Cello Lesson Number 13

Yesterday, September 18, 2026, I had my thirteenth cello lesson with Ana Ospina at New School of Music.

Practice Session Notes

For the past week I practiced “Long, Long Ago” and “Allegretto” from Suzuki Cello School Volume 1. These pieces are teaching me the notes on the G string and the D on the C string. After a few days, I began playing both pieces with backing tracks at 50% to 70% performance tempo, but not very cleanly. The backing tracks are slowly helping me correct my intonation.

For one day, I also practiced “Bingo” from Blue Book of Tunes.

Lesson Notes

Ana and I played “Long, Long Ago,” “Allegretto,” and “Bingo” together, with Ana playing the accompaniment. I asked Ana to demonstrate how to play the accented notes in “Allegretto,” because I’ve heard different interpretations in YouTube videos. Ana demonstrated how to play the accented notes and had me practice.

For “Allegretto,” Ana demonstrated ways of breaking up the piece into note clusters to change the rhythm and introduce variation. I have read about this approach in books about learning music, but I have never tried it before. Ana demonstrated playing the two eighth notes, the quarter note, then pausing for a beat, playing the entire piece that way. That makes it possible to focus on a cluster of three notes at a time with a pause before playing the next cluster. I played “Allegretto” that way. Then Ana demonstrated grouping the notes into clusters of six (eighth eighth quarter eighth eighth quarter) with a beat between clusters and had me play “Allegretto” that way, too. (That makes the rhythm 5/4, which is interesting.)

After listening to many podcasts about playing string instruments, such as The Cello Sherpa, Lonely Cello, Stand Partners for Life, and Mind Over Finger, I am a big believer in playing scales. Ana had me play one-octave D major and G major scales. Then we played the D major scale together as a round, where I started first (D, E, …) and Ana came in second with the same scale as I was continuing with the F#, G, …, so we were playing thirds while ascending. Ana had me play a single D at the top of the scale and begin descending. When I reached the open D at the bottom of the scale, Ana had me repeat that note until after she had reached the same note with her scale. Then we reversed, with Ana starting first and me coming in two beats later.

Finally, Ana introduced to me the piece “It’s Raining” from Blue Book of Tunes, teaching me how to play the rhythmic harmony. Then we turned to “Ode to Joy” on p. 35, where Ana asked me to play the melody. This piece has slurs, and I ignored every one!

As always, that was a challenging but enjoyable lesson, and I left inspired to work on new things for the next two weeks.

Assignments

Use my iPad or iPhone to record myself playing the D major scale. Then play the recording while I play the scale again as a round.

Work on the following pieces for my next lesson:

From Suzuki Cello School Volume 1:

• Continue working on “Long, Long Ago” on p. 16.
• For “Allegretto” on p. 16, try practicing with different rhythms as Ana demonstrated and had me play during the lesson.
• Finally, take a first look at “Andantino” on p. 17.
• I also want to go back and practice “Perpetual Motion” in D major and G major, pp. 14–15, to play it faster. (I like this piece).

From Blue Book of Tunes:

• Learn to play the harmony for “Bingo,” record it, and play along with the recording while playing the melody.
• For “It’s Raining” on p. 32, learn the melody and harmony, record the harmony, and play the melody along with the recording.
• Learn the melody for “Ode to Joy” on p. 35 and try to play the slurs.