there are other ways to get volume.

Since this is a Baroque piece, if I were to play it on a Baroque cello with a Baroque bow, weight on the bow would not be an option. The gut strings and the bow shape wouldn’t allow bow pressure because it would just be a mess of strings mashed against fingerboard and stick mashed against hair. In plain language, yucky-sounding.

Instead, we played around with how much bow to use – shorter sections for piano, gradually increasing to just about full bow length for forte. At the moment, the difference in sound is very subtle to my ears, but I’m hoping more practice will make it more obvious while still having a nice, smooth, watercolor-like gradation (slowly bleeding one into the other, rather than hard stops between). This method of volume is more in keeping with the Baroque style and therefore the thing to do in a Baroque piece. (Bloody obvious, right?)

Oy! It took me a ridiculous amount of time to write the above six paragraphs. Quite unlike me. How do you all do it?

on the market

Right. In my last blog post plus one, I listed a bunch of things I was taking on this fall. I added something to the list because I'm just on the greener side of crazy:

I decided to sell my condo and move somewhere else.

I know people do this everyday, but I've been in my condo for 11 years, so this is a big change for me.

And a fast one. I started looking at places before the economy tanked, and then decided to sit tight for a bit, Just In Case. I started looking again recently, found a few I wanted to see, contacted a realtor for one of them, and then things really got moving. I contacted a lender and got a pre-approval letter, which took all of 10 minutes, and had a copy of my pre-approval letter in my e-mail inbox soon after. This is about when the dazed feeling started to settle in.

I saw several more places, and was appalled at what people do to their homes, and they think they can sell them in that condition. Maybe they can. Not to me, though. And architects and builders these days have wacky ideas for layouts, which in no way amuse this potential buyer. In several instances, my realtor and I were both wondering "WTF?" as we were walking through. It's good to know that I'm not alone in my ideas about house set-ups that make sense.

I was expecting to possibly have to move out of the county to find a nice place that was reasonably priced, and I had resigned myself to that. Then I saw a townhouse just down the road from where I am now, and it was perfect - just the bit of upgrade I was looking for, more room, more storage space, a bit of yard for me to learn how to garden, cute overall, quieter neighborhood, and both interior and exterior were well-maintained. So we started the paperwork. And then it all went wrong.

The owners didn't want to do a contingent contract - meaning my offer was contingent on me selling my condo. Not unreasonable on their part, so I didn't mind that bit. I could put enough down with an FHA loan on a non-contingent contract.

But here's a piece of trivia to keep in your back pocket: You can't have two FHA loans at the same time. Maybe lots of people know this, and I'm just ignorant. The lender caught this as he was getting ready to approve my final loan application - I had an FHA loan for my condo. No one ever told me this could be a bad thing. Nor did I read it anywhere. FHA loans are handy because you don't have to have as much of a downpayment. Conventional loans require at least 10% down, preferably more. I didn't have enough for a downpayment with a conventional loan. Since I hadn't sold my condo yet, that meant I couldn't take out another FHA loan for the townhouse. So we couldn't submit the paperwork for it after all.

Not a week later, someone else put a offer on the townhouse, and it was accepted, so it's off the market. The listing said "Contingent (kick out)." I was curious what that meant, so I looked it up:

A term that refers to a real estate contract contingency that's often used when a home buyer places a house under contract with the understanding that he must sell his current house before finalizing the new purchase. 


Sellers holding a contract with a kick out clause continue to market the home. If they receive another offer the buyer has a specific amount of time as stipulated in the clause to remove the contingency and move forward to buy the house, whether his existing house is sold or not. If the buyer cannot move forward, the seller can back out of the original contract and sell to the new buyers.

In other words, the owners accepted a contingent contract with a buyer...a week after saying they wouldn't do the very same thing with me.

This is when I got irritated.

I decided to put all my focus on selling my condo. My realtor sent a "staging consultant" to advise me on how to present my condo to the best advantage for photos and walk-throughs. I had a couple of cosmetic things to fix, and then it was a lot of "get rid of as much clutter as possible," which is a standard thing they tell home sellers. I never thought I had clutter, given that the condo is so small, so there's no room for it. Since I discovered freecycle.org, I've gotten rid of a lot of stuff. I re-organized some things, and got rid of even more stuff. However, personal family photos that you might have on your mantle are considered clutter. Displays of collections on shelves are considered clutter. The stager told me that potential buyers aren't there to see how I made the place homey, they're there to look at room size and whatnot for THEIR stuff. So I started packing stuff up even before I had a buyer, let alone someplace to move to, but I latched on to the idea of "act as if." It's one thing to say I'm going to move, but actually packing stuff up makes it much more of a reality.

Then the realtor suggested new carpet - apparently carpet allowances aren't the thing these days. I did have old carpet, so I went ahead with replacing it - that happened last Friday. I piled a ton of stuff into my dining room and kitchen (the only two places with bare floors) and holed up in the kitchen for the day with knitting, my laptop, and a bunch of Futurama DVDs. It was an odd but nice way to spend most of a day.

I managed to get Lyra-the-cat into the bathroom, but couldn't catch Tristan, who is surprisingly good at hiding where he can't be gotten at. The carpet installers said not to worry, if they needed me to come get him as they moved stuff around, they'd holler for me. So he spent the day dashing from one hiding place to another amid pushed-aside furniture.

Once the carpet was in and the installers had left, I let Lyra out of the bathroom...which is when she started chasing and hissing and swatting at Tristan. She acted as though she didn't know who he was, like he was a new cat in her territory (they've been here with me for three years). I assume this was because with the old carpet gone, all the familiar smells were gone too and that somehow blocked her sense of who he was. So I had a fun time this past weekend trying to keep them apart while making my condo look presentable again. At least I got to watch the Rally for Sanity online while I tidied. I would have liked to have gone to DC for the day, but I was on a deadline.

It took a few days, but Lyra and Tristan are friends again. Here is evidence from last night:

For several days before this, if they got within three feet of each other, there was hissing and swatting (mainly from Lyra). For them to peaceably lounge on the couch in bored contentment mere inches from each other like this is major progress.

Anyway, pictures of the condo were taken, papers were signed, and it's all live and official now.

I also looked more closely at the company stock I own, and it turns out I have enough from the sale of it for that magic downpayment percentage. I wish I'd known that sooner.

I looked at some more places today and put in an offer on one of them - a gorgeous place inside and out. It's bigger than the other townhouse I was interested in, but it's the same price - so more house for the same amount of money. That's a yay, I think. More paperwork, but looks to be worth it. Will find out tomorrow sometime if the offer is accepted.

I'm having trouble focusing on work and cello practice and writing projects with this Big Change happening. (I may not get very far with National Novel Writing Month, let alone the Bach prelude.) Now I realize why I put this process off for so long. It really takes it out of a girl, both physically and emotionally. I need to move though. I need the change. I've been feeling stale and cramped for a long time.

One thing I've not been feeling, however, is panicky. Not a shake, not a tremor, not a butterfly in the stomach. I guess if I'm the one initiating something like this, my psyche and my body are okay with it. Whereas when stressful and/or unexpected events are thrust upon me, and I have no control over them, nor can take an action to deal with them, I fall apart. Weird, huh?