Sunday, June 7, 2020

Cello Shifting



So…shifting... a lot to unpack and why you need to unpack it and wrap your head around it. As well, its a blog post where a large section of it is on decisions. Why? Didn’t I just write about that recently? Why have  have this whole separate thing on all the  aspects of shifting, and such a large part on decisions, again...? In a nutshell, it’s that important. The reason to have it is so that you understand and appreciate the different components separately. The different parts of a shift that we are going to go into are, decisiveness, intonation, rhythm, and one smooth motion. This is really important when it comes to learning because you must evaluate your performance and decide which part needs the work and needs correcting the most. If you don’t appreciate this fact about learning, if you don’t break the shift down into its separate parts then you are liable to not make the progress you are hoping for. 


Its so easy when practicing to say  “That was good’ or “that w as bad” in very general terms. We lump everything into one pile and either play it again or move on without much change. It is imperative that you be able to focus on these different parts at different times in your practicing. Now, Performance is a different story, when you perform you don’t think about tons of things at once, you just think about the music about the goal you are going for, and you go for it. Practicing is a completely different entity though. So how do you recognize and decide which one to change and/or improve when you are self assessing and correcting?


A great, easy, indicator that one core principle of the shifting is not developed or needs some more work is when you feel very strongly that the other 3 are really solid, and the one in question is not. 


For example...


Decisiveness is important because it is the thing that build consistency and confidence. If when you go to perform the shift for the first time, or the first few times like say for family members at home or in your lesson, and you find yourself with debilitating nervousness. This is probably a sign that you haven’t quite decided about this shift. Now nervousness is a really big topic all its own and can be affected by many different variables, decisiveness is just one. I have found in my own playing though that decisiveness plays a key role in my stage fright. This is why I mention it here because the first and most prevalent symptom of indecisiveness is nerves. To say it another way, nervousness doesn’t always come from indecision, but indecision does usually lead to nervousness, which makes stage fright a good indicator As a side note, you, nor I, will ever be completely without nerves. Its what makes us human and what helps us give exciting performances. For our purposes here I am talking about the level of nervousness that you feel is really stopping you from performing at even your most basic level of ability. I have suffered with that a lot in my career, for this reason,  and so I bring it up now. 


Another indicator of indecisiveness is when someone, probably your teacher or fellow musicians, ask you about the shift. What do you think of it? How have you practiced it? What have you done to internalize the notes and the physical motion? If you have a hard time responding to these types of questions you haven’t decided much about this passage you are worried about and/or you haven’t practiced it much, which is also leading to lots of indecisiveness and doubt.


How can you change it? How can you be more decisive about what you are doing? Why should you change it. You should change it because you don’t want to be nervous, you want to be able to engage in conversation about it,  but also you simply want to be very consistent with the shift you are trying to execute. 


One really important thing to do, you are doing it right now, you are watching this video. Studying up, getting other perspectives, affirming what you believe about shifting. Don’t just watch this video, watch as many as you have time for and commit to watching at least a few of them. Listen to recordings, watch other performances of that shift of that entire piece. Yes ours is an aural art, you must use your ears first. But this wonderfully technological age we live in allows us to see our fellow musicians, other human beings, executing this skill which we are trying to attain. That is so powerful! And so important to our decisiveness. 


Why is it so powerful? The opposite of decisiveness is doubt or indecisive. That state of being where you are constantly questioning what you are doing, constantly doubting the decisions you have made. The fastest way around that is to be affirmed by other people, either by direct affirmation or by seeing them do what you believe to be accurate and true. So you can see decisiveness isn’t just about time in the practice room, that’s really important, but it is equally about thinking through what you are doing, being committed to and  confident in the decisions you made about the shift or other music, and executing them free from doubt  and indecision. 



Intonation - something which we are always working on regardless. When it comes to shifting how might I know that intonation is the thing that needs the most improvement? The clearest indication is when its not going correctly, out of tune, and you feel very confident, you are less nervous or not nervous at all, you are moving well with good posture and great rhythm. All of this is going well and yet its not in tune. You go to your lesson and your teacher says “Its out of tune, you are not shifting to the correct note.” or you play back a video recording of yourself and you see and hear that everything else is right then say to yourself “Its out of tune”. 


The biggest reason this happens is that early on in the learning, probably not enough decisions were made about the intonation, specific decisions like ‘That was sharp, make it lower” or “That was flat, make it higher”. And there goes that word again, decisions (decisiveness) and so you begin to see that these things are intertwined. Something went wrong and you didn’t internalize this pitch, this musical note, you didn’t in-tone it in your brain. One of the tried and true methods to get your brain caught up is to sing it. This greatly helps with internalizing. Another method is to play the pitch different ways, play it down an octave, or two. Play it on the piano. Listen to the piece with the music in front of you, following along on the page while you are doing some deep listening. This one is really key. 


Rhythm - rhythm is the most easy to fix and ironically the most easy to miss. We practice alone most of the time, like 99% of the time. We don’t have other people that we have to play along with in the practice room. We have the freedom and the curse to make notes as long or as short as we wish. We do it often enough, and repeat it enough times on the same notes and wall-a, we have no idea we are rushing or dragging. The solution is simple, practice with the metronome. So often students either don’t get the metronome out to begin with or don’t follow it. You can’t have it simply playing in the background, you must follow it. 


Having trouble knowing if you are following it? Easy, record yourself playing to the metronome. Its not something musicians do a lot, usually they are recording to see the big picture, to see if the end result is coming along. Students, the younger the more important this is, should record themselves playing to the metronome to ensure that they are following it. It is easy to ignore while you are playing but you will hear instantly on the recording if you are not following it. 


One smooth motion, which also goes along with posture and position - What does this mean exactly one smooth motion? It means that I shift my hand and fingers in one single, not herky jerky, motion from the bottom note to the top note. The key to executing this is to leave early, and so the one smooth motion aspect of shifting is very connected to the rhythm. This is something I will cover in detail in the how to practice video. I as the musician have to understand exactly where the note begins and ends in order to leave early and arrive on time, or even arrive early without extra unintended movement in my hand. 


How do I know if I am not doing this correctly? Again, if I feel very confident in the others. If I have decided and internalized what these notes are, what this passage is, that I know exactly what this pitch is supposed to sound like and I am able to follow the metronome accurately, then possibly I am not moving my hand correctly and possibly not moving it with the correct posture and position. Usually this is indicated by shifting up, immediately hearing that it is out of tune and jerking or correcting the note at the last possible second or even late after the beat in which it was supposed to be played. 



Video taping can also help this. If you see yourself following the metronome accurately, but then always leaving late, or making extra motions just at the very end to correct pitch, then possibly you are not building up the control required to have consistently accurate shifts which is the same control it takes to have one smooth motion. 


Now I know you are wondering a few things like, these parts of the shift, they all overlap and are  so interconnected, how do I really know which one needs the work? What if its more than one? What I can promise you is that you will make mistakes in your analysis, in the beginning, and you will get better at it. The more you try to separate them out and identify them individually, they better, faster, and more efficient you will get at it. You have to stop and make decisions about these different aspects, specific decisive analysis, and there goes that word again decisive. The more you identify them and fix them individually the more accurate you will get, and the better more consistent your shifting will become. 


I promised a resource to help with practicing and so I want to make sure I get that in here. In the description I have a link to this passage from the Dvorak humoresque for Cello. It’s a a video on Tik Tok and what makes viewing it on tik tok so powerful is that it loops for you indefinitely. Looping is a tremendous tool in any music learning technology and tik tok has it built right in. Please take a look at that and follow me there for more great practice videos. https://www.tiktok.com/@musicalistening/video/6834103669928021254




These topics are covered over the course of a three video series on my YouTube Channel if you want to check that out. Part 1 is an overview of why you should know these different parts. Decisiveness is it’s own thing and it is also something which is affected and intertwined with the other three. For this reason the entirety of video number 2 is about decisiveness. Part 3 is about the specifics of practicing shifting for improving your performance. 


Part 1

Cello Shifting - Part 1


Part 2

Cello Shifting - Decisiveness - Part 2


Part 3

Cello Shifting - How to Practice - Part 3

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