Suzuki Book 1 Cello Beginner's Quick Finger Placement Exercises D Major Free Pod-Classes

hi cellists welcome to our preparatory exercises for suzuki method book one and it's very exciting because after this uh exercise we're going to go on and we're going to be doing um something called first position which means we're on the track to be doing real pieces but you need to get this exercise lipped so we're on an open d

you can have in the background i'm going to play the g um major backing although this is actually in d but because we're starting on a g it's a bit easier with a g in the background do you hear it's just easier because we're starting on that so i hope you've listened to the track let's just do a couple of long bows on that g so four fingers down put all four fingers down to play me this first g

and do a couple of bows to check that you're playing the correct note

okay so you should have four fingers down and this is actually called first position um you don't really need to worry about that at the moment but what we're going to be doing is lifting one of our fingers every bar for the next two bars and then we're actually going to lift two fingers right so let's let's just play it it's much easier so middle of the bow after me

and then there's two rests now i want you to lift your pinky and play the next bar

two rests now lift two fingers

and now lift the last finger

okay that's all you have to do for that exercise but what we're doing is during the rest we're lifting our fingers or one finger or two fingers whichever it is okay so the next bar we don't have a rest so the first uh sorry the next line we don't have rest between each section so we have a rest in the first bar that squiggly thing that looks like a seagull is um a rest so during that rest we put all our fingers down again and then we play our four notes and then our two staccatos

and there's no rest so we have to pick up that finger quickly do you see

and there we have it so that's all you have to do now practice that over and over again until you can play it in a smooth way or without a break in the middle as possible you don't want to be doing on the second line as we were doing on the first with a pause in between okay listen to the reference material really hear the absence of space because uh a space means a rest and if there's no rest in the music that means you're getting it wrong okay hope that helped i think that's very exciting because as i say the next um lesson is first position and we're going to be doing a little bit of a scale a d major scale so this is all very thrilling for me as i take you onward um on your cello journey so welcome my friends please practice your preparatory exercises and don't forget

make sure that bow is nice and straight for me