After teaching two lessons yesterday, I went up to the city to get a lesson with David. What did I bring in? I brought in Feuillard and started looking at it from the very beginning. I learned that you can learn and teach the fundamental principles from just the first lesson. Things like…
– Committing to the tempo and rhythm.
– Playing with an anacrusis. When you start from silence and when you change notes.
– Keeping all fingers on the bow.
– Keeping your bow glued to the string.
– Legato really means cresendo on the down bow and decresendo on the up bow.
– Making sure your fingers can tap all the way down to make a louder pizzicato sound.

I have a lot of etude books with varying degrees of difficulty and I’m discovering that the things I need to work on the most are the basic principles regardless if the content is difficult or easy. If I were to master these principles in the easy pieces, playing the difficult pieces will be a lot easier. This draws parallel to the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People book that I’m reading. When it comes down to it, we become better people by following the principles discussed in the book. Instead of saying “guiding principles”–Covey calls them habits. Why? Because people who live by principles live according to their habits.

Now I’m off to following the principles that we discussed about in the Feuillard. I plan on practicing until it becomes habit–which in turn will make me a better teacher and cellist.