Cello Lesson Number 18

Yesterday, October 30, 2026, I had my eighteenth cello lesson with Ana Ospina-Edwards at New School of Music.

Practice Session Notes

My focused practice time this week added up to a satisfactory 8 hours 5 minutes. I spent another 40 minutes playing along to music in an unstructured way.

This week, I worked on:

• Scales and scales with slurs with a metronome and drones as a warm-up
• Position Pieces for Cello
  • “Extended Second Position Target Practice,” p. 13
  • “Ballad,” p. 15
  • “Target Practice,” p. 3
  • “Fanfare,” p. 5
• Suzuki Cello School Volume 1
  • “The Happy Farmer,” p. 20
  • “Etude,” plucking and bowing with variations, p. 19
• Blue Book of Tunes
  • “Ode to Joy”

I am improving slowly.

Lesson Notes

I slept and ate properly before this lesson, and I did much better than a week ago.

We started with scales and scales with slurs, focusing on the two-octave C scale. Ana had me play it multiple times, giving me pointers on how to play it better.

We spent most of the lesson working on “The Happy Farmer.” I have a lot of trouble with bowing the slurs. Ana had me do air bowing (vertically), calling out up or down. She also had me bow on open strings, but I had a lot of trouble bowing on the correct open string. Finally, she had me play parts of the piece to focus on the areas where I have difficulty. All of this is good for my brain!

Ana also showed me some finger exercises, such as touching the thumb to each finger in order, but touching in reverse with the other hand. She also showed me a finger exercise with pointing the index finger with the thumb vertical with one hand while making the peace sign with the other, then switching hands. That is impossible for me to do right now. Ana says these are good warmups for activating the brain-finger pathways.

Ana had me work on target practice for first and second position with all of the exercises in Position Pieces for Cello, p. 3, on the D, G, and C strings, using the harmonic as a guide.

As always, it was a great lesson, but very challenging for me.

Assignments

Ana did not assign any new pieces this week since I’m still learning the new pieces assigned last week. My prioritized list is:

• Scales and scales with slurs with a metronome and drones as a warm-up (two-octave C major, A minor, G major, and D major)
• Position Pieces for Cello
  • “Extended Second Position Target Practice,” p. 13
  • “Ballad,” p. 15
  • “Target Practice,” p. 3
  • “Fanfare,” p. 5
• Suzuki Cello School Volume 1
  • “The Happy Farmer,” p. 20
  • “Etude,” plucking and bowing with variations, p. 19
• Blue Book of Tunes
  • “Ode to Joy,” pp. 34–35
  • “Bow and Fiddle,” pp. 36–37