hi guys welcome to the tonalization uh exercise page six uh sorry um for uh oh come little children and may song it's in between those two and suzuki book one for jello now i'm going to do this one with and without a backing track i always insist on a backing track but actually learning to do to hear the ringing is a very important part of suzuki so we're going to do both now there are some questions that we need to ascertain if you're using the suzuki method and these are really useful um the sort of rules for progress so are you listening to the reference record at home every day now i do hope so you can um there are a few places actually if you go to uh youtube and you can add you can create a playlist of your own you can set up a little playlist where you give it a title you can make it private you don't have to share with anyone else and you can add all the versions that you want to have of the various suzuki songs okay now i don't recommend listening to one ever i recommend listening to about five everybody plays cello in a slightly different way and one of the problems with suzuki is that you can end up just copying exactly that's not such a good idea but you do need to know this piece you need to know all of the pieces you need to know the practice regimes you need to understand what you're trying to aim for listen just it's going to be so much harder if you don't is your tone improving well how are you going to know that you're going probably to have to record yourself at some point recording yourself on your phone is a really good way of hearing how rubbish you are and let me tell you you never really appreciate your mistakes while you're in the thick of them it's much better to look on at them as an onlooker after the fact and you will find that you make mistakes that you don't even realize when you're in in the thick of it so the um the sound that you the intonation is is the being hitting the right note the tone is the quality of the note and this is it's the almost the intonation i think sometimes a bit easier actually to to grasp than the tone you think oh i've hit that note that's good but you know it can sound awful even if it's correct it can sound awful because your tone is rubbish has the proper playing position been acquired well in most of my lessons when i remember or if we're short of time we don't go over it but i assume that you're sitting correctly and you're going to have to go around to one of my other podcasts to find out how to sit i'll pop one up today how to sit correctly with your cello okay is the bow being held correctly again where i'll be popping up today two more broadcasts probably later on this evening uk time about um the correct posture okay all the information you need to work through the suzuki books will be at telltale club podcast um telltale kids okay in between all the stories i put up lots of stories because i don't think it's fair to make you do too much work and not have stories in between and i put up some wonderful wonderful stories i really do so let's have a look at this first bit we've got pits bits pizza what does that mean it's short for pizzicato which means pluck let's have a look we've got a d

and an a

now i'm you might hear that i'm stopping the vibration of the string so that i can hear that rest so one two three four one two three four so a rest is very very important never assume that a rest means nothing's happening um when you're bowing it's a bit easier to appreciate that

rest with pizzicato it goes on forever you've given it a real vibration it's still going on now i can still hear it i can still hear it right now it's gone i mean how long was that this is the wonderful thing about being a cellist because we've got this massive body of instrument and our sound goes straight through those holes or it comes through the bridge as well but all the vibrations and the wonderful sounds into the holes and out of the holes and it's just absolutely magnificent isn't it i mean it's really meaty that's why i love the cello so much because we can be um noticed it's the most uh notice not only the most beautiful sounding instrument in the orchestra but also um the most uh visually attractive i think but i'm biased of course i am now then let's have another look what are we doing play tones with the same resonance with the bow so we want to make the same amount of pressure and spend the same amount of time on the bow with the uh the bow hair on the strings on each note equal

and i would use the sort of center area on your bow now if you're a bit more confident you can use the whole bow right the way up and right the way down

as a warm-up and it teaches you how to hold the bow correctly but when we're really concentrating on sounds and intonation and tone it's advisable sometimes to keep them shorter so we're going to do okay that's the sort of speed we're aiming at

now that's quite easy isn't it because we've got open notes but now we're going to come to

okay there's a bit a bit uh dodgy there i think on my e it's better isn't it now playing without the accompaniment makes it harder to know if you're in or out of tune if you're not listening to the song okay so we're going to do this with the the drone in a minute and you'll find it much easier actually let's look at that last line

rest okay that wasn't too bad there but now let's play it a little bit more fun because i like doing it with the orchestra okay let's just go through this from the top

and then

okay now you'll notice that on the second two lines uh we've got a dotted uh note there which means it's a bit longer so we're holding that down for three okay um i think that's about it i'm going to run the uh vapor pump a bit longer with our d and remember you're allowed to make as many mistakes as necessary to get to the right place and sometimes mistakes are quite useful and you learn a lot through them so the rules listen to the reference record work on posture keep that bow straight listen listen listen record yourself look in the mirror and relax okay back later