”PLAY AS YOU SING - SING AS YOU PLAY”

The book ”PLAY AS YOU SING - SING AS YOU PLAY” is not only about pulling and pushing a bow, or putting the fingers on the right place at the right time. It is also about the greatest global problem of today’s world – the problem of communication.

Communication has always been an essential need of the human race, particularly today, at the time of global trends.

It is of paramount importance for a musician who must communicate with his audience, and his colleagues in the orchestra. Therefore, most of the songs, exercises and etudes in this book are devised for two instruments – cello and piano.

Listening to different sounds, children will learn to listen to other people, other ideas with new sensibility.  Hopefully, it will help them become better people.

Also, performing on the stage with somebody else might develop the child’s self-confidence.  Sharing the excitement and joy of performing - is the best feeling ever.

At their early age children are not “specialized”. They are complex persons influenced by various kinds of art. By all of them together. This synthesis is called “children’s creativity”. So, a child will express itself creatively a lot before it starts to speak.

At first it could be by dancing (which grownups will perceive as jumping around). Then by drawing, painting, singing, etc.

The true intention behind this book is to help preserve this wholeness of children’s spirits for as long as possible.

The long-term goals of education are to help a child become a person of integrity with full responsibility of an adult and rich creativity of a child. In order to express and preserve these creative values, the child/adult has to develop certain skills.

This is where music can be used as a wonderful medium of developing the most valuable human characteristics, such as honesty, good communication, positive emotions, patience, imagination, discipline and self-confidence.

Cello playing is only a small segment in practicing music. It might seem contradictory to address cello playing techniques devised for a small child, a beginner in music, within a context of ambitious educational objectives.

Modest as it may seem, this book will, nevertheless, help mastering the basic cello playing knowledge and skills and this get us a little closer to our great major objective.

Unlike most instrumental music handbooks for beginners, the etudes and exercises in this book are presented in a form of songs with lyrics. I believe it is very important to motivate a child to sing a song before playing it on the instrument, and it would also be desirable to sing while playing.

The habit of singing the tune is vital to the understanding of the melodic phrase and rhythm, to feeling the pulse and controlling breathing; singing also stimulates the coordination of body movements, relieves tension in the neck muscles, and does much good besides. 

In this book, songs, etudes and exercises are grouped under four strings, and not according to various different levels of difficulty in mastering the musical challenges or instrument playing techniques.