Cello Suite 1 Prelude

[Chris W.]

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[Bill Clements]

Well done, Chris!
Thanks for sharing.

[Chris W.]

Good gravy! Embedding a video is so difficult for me. Can someone help??

[Chris W.]

Ok. I think I got it.

[Cecily_Mandoliner]

That was lovely!! Great dynamics!

[Pasha Alden]

Thanks for sharing Chris. Giving it a listen now.

[Maczart]

Nice job, Chris!

[billhay4]

Nice job. What kind of mandolin is that? I can't quite read the headstock.
Bill

[Chris W.]

Nice job. What kind of mandolin is that? I can't quite read the headstock.
Bill

Thanks. That would be my 1924 Gibson F-5...

Lol, just kidding. That is a Rover RM-75. It is probably the best sounding $300 mando I've played. I recently upgraded to a Northfield but I kept the Rover because I really like it. It has a nice dark tone to it and I like having a back-up.

[billhay4]

Good try, Chris. You almost got me to go back and look at the headstock script.
It is a nice sounding Rover, though.
Bill

[danielpatrick]

Nice job!!

[Rob Beck]

Nicely played! Thanks for posting it

[Dancing Seahorse]

Absolutely lovely! I really enjoyed listening to you play. Thank you for posting the video.

[Tavy]

Outstanding!

[EdHanrahan]

ARRGGH, yer killin' me! That was NICE!! (Granted this isn't mandolin but...)

In just the past month, I passed on a book of the Bach cello pieces transcribed for bass guitar, in both tab and bass-clef notation. Of course, the tab would work for standard guitar's lower strings, and, I suppose, the notation for piano left-hand. So now I gotta go looking: was it at my local (NJ) Guitar Center, or was it when I stopped in at the Denver Folklore Center?

I do suspect that lots of us could put the guitar tab to good use!

[tkdboyd]

First and foremost, sounded wonderful....

However, I am intrigued now by pick stroke. I noticed you glide through the as if a slow strum to great affect. I have always played it with alternating picking. Checked Alex Timmerman and he does the same
But then I watched Mike Marshall and it looks like he uses the DUDU rather than the arpeggiation. Wonder if there is a "Best Practice"?

[Chris W.]

Hey tkdboyd. Thanks for noticing. Yes I play DDDUDUDU at the beginning and also at other points. When I'm not using that I'm using alternate strokes. I learned this off of Mike's Artistworks site in a lesson that his wife Caterina Lichtenberg gave of this piece. The reasoning is that you get better bass lines with the down, down, down stroke. I find that it mitigates the clipped sound of alternate strokes and gives a smoother feel to the line. Sort of a way to be more like a bowed line. There are many places where this technique can be applied here. Pretty much anytime the line has that pattern from the opening cadenza, that is then modulated in different ways throughout the piece, you could use the DDD stroke. Bar 16 and 17 are the only exceptions.

In fact this very video was one of my student submissions to Mike's online academy. And lo and behold Caterina Lichtenberg gave the response In it she explained how this is an arpeggio technique from the 18th century called arpeggio technique number 6.

I don't know how old that mandocello video is, but I can assure you that Mike teaches his students this pick stroke nowadays.

Thanks again, Chris

[tkdboyd]

Very cool. I'll give it a go as you have done. Thank you!

[Chris W.]

Yeah. Try it out. It really helped me to get better phrasing for those long 8th note lines.