[cellobello virtuosity, expression, mastery]
[Eliminate Left Hand Tension (Part 2) with Paul Katz]
I often hear people talking about making their fingers strong,
I actually think it's not necessary to think that
if you're playing—for some people it is
but not if you're playing the cello a couple of hours a day.
If you're playing the cello 2, 3, 4 hours a day like most serious people are,
your hands are going to be strong enough.
So what you want to do is you want to think about
loosening them not tightening them.
Right?
What you need is speed.
The speed of the strike and the looseness.
Speed and looseness replace muscle.
You can practice it with the bow—without the bow.
And the hand should feel very loose and very alive.
Right, do a scale once.
Right, and I liked what I saw because there was a little bit of forearm rot—
you feel how your...right.
So very quickly go up here in the thumb position
and do this and feel the fingers from the forearm,
back from the forearm, raise...
right.
That makes your finger very strong.
Is that rotating like that?
Yes, you don't quite have it, it's sort of more like opening and closing a door.
Like do this in the air once.
Yes, so if you notice how you, that's a reflex.
You can just throw it and it bounces back.
That's it.
See how strong your fingers—and they're not tight are they?
That looks good.
And, what happens with that is that you will throw a finger and you have instant vibrato.
Like a dart.
Bing, like a dart, yes.
Without your hand being tight.
Okay, very good.
If we go back down to here, when you're throwing your fingers,
just do that a few times, and kind of get an awareness in your thumb.
What does your thumb feel like?
It feels loose right now.
Good!
Right? That's good.
Here, I love to have people do this.
I was—just hold up your hands like this.
I was taking a tai chi lesson a long time ago, many years ago
and my tai chi teacher said, "Your hand is tight because your thumbs are tight".
I said, "What?"
And that immediately started to sound like a cello lesson to me and it was.
I said, "If you tighten up your thumb, your hand feels tight."
"Think of loosening your thumb, your whole hand goes loose."
-Right? -Yeah.
So, that goes for right and left hand.
If we squeeze too hard the bow, then our fingers lock.
If you loosen your thumb on the back of the frog,
then you will have a natural motion from your fingers here.
Same thing here.
If you, you can be releasing your fingers but if you're squeezing
then you've tightened up your whole hand.
So you want to, that was nice when you said that you felt the looseness on the back.
Yeah, it doesn't usually feel like that so...
So, your thumb is touching the back isn't it?
Yeah.
Yeah, that's good, that's very healthy because some people are trying to loosen their thumb so they take their thumb off.
They can have their thumb in the air and it will be tight too.
So it's a great reference point, it helps us know where we are
but not, little kids particularly
get the strings down by squeezing their hand together.
Right, yeah.
So instead, you want to feel more like we're hanging,
hanging the weight of our arm on a finger.
Right, and our thumb stays loose on the back.
Okay, good.
[cellobello]