Technique

Reach Back for Flats! So much of the music we play requires flats and the second you start adding flats to music you’ll find you need extended 1st finger. Very often students encounter backward extensions in orchestra music before the student has encountered a single flat in their solo repertoire. The Suzuki Books do not […]

Reaching New Heights! Extensions are EVERYWHERE in cello music. Most beginner and intermediate cello music can be played with first position using forward and backward extensions. Once you are comfortable with forward and backward extensions, a whole new world of music is opened up to you. With forward extensions, you can now play in A major, D

Keep The Vibrato Party Rockin’ By now you should have a beautiful vibrato on every finger and have full control of vibrato speed such that you can color each note according to your own musical desires. If this is not the case then I highly recommend the previous 6 video lessons on vibrato! Start on

Play The Cello ~ Don’t Let It Play You By now you should have a beautiful, wide vibrato. This video lesson will help you develop the full range of vibrato speeds so that you can color your music with more subtlety, energy, and emotion. Vibrato is the soul of tone. You should have already developed

Every Finger For As Long As You Need If you’ve made it this far then you should have a beautiful vibrato on 2nd finger but it probably comes and goes. If you vibrato on the note for more than a few seconds then don’t be surprised if your hand starts to tighten up. This is

Baby Steps to Success! You are finally going to make a true vibrato! But the first step is to successfully execute a pre-vibrato. A pre-vibrato is just like vibrato in that your finger presses the string all the way to the fingerboard but instead of staying centered over a single pitch, the hand slides a

Slick As A Whistle! Time to test your muscle memory by complicating the task. Take the same motion developed in video 1 and video 2 and start using the bow. The more weight you add to the exercise the smaller the motion becomes and the more likely you are to lock up and create a vibrato

With One Hand Behind Your Back! Take it one step at a time. I know you are dying to use the bow but first we have to make sure that your motion is going to create the most beautiful and controllable vibrato possible. Once we add pitch, speed, and the bow you may find that

First step? Find a wall. The first step to a professional vibrato is to put the cello down and find a wall! Anchoring the elbow will help to isolate the motion to the correct joints. There are of course other methods of creating a beautiful vibrato so please do not attempt to correct your teacher,

You don’t hold anything in this world the same way you hold a cello bow! Why is it so hard to hold a bow properly? Why does it take nearly every student weeks just to figure out how to hold a stick that weighs around 80 grams? Because you don’t hold anything else in this