[cellobello virtuosity expressiom mastery]
[Sitting: Chair, Feet, Power at Tip with Paul Katz]
Physically you're a little uncomfortable to me. Do you feel good or you have—?
Yeah, I'm a little—I feel like my motion is a little restricted.
- You feel stuck. Right. - Yeah.
So I just want to show you, I think it's got a lot to do with the chair and the way you're sitting.
I'm going to take your cello away from you. Okay?
Just with the way you're sitting, the point of this is to show the fact that where we put our legs
and the kind of chair we're sitting on actually affects our upper body comfort a lot.
So just sitting like that, just move in the chair and play cello, by Yo-Yo, you know?
playing symphonic concerts outright.
- So you feel a little restricted, right? - Yeah.
Yeah, so now I'm going to change your chair in a second, but just move your feet around
anywhere you want and see if you can find a place to put your feet where your hands and your arms feel more comfortable.
- A little more here. - Okay. Good.
Yes so the wider stance, of course. So that's good to know because tall people without even realizing it
they very often put their feet back like this when they play.
Right? And then they lose their base, and that's why you were feeling kind of constricted.
So that's an adjustable bench. Why don't you adjust that bench up to a higher height.
Just take a guess as to—I would say you want to come up about two inches or so.
- Okay. - So everybody I've ever talked to
that deals with the body from all kinds of different perspectives—
yoga, Asian martial arts, dancers, actually very importantly these guys that study office ergonomics
for people that are sitting in chairs all day long.
They all say that the healthy position comes basically the way you are now
where your knees have to be lower than your hips.
Right? As soon as your knees get up here at a right angle, you can feel a little bit constricted.
So you want to be on a chair that's high enough. The other thing you want to do
is roll forward a little bit and feel the indentation in the bottom of your spine.
Probably 80% of cellists have lower back problems after—right—
this is a healthy way to sit. So you want to be tall here.
Now do the same thing that you did before. Put your feet in here.
Put your knees together even and play and notice how uncomfortable it is.
- Yeah. - Right? Okay, now just go through that same thing
and just find a place where your legs feel—where you feel powerful and free.
- I think here. - And even if you bring your feet out a little bit further,
yeah I bet you feel even stronger. - Sometimes when I play,
especially if it's a low chair I tend to bring my leg out and I'm going like this.
Okay, so very good. Your body's instincts are right on.
So what we're doing when you do this on a low chair, you're opening up this angle here.
You're dropping the legs out the way I said.
When you do this you're doing the same thing. - Yeah.
Right? Ideally you want to be on a chair where your legs can slope out just a little bit
and you've got this powerful base.
Now I'm going to give you the cello back in a second, but I just want you to feel something first.
Step into the floor with your right foot and your body will go over here,
and then step with your left foot. So you can actually—that's right.
So you can steer—I call it steering your body from the floor. I like to say play from the earth.
You want to have—so you will feel much stronger and freer when we do Pezzo again
now playing from that position. When you're in like this, you destabilize everything.
Okay so a couple of things happen. So you're going to have that wide base now,
and if you step into your right foot when you play down bow, yes, and send your body that way.
Right.
So I'll show you.
We have all of our arm weight that we dropped here, and the question is how do we get it out here?
So when you use and play from the floor and you push a little bit —
That motion transfers your power out here. Just try it.
And again here.
Right, good. Right it's the end of the—
That's where you want freedom for the turn around.
So just do it the wrong way once. If you go—
go this way.
Right, lean this way. Now you see how you don't feel the weight in the end of the bow.
Your weight is going into the floor here. Right?
So those are the basic sitting principles that I'd like you to work on.
And then maybe next time we can talk about endpin heights and things such as that.
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