Julia is still struggling with counting eighth notes, which is not unusual at her level, however, this weekend she wanted to leap to some much more advanced level.  We listened to Vivaldi’s Four Seasons and she heard vibrato.  She has heard plenty of music with vibrato but this weekend she recognized it for the first time.

“What is that wobbly sound?”  And I tried to explain.

When it came time for cello practice, she tried to reproduce the sound by vibrating her bow instead of the fingers on the neck of the cello.  Quite ingenious really.  It looked very silly but she managed a sound that was something like vibrato.

When I explained how the sound was made, Julia did not like it as much as moving the bow around.  She tried it as she practiced and I asked her not to do it until Martha, her teacher, explains it much better than I could.

Bow hand and arm positions and directions, posture and sitting position, and recently having all of her tapes taken off, there seems to be plenty to concentrate on.  I send up a secret prayer that vibrato can wait a year or so down the line.

Still, gotta’ give the kid credit.