20th May 2019
let's start playing games!
As you have probably heard me say, warming up is very important before playing. We musicians have lots of similarities with athletes: we also train (practice) before a race (a concert). Besides, the work we do is not only mental but also physical! Therefore, before practicing we have to do a warm-up so that we don't get an injury.
Well, we can use this warm-up to play some games, at the same time that we train our sound, intonation, rhythm, agility or other things. In this article, I give you 3 games that you can warm up with. Print them and store the tables in the pocket of your agenda!
The infinite note
You sure know this game from doing it in our lessons. It consists of seeing how much time you can keep producing sound on an open string without changing the bow. However, there are three rules:
1. The bow will be close to the bridge
2. The sound will be forte
3. The sound cannot cut
The more you play this game, the more time you will be able to keep the sound. Click on the link on the right to download the template and be able to write down your marks at home, this way you will see how improve every day!
Arco-pizzicato
This game is also about counting time and improve the score! To write it down, you have the template together with the infinite note here above. The game consists of imitating the resonant sound of a pizzicato but doing it with the bow. Here I explain to you the trick to have a better score:
1. We land with the bow on the string, resting our weight at the frog.
2. We check if, with our weight and the bow sticked to the string, we can move it to the sides without making any noise.
3. With a fast movement and leaving the bow on the string the minimum possible, we let the string go, imitating a pizzicato.
We start counting the time since we let the string go, we listen to the resonance in the air and we stop counting when it's gone. Don't forget to write down your score in the template!
Scale dices
The scales are the queens of the warm-up and the greatest cellists' allies. They are great to control intonation, check some bow strokes, work on agility, etc. Besides, the scale dices that you can download clicking above on "template" are very fun to play!
1. First, we will build the dices, cutting, folding and sticking by the tabs.
2. We throw them in the air together, and we will get a combination of a scale and a rhythm.
3. Every day we will have a different one, and we can write down on our agenda which one we had to see all the possible combinations.
Guinness records...
Make sure you fill in the tables of the infinite note as well as the arco-pizzicato to show me in our lesson. If you score better than the Guinness record, you will appear here at the hall of fame if you want!
These are the current records:
