Wednesday, May 5, 2010

Bow Technique

I learned two things from watching Nevarra's bow technique vids:

1. The index finger & pinky are the most important fingers ... the pinky is for balance ... it is important to concentrate on both of these fingers.
2. I was doing my bow changes wrong ... I was doing them with the fingers and not with the upper arm ... he had an excellent point: you can tell if you're doing the change motion correctly, because the angle of the tip will remain the same. That was a valuable lesson & I'm playing better already ... coordinating bow changes was always something I had trouble with. ... It's amazing how much of playing the cello well really just comes down to have a concretely & correctly defined technique

Caveat: Anybody reading the above should go watch the actual videos, because it's easy to misunderstand what I'm saying since it's out of context (and I don't think I'm explaining it well):

Part 1 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ber93Z85eA&feature=related
Part 2 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OiNhZrMhD6I

2 comments:

www.martinemussies.nl said...

Those are really great tips, thanks for sharing! I like your blog a lot, keep up the great work. xMM

P.S.
My cello page in (my version of..) English: http://www.martinemussies.nl/site/music/cello.html

Mike Lunapiena said...

Hi! Thanks so much for your comment and sharing your page! I have actually used your English/Irish Duets book before with one of my students!

Please let's stay in touch :)

-Mike