...OK, I am verbose today. I am just sitting at home...
..."Bowing"...that is...how you run the bow over your cello, not what a bond does when a Master enters.
...It is difficult, since it involves all parts of your right arm...and they are doing different things. You also have to land the damn bow on the right string!!! In a solo, I once really screwed up...I was all 'excited'...and wanted to impress the audience...I raised my right hand high...(I was trying to capture attention...and it worked!!!!)...The bow landed on the WRONG STRING!!
...I spent HOURS in the GD practice rooms every day...they were the size of closets. I was trying to figure out how to make my arm do what I wanted it to do. It got down to where I just played open strings, and watched my right hand...my left hand was just relaxed and sitting on my lap. I got my right shoulder, and upper arm to relax...unless I needed their weight to just HAMMER THE NOTE!!!
...The 'note shaping' was much more difficult. The shoulder and upper arm can make the note loud...but the lower arm and wrist controlled the softer notes, I found. They can pull the bow away from the strings, or relax. I worked hard on how to 'shape' a note. You can drag the bow the same way...back and forth...and all of the notes sound the same.
I found, that the 'note shapers' are the fingers. Again, I really believed that my hands had their own minds, and I would talk to them as I practiced. It worked, I felt that they were speaking back to me.
...The right hand told me that her fingers controlled the shaping of a note. I let her push hard with the first finger, and the note got louder. Then, she would relax, and press with her little finger, and the note sounded different. Again, I spent hours in the 'closet', and would just play a note, and see how much I could shape it, using the weight of my arm, and how I pressed my fingers.
She also told me to just let her fingers do the job in a fast passage.
If I tried to use my wrist, or lower arm, to play a fast passage...the bow would be all over the place.
...*S* A difficult memory is when I was in a Pit Orchestra, for "Le Miz". I was accompanying the Singer in a poignant duet...and it went very well. There was a lot of aupplause at the end....Me and 'Rightykins' were shaping the notes very well, and we blended well with the Singer. ((She came up, and hugged me at the reception, and said that she had heard me, and was comforted, because I seemed to know what she was trying to get across, and she said that she sang more passionately, and got into her Char.))I looked around the Pit, and two women were crying at the end...and not because I was playing poorly. My cello, "Pavane"...had been crying...everyone heard Him.
"Rightykins" had made Him do it...my fingers were doing things that I was not planning...I just sat back.
...At times, at home...I would be practicing, and a member of my family would come in, and ask me why I was making "Pavane" cry so hard.
...I had no answer...
...I had to calm down
...Later, I will describe at what 'Her Leftiness' put me through. I could direct her, fairly well, on the piano...but she had her own mind, when I played the cello. I would, actually, GLARE at her as I held her up in front of me....I would SHOUT..."DON'T YOU REMEMBER WHERE TO PUT YOUR THUMB IN 6TH POSITION?
" She would just nod, and stare at me.
