Adult Class will Review this Week but you get to Start Christmas Early

We still need to work on more sustained bowing with the right amount of pull on the D and A string for proper speed and tension. So we will review the practice we did last week, but improve the bowing. You should barely be able to tell when you change from a down to and up bow, and vice versa. Use your whole bow for quarter and half notes and shorter wrist strokes for eighth notes. The index finger and wrist catch the string lightly on the down bow and by the time you are at the tip the index finger has to apply a slightly greater tension or you will lose the tone. You slow down slightly as you switch directions and use your wrist as a paint brush to reverse and go back to the frog.
After you have tuned, warm up on the same long bowed D scale and make sure you have that memorized. Now you can alternate one long down bow on the open D string followed by two short eighth notes on D at the tip of bow, then 1 finger (E note) up bow followed by two short eighth notes on E at the frog, and so on until you have reached the high D (3 fingers on A string for violin and viola, 4 fingers for cello). Repeat the high note at the top of the scale and go backwards, this time playing open strings instead of 4th finger. The cello may change to second position on fingerboard and play 4th finger instead of open A in scales only for now.

You get to start Christmas early with The First Nowell the first two top lines, the melody line (not harmony, which is second line). This song is in 3/4 time, so there are only 3 quarter notes per measure. Bow two short bows at the frog starting down bow to start, then long down bow on dotted quarter which is 3x longer than short eight note that follows it, then two more short eight notes staying at tip. Now it is easier if you LIFT YOUR BOW BACK TO the FROG LIGHTLY for the long slower half note. The rest of the bowing will be back and forth because when the melody resumes it starts on an up bow. You will really get the idea of alternating long and short bows from frog to tip on this melody. Go slowly at first so that you hear the difference between the long and shorter bows. If you need to have numbers on the notes at first go ahead.
The music builds from medium loud mezzo forte, to forte, and finally double forte at the end with a gradual slowing at the end (rallentando). That means use a little less bow on your quarter notes at the start and gradually increase the amount of bow used till you are playing quite loud. When you can play this piece well individually I will give you another Christmas Carol (which means dance, incidentally).