As the summer winds down and the days get shorter, I am taking a week off to spend time with the kids, and do those “one last” activities so that the summer becomes locked in memory.  It’s not a week off from Cello Playing!  We’ve been through the entire Chopin piece, and parts of it are starting to sound Melodic.  My plan is to get it in progressively better shape.  Today we focused on the final long phrase of the Chopin Largo op. 65,  reading for pattern so that I can have some idea about how the line progresses, even without having an undergraduate background in music theory.  I need to have an idea of the music independent of the cello, so I can let my idea guide my hands. For example, we can view the last long phrase in terms of where each downward passages land. Is there a pattern to it? If so, what?