practice with the moon and stars

I had a cello lesson tonight, and it occurred to me that it's been awhile since I posted any cello progress updates.

I'm going to have hour-long lessons starting in September. Looking forward to that.

I'm working on a Bach minuet, an etude, and the E flat major scale. I learn a new scale every few weeks, and I've racked up quite a few. I like scales. Nothing has helped me attack my intonation problems more than scales, and I also use them to practice vibrato, shifts, extensions, and bow direction changes.

Lately, whenever he assigns me a new piece, Ben asks me how I might go about learning it. Since I have two years' worth of study under my belt, I seem to have learned enough about practice approach to have a little more say in it. The layering method is working well for me, and really helps avoid mindless practice that usually results in frustration rather than progress. So when I tell him my plan, it's in that framework.

We've also added the "targeted approach" to the layers - once I'm familiar enough with a layer, it's time to really zero in on the details I might be tripping over. In other words, an even more thorough learning of a layer. For me, this is usually extracting a tiny section in a line to work on in isolation, and then gradually adding in a note before and after that section until the whole line is added back in. It's sounds tedious and laborious, but I don't mind it, and pieces aren't feeling so slippery under my fingers these days.

I also recently encountered an etude (Dotzauer Grant #120) that I got the hang of right away. The note pattern, slur pattern, and fingering pattern all made sense at first glance. This has never happened before. Ever. Even Ben noticed that I wasn't struggling with it.

Which isn't to say that this etude sounds good when I play it, because it doesn't. Playing the right notes at the right time with the right slurs isn't the entirety of making music. But the fact that I could analyze it and figure out the technical aspects and the structure without help is a milestone for me.

It's a nice little confidence boost to know that my usual slowness and stupidity at this cello stuff is absent for a change. It will likely come back with a vengeance, but for now, I'm enjoying the holiday away from it.