Transcripts
1. Introduction.: I still remember the day when my mother bought me six years old boy to sign up for music lessons. And I heard someone to play this gorgeous prelude by Johann Sebastian Bach. That very moment I decided I want to learn to play cello. And that became my life story. 40 years later. I'm still learning and enjoying this process. I really happy you decided to join me. Let me introduce myself. My name is Maxim Kozlov I was born in Russia, where I got my Doctor of Musical Arts degree from Moscow State conservatory. Later on, I moved to the United States, where I got my graduate performance diploma from Peabody Conservatory of John Hopkins University. Cello brought so many wonderful things to my life. It allowed me to see the world being principal cellist of different orchestras. I was able to travel all over the world. I played hundreds of concerts in Europe, Asia, South, and North America. About 20 years ago, I started teaching and got wonderful chance to learn a lot by giving thousands of lessons to students from beginner to advanced level. One of my passions is to share the knowledge I got from my teachers with the cello community. I created very popular YouTube channel, Cellopedia and started podcasting. I will be teaching you the same way I'm teaching my private students. I will not rush you from step to step. And I will try to explain every basic technique of playing cello as patiently as I can. If you have some experience playing cello, you might still enjoy reviewing few basic things I'm going to teach you. Because there is a chance that you might miss something. And it will be very good experience for you to review all material with me.
2. Posture and bow hold review: Hello everyone. Today is very exciting moment. We are going to learn to play our first cello duo together. Your part will consist only of open strings. That's not easy to do because you will have to find each string, play on it with the bow. And also you will have to count. So you are able to play alone with second cello teacher's part. To get the idea, Let's make sure that you remember which string is which. We have A string. Our first string. Then the second string is D. And the third string is G. And below is the fourth string C. Now let's review bow hold. Just remember you have to pay attention how you hold the bow. I suggest to hold the bow this way. When your middle finger will be touching these ring on the bow, fingers are spreaded nicely. But if your teacher told you to hold the bow in slightly different way, well, you can follow what your teacher said. One more thing. Make sure that you pay attention to the angle between the bow and the string. You have to keep the bow roughly in between those corners of the cello. This way on the A string, you'll play with these direction. Then you'll have to turn the bow slightly this way towards yourself to play on the D string. One more turn. And you play on the G string. And turning a bow Even more will help you to play on the C string. When you play on to lower strings C and G, your bow has to be roughly in-between those corners. And when you play on A and D strings, your bow has to be somewhere in between all of those corners of the cello
3. Let's play whole notes.: In the exercise A, each note you will have to play is the whole note. That means you will play very long notes and each of them is four beats, four quarter notes. We will use a metronome and I will set it to 60. That means it will be making 60 clicks every minute. So one click per second. You will hear those clicks in the background. This way, it will be easier for you to prepare and start playing with me. Now, let's try to play together. I will play your part, so it will be easier to follow me. Listen for four clicks before we start playing. Let do it together. The more your rehearse More you practice, the better you will become. One more time. You might want to rewind it back and play few more times with me. And maybe after that, just set metronome to 60 and play with the metronome. And remember, four clicks in every note. Now, we will play together. You will play your part, and I will play teachers part. You start first in the first measure. This way, you will hear for clicks and then you will start playing And I will join you. One quarter note, one click later Listen how nicely it will sound. You will hear the harmony between your part and second, teachers part. If you enjoy playing it. Don't stop here. Play it few more times until you feel very confident and you indeed start enjoying it.
4. How to count half notes.: In the second exercise, exercise B, you will have to play half notes. And remember, half nodes are two quarter notes loan not four as the whole notes in the first exercise. And you will just very beat each note two times, each note, two clicks. We will set the metronome the same way. Quarter note 60. Let's try it. I will play your part and let's do it together. Did you manage to keep up with me? I hope yes. As always. Let's do it again together. Did you remember to keep an eye on the bow? If you see that the bowl starts sliding up or down. That means you have to change its angle. Ideally, when you play, it has to stay on the same spot without moving up or down, just right and left. Now, you will play the exercise, but without me playing the same part. You will play the top line. I will play the bottom line teachers's part. The same way. You will start first.
5. Quarter notes exercise.: Moving on. Next exercise. Here you will have to play quarter notes. That means that each note you will play will come exactly with the beat. With each click of the metronome. We still keep it 60. By the way, if tempo 60 beats per minute is too fast for you, you can adjust it and try slower tempo. You will set metronome to 50 beats per minute or 40 or anything in between those numbers. And make sure that you can keep up with it. Then after few times, you can adjust the metronome and play in little bit faster tempo. The higher number on metronome me try, the faster you will have to play. And once you will reach the tempo 60, you will be able to play with my video. Now, we will play together. The exercise C, quarter notes. Remember to make sure that your wrist is round and it's flexible. In order to keep up with the angle between bow and string, you'll have to slightly turn the wrist. If you forget about this, you will start playing And you will never be able to play with clear and beautiful sound. Now, you will play the top part of the exercise C Quarter notes. And I will be playing teacher's part. In this exercise. We will start together . Get ready! Check your bow hold. How did it go? You have to play so many quarter notes now. Well, feel free to repeat this exercise as many times as you feel you need to. And let's move on to the exercise D.
6. How to improve string crossings.: In this exercise, we will play half notes. Each note, two quarter notes, two beats long and some quarter notes towards the end. But the most important thing is that now we will be changing strings, not in the same order as you had to in previous exercises, but we will go back and forth between strings. So it will be even more interesting to play. Let's try to play together. We will play the same part. Do you hear when I play the last note, I just lift the bow off. The string keeps vibrating. Try not to stop the bow when you finish the last note. Many beginners do... that blocks vibration of the string and we don't hear, it to die off beautifully. So you are done with the note and gently lift the bow Now, we will play the exercise D together. You will play the top part. I will play teacher's part. There's always four beats before we start playing.
7. 3/4 meter and double stops.: Now, let's move on to the exercise. In this exercise, you will have different nodes introduced. Dotted half notes. You probably learned already that dotted half note is three quarter notes long. Every time you see a dot at the right side of the node, it adds half of the original node's value. So if the half-note has two quarter notes, dotted half note has 32 plus one. Every measure here, we'll have three quarter notes. It doesn't mean that you will see actually three quarter notes in each measure. That just means that the length of the measure is three quarter notes. We will have different combinations here. Say quarter notes, one plus one plus one equals three dotted half nodes, which is three quarter notes, loan 3. And quarter note, half note, one bead plus two beads. And also half note in a quarter note, two bits plus one bit. And you can see how long each measure is in this exercise. When you look at the meter at the beginning of this exercise, 3, 4, three bits. And each bit is a quarter note that what four stands for. Okay, let's play together the top line, the style, you will hear only three clicks, three beats before we start playing together. Check your ball, holt, get her ID. How did you go? Did you get confused? How to play last two nodes? Yes, we can actually play two notes together. So one cello will sound like two instruments. You position the bow right between strings you have to play in this instance, between C and G. And after a few tries, you will figure out the perfect angle. And you will make it to sound like this. Should we try it together? Let's do it. Just last two, measures. Eight. Now, I will play the teacher sparked into you will play your part again. So we will play as duet, two voices at the same time. Okay, that was a very nice journey through those exercises. Now, I believe that your right hand is the RID. And you obviously learned how to count. Counting is very important. This way, we develop the sense of freedom. Aimed rhythm is what helps musicians to communicate with each other. Without good sense of rhythm, you cannot play together with other people. They will simply not understand when to play. The next note. This is why we count. We play with the metronome. We do it again and again and little by little. It will become second nature. Thank you for practicing with me. Come back for more lessons and we will learn to play more wonderful cello. Do it.
Maxim Kozlov, Cellopedia YouTube
