Teaching Advice for a Non-Teacher
Hello! I have been playing cello for a long time (since I was a kid) and recently a woman at church who is just learning cello asked if we could meet occasionally to play some duets together casually. After playing together the first time, I learned that she only is learning cello in a large orchestral group setting and she asked if I could give her a little one-on-one feedback / help teach her a little whenever we might meet up. I am not interested in taking on the full task of being her teacher, but I am more than happy to help her out and provide direction when we get together. HOWEVER. She has a lot of things that are problematic rn and need correction with time (both right and left hands, posture, confidence, etc etc etc...). I am not a professional musician and have no teaching experience so it is a bit intimidating to think about how to best help her (which I want to do!)
Two asks for you lovely people. 1) Any helpful resources that can help me articulate many of the things that have become automatic for me over the years (e.g. she asked me about holding the cello and it was struggling to articulate with words what I do and what is needed even knowing what feels/looks right). 2) Does this vague mental plan make sense / I would love feedback:
As mentioned, there are a lot of things that need correction. My thought was to focus on left hand first, which currently can't sit in the right position and gives her significant issues with intonation / changing notes / using the lower strings / etc, using whatever stuff she is working on with her group that she is formally learning from. Right hand is really breathy/wispy and held a bit awkwardly but I don't want to overwhelm by dealing with too much at once. There is a bit of a vocabulary gap as well (identifying parts of the instrument, names of the strings, she reads music but didn't seem to recognize notes by name). Unclear if this is a knowledge gap or an English / language issue (we're both immigrants where we live in Germany so she may be learning in German. I don't speak German (at least not music stuff!) and we speak English together, my native language. I am not sure where she is from originally but I know she plays piano and that musical knowledge may very well be all in her native language). Her posture (minus left hand) was mostly fine from what I saw with her but she mentioned how she holds the cello between her legs is really inconsistent (sometimes even with her knees behind the back of the cello completely?) and sometimes uncomfortable, and she clearly wanted more feedback on this issue.
My thought was to maybe spend some focused time at the beginning on the left hand (maybe just playing some plain notes in first position and getting that hand more comfortable in the correct position) and then try to apply that in her current pieces from the orchestra. I will watch how she is holding the cello but don't know how to address her posture questions without seeing something wrong? Last time, I suggested maybe adjusting her end pin so the angle/height of the instrument is comfortable and sitting right for her (and we messed with it a bit) but not sure how to address that for her otherwise (or if it needs to be?). As far as vocab, I am very concerned about overwhelming (or babying...since she mentioned she had been learning for 2yr) so I was thinking about just letting things come up as they do naturally? I was debating if it would be helpful to go over like names of strings, brief tour of the instrument part names vs just referring to things correctly and helping her understand maybe more intuitively as we go. But was worried that would feel too basic to her to do a "tour" of the cello and bow when she has been playing for 2yr already.
Any and all advice appreciated! Sorry for the long post...feeling a bit lost and wanting to help.