January 11, 2009 at 1:20 am (Uncategorized)
I’ve been neglecting this blog for quite some time, so it’s time to admit that I need to take it out the back and shoot it. Sorry old fella!
Thankfully although this blog has been abandoned, the cello hasn’t. Still practising, still learning, still getting better. From here on out any cello related posts will go on my normal blog, under the cello category. There’s a new post there now!
June 5, 2008 at 7:04 am (cello)
Well I dropped some dollars on a new cello. It sounds a lot better than the hired one! Photos, pics and mp3 soon to come, for now I just jumped on to bitch.
I am bored with major keys. All of the practice pieces and stuff I have been doing is in major, I want some minor dammit! I want to stretch my musical horizons and my fingers. Everything sounds cheery and upbeat but sometimes you just want to express some darker emotions.
March 18, 2008 at 2:11 am (cello)
I realised why I was becoming frustrated and impatient learning the cello – all I was working on was technique. Technique technique technique, for a month straight. This week I threw out regimented practice, picked up the cello and just played. I’ve got to the point where I can improvise a little bit, so I just had fun doing that. As a result I realised how much I had actually learned in that first month of playing, and I think I also learned how to be more expressive. It’s hard to focus on your expression when you are practising scales, and my teacher had to constantly remind me to use more bow. After making up my own tunes, the expression was so natural, I just felt where I wanted to go and played with my eyes closed.
It seems along the way I forgot why I wanted to learn cello in the first place.
March 12, 2008 at 1:07 pm (cello)
At the moment it seems that at each practise session I start from scratch. My fingering is off and all the notes sound out of tune, but by the end of the session everything is working again. The very next day I pick up the bow and it’s back to square one. It’s frustrating and it feels like I’m going nowhere, but the truth is probably that I am going somewhere, just very slowly. I know I should be patient, that muscle memory takes time to train, but I want to sound good now dammit! Especially after seeing the Australian String Quartet tonight, they made it look so easy.
While I am in the mood for whinging, I have to say that cello strings are damn expensive. I busted an A string – the cheapest one – and it cost me $40. On the guitar I could get two complete sets for that much!
February 25, 2008 at 12:45 pm (cello, sound samples)
I decided it was time to tackle Beethoven’s famous “Ode to Joy”. I was wrong. Listen to my rendition if you dare, but it will sully any future enjoyment you may get from it. Afterwards, you might listen to the professionals perform it over and over again, but nothing will remove the stain from your ears; nay, your very soul.
In all seriousness though, I don’t think it’s too bad for someone who had never even laid hands on a cello two weeks ago. What do you think?
February 22, 2008 at 12:44 am (cello, photos)
Yesterday when I woke up my hands hurt. My right thumb has been hurting for a couple of weeks due to a basketball injury, although I think it might be aggravated by the way I hold the bow. My right shoulder began to give me the ol’ lactic acid burn due to the sustained bowing as well.
On my left hand, apart from the obvious discomfort of the calluses forming at the tips of my fingers, the muscle in the webbing between my thumb and index finger has begun to hurt. During my second lesson the teacher pointed out that I tend to squash this finger flat rather than hold it arched (see photos below). I wonder if this is causing the problem, or if it’s just sore from use.
(ignore the wrist angle, that was necessary in order to take the photos)
My guess is these little aches and pains are only the tip of the iceberg, and that I can look forward to a lot of discomfort in the years to follow. Ah well at least it’s worth it, I’m getting better every day. This lesson we threw the pinky finger into first position, so now I can play a one octave major scale. Mucking around with this new found arsenal of notes I managed to squeeze out some poor sounding riffs from the White Stripe’s Seven Nation Army, as well as the main theme from Beethoven’s ninth symphony. Stay tuned and I’ll post another sound grab this weekend. Today though I’ll rest my hands and focus on learning to read music instead.
February 17, 2008 at 1:45 am (cello, sound samples)
I picked up my rental cello during my lunch break. Not wanting to wait, I opened it up at work and proceeded to terrorize my co-workers with it.
The first thing I noticed was that the fingering felt much more natural than on the guitar. I always hated the awkward cock needed in your left wrist needed to get to the strings, but on the upright cello it felt much more natural. What didn’t feel natural was the bent angle of my neck I needed to avoid headbutting the tuning pegs.
Now I’ve had my first lesson and learned to sit with the cello at an angle so my head can sit upright. My teacher also taught me how to hold the bow, how to use it, and the basics of first position (for your left hand on the fingerboard). The thing I probably had the most trouble with was getting the bow hold right. It just felt unnatural and clumsy. It feels like I need to use a lot of pressure with the right thumb in order to hold it properly. It is getting sore, but that might have something to do with the fact that I injured it playing basketball the other week.
As for first position, my teacher taught it to me by first showing me the position of the third (ring) finger then the first (index) finger. My homework has been to practise hot cross buns using them. Right now it feels weird as the pads of those two fingers are tender and developing calluses, but the other two are not. Perhaps I should try and rough them up a bit too. Unfortunately finding first position from a cold start still takes a bit of fishing, but I am getting better.
Bowing is hard, especially on the C string. The open C usually sounds reasonable, but when holding down the D or E it just sounds scratchy and hideous. Apart from lack of practise with the bow, I think it might be because I don’t press the string into the fingerboard hard enough. I will have to ask my teacher about this at our next lesson.
For posterity, here’s a sample of what I sound like at the moment, so that I can look back on how much it sucks, and how much I have improved, in the months to follow.
February 16, 2008 at 10:50 am (cello, photos)
I’ve always wanted to play a musical instrument. After mucking around on both the piano and guitar for the last five years, I haven’t made much progress. This year I’ve decided to do it properly and get some lessons rather than teaching myself.
I’ve no doubt picked up some incredibly bad habits on both of my previous instruments, so I decided that a fresh start on a completely different one would be a good idea. That instrument is the cello.
Why cello? I like the way it sounds. The cello is an expressive instrument, much like the human voice. A note can be loud or quiet, just like on a guitar, but unlike a guitar it can start out quiet and then grow in intensity. I’m also a fan of classical music, and in contemporary music the cello is a bit different – everyone can play guitar, bass or drums, but the cello isn’t that common. Hopefully that will allow me to contribute to a band without having to completely master my instrument.
There are also downsides to the cello. You cannot reasonably play more than two notes simultaneously, whereas the guitar can play five, the piano ten. It is also an instrument that sounds very bad until you get good at it. Anyone can bash a single key on a piano and it will sound nice, but playing a single note on the cello sounds like a cat being strangled to death unless you use the bow correctly.
I’ve already had my first lesson, and will soon master “hot cross buns”. All I need now is five years of practice.
One thing I have noticed while learning the other instruments is that progress takes a lot longer than you imagine. At times it can seem so slow that you wonder if you are getting any better at all. To remedy this I will try and document my progress as I go, so that I can look back on it later and see how far I have come. It will probably be a boring read to everyone except me, so I will write it in this new blog, rather than my main one.
Wish me luck!
