I see, I see! No extraneous movements! No squirming, no fudging, no second-guessing! That’s how I will beat the beast of left arm exhaustion. It’s been there all along. I’m sure Starker harped on it repeatedly, in me and others. But now I’m ready to use it.
I see now that any moments of epiphany always involved this approach. It’s kind of like the middle way. I had to test the waters of all the edges in order to wean myself down to the simplest point of motion.
originally published on 4/25/08
I have naturally been trying to sort out all the info I gathered on my recent trip to Bloomington. That’s the thing about Mr. Starker — he condenses huge, complex ideas into succinct statements and demos, so you can be working through a few hours of lessons over the course of months or years. I suppose I had forgotten just how mind-altering his wisdom is. The only down side is his professorial shadow lingering over my shoulder when I teach at times. Maybe that’s not so bad.
One particular thing vexing me is the issue of the hooked first finger on the bow hand. What I have noticed is that when I let it relax and uncurl, eventually the other fingers compensate for the absence of its grip, thereby organically rebalancing the hand. I am also hoping it’s not my imagination that my left hand fingers are responding in kind to this lack of hooking and curling. The question basically is, what is the minimum amount of this shape I can get away with without sacrificing the sound or control? Writing these words is tapping my sensory imagination, as if I can connect the release in my fingers to a release in other muscle groups.
originally published on 11/9/08
I wonder if good intonation for any single note is more dependent on the position and placement of all the non-playing fingers than on the playing one? Last week I surmised that the majority of the tension in the hand seems to come from the non-playing fingers, so this theory is an extrapolation from that.
originally published on 3/8/09
The other question is whether I have a greater or lesser need for socializing than other people. I used to claim, even to myself, that I liked being something of a loner. But now I wonder if I was simply trying to make some sense of the way I related to the world. I didn’t necessarily enjoy being alone, but it was preferable to making the herculean effort to have pleasant banter with acquaintances.
But I felt a little more at ease today after venting and formulating hypotheses here last night. I could observe others more clearly, more objectively. Maybe that’s the first step towards the ability to approach others in the miraculous way they approach eachother.
I also felt myself breathing differently. I noticed that when the breath stays inside my lungs, it permeates out through the limbs and fingers. I don’t necessarily have to take breaths, deep or otherwise, to benefit from the presence of air in my body. I just have to use it, be sensitive to its presence.
originally published on 7/31/08
Last night we did the dangerous duo of operas, giving me ample time to test out my electricity theories. They were effectual for a while, but eventually I needed other tricks up my sleeve to retain any sort of left hand comfort. What seems to always be the outcome of nights like that, if I’m lucky, is a funny Zen state where everything just falls together in its own rhythm. All the theories which could sometimes seem contradictory – electrical connection, tiny spasms, only tensing the playing finger, breathing through things, non-interference (allowing things to just happen), and any of my other dissections – they all fall into the background of the magic mental state which I cannot plan for. Of course it’s frustrating to think of why I can’t skip the middle man and go right to the dessert course. Maybe I would get bored. I would have no mountains to scale, then. I would be content.
Often the Zen feeling comes over me after I have tried a few of my tricks, and I sort of give up. It seems nearly impossible to get that given up feeling before having given something up. I have tried.
originally published on 3/24/09
2 things: I listened to my mind, and I futzed with my left fingers’ approach. The left hand thing has been going on for about a week-and-a-half. I got some advice from a colleague about a different way of thinking about coming at the string. It started me compartmentalizing the stages of a note – from the first instant, through the body of it, at its concluding moments, and on into the next one. I hadn’t ever really done that. It’s not as though I hadn’t heard it discussed. I just somehow couldn’t focus on that sort of minutia until more recently. So this was fun for awhile, playing with these stages. There are many ways of commencing a note – with a ping, with a plop, with a lean, with a tickle. And the choice you make here affects the continuation of it – the pingier the attack, the more likely there is you will have a lighter body, from a releasing action. But you can train yourself to start gently and continue gently. I’m more on that notion now. But the key thing which seems to be particularly relevant is that the character of the bow and the music can be reflected in these nuances of the left hand, if you are aware of them (finally). So, thing #1, my mind. Last night I listened to it a bit more objectively than usual. If that is feasible. I didn’t appreciate its tone. Really very judgmental. Why is that? No wonder it is such a relief to blog/journal. Getting my nasty brain onto paper instead of stuck in my suffering skull. But my second thought (not quite my first) gave me hope for my mental health: I bet a lot of people are dealing with these crappy thought tendencies. And some learn how to manage nonetheless. So, that means a couple of things: I am not a freak, and therefore not an impossible case study, and there must be some effective means of overcoming it. Hopelessness has never been particularly useful.
originally published on 12/14/09
Tonight I had a chance to try out my left hand finagling. It did not work too well. But I think I had a breakthrough. Why do 99% of those happen as a result of a failure, and only the 1% within a success? Oh, well.
It’s hard to go into too much detail about the cello in this blog, I find, so I didn’t explain all of my dominoing ideas yesterday. One of the subsequent notions I had was that everything is derived from a sense of balance. I can think of my left fingers as balancing on the strings like a tightrope walker, although with much less risk of plummeting to their deaths. That springy, light-footed image helps re-envision what their actions entail. It almost gets you into the miniature perspective of them dancing and swimming along the strings. I was also playing with the manifestations of ballet throughout the cello-playing body – in the bow hand and arm, in the spine, through the legs, up into the head.
So tonight I focused too one-sidedly on the left hand, and I suspect that this has very limited usefulness in the long run (or even in a 10 minute performance). The left hand needs the right hand, which needs the torso, which needs the lungs, etc. It’s a complex system which must function as such. And as I practiced later on, I realized how open I have to be to every little discovery I have ever broached. Everything is relevant. I think Casals spoke of the incredible amount of awareness and aliveness and concentration needed to even play something quite simple. I don’t know why I like to think things cancel eachother out or override one another. Maybe I am afraid. Afraid of the grandness of what might happen if I don’t dismiss or disregard. If I make room for many seemingly unrelated or contrary sides of an issue.
originally published on 12/15/09
The thumb’s job is to help keep the hand shape in tact. Not to squeeze the neck or somehow help with finger pressure. Simple alignment. So the goal is to find as many myriad ways to get the pressure down into the string without any effect on the thumb. The thumb seems to come into play when there is an imbalance on the upper end, with the finger placement. The thumb tries to balance it. It should not be needed for that, if you can achieve that balance with appropriate mechanisms up above the string.
You can also go at it from reverse. You make sure the thumb stays loose, in turn giving little option but to balance the hand and fingers exclusively. You must keep that goal in mind, though, or old habits slip in.
The thumb is really tempted to help out with the first finger. It thinks it is attached to it. But you must insist that it is a separate digit, despite its juxtaposition.
originally published on 1/3/10
I may have (accidentally) struck upon something which apparently all Starker students are supposed to know. Tension/release. I was getting ready to pull all of my remaining hairs out due to frustration with left hand tension. Instead, I unconsciously started bobbing my arm up and down to the beat, a movement which I associate with preparation, breathing, and feeling pulse – all of which were drilled into us in room 205, I believe it was. After doing that, it made perfect sense that it would apply to the tension/release philosophy he apparently espoused most of his teaching life. It was only due to focusing 98% of my brain power on this persistent problem that I experienced the connection.
The up and down motion smooths over much of the paradoxical nature of L.H. and L.A. intricacies. It causes many things to move in the right directions, it gives a natural sense of release and freedom, and it doesn’t go counter to music making like so much technical compartmentalizing does. It also seems the more I tailor the motions to the phrasing and the desired impulses, the better it works as a release mechanism. Maybe tension/release could be less succinctly rephrased as inevitable tension/controlled respite.
Actually I think Starker referred to using tension for the necessary strength to play beautiful notes. Appropriate tension makes clear sounds. Incorporating release enhances the resonance and gives breath to the phrase.
originally published on 1/5/10
I have recently been breaking down my LH technique into a few main components. It started when I got fed up with how uncooperative my first finger is. So the first thing I realized is that I have to keep each finger in mind individually. I cannot let one finger’s propensities bias all the others. They are really coming at the string from different places, at different angles, from different parts of the hand, from different lengths, etc.
On the other hand, the fingers are indeed unified in a lot of ways. I cannot forget that. The trick of course is to have that unified sensation combined with the above-mentioned autonomy. But that seems to be the trick with a lot of things. Permitting contrasting and even contradictory guidelines to all come into play seems to be a helpful approach. In other words, even if there is a unified theory of everything, I better not approach my craft as if there is. That is something which just happens. On a good day. When things align. Not when I perform some sort of fancy computations.
The other two facets of the left side which have been useful are the arm – neck connection and the variability of the arm height. Keeping in mind that neck tension has a direct affect on the upper arm on down to the hand has a great effect on my posture and symmetry. And utilizing a bouncing and releasing elbow helps to bypass a lot of irrelevant convolutions I go through in my vibrato and hand position.
originally published on 10/4/10