When I was much younger and taking piano lessons, I would dread those words “Go Practice”.   I don’t think I knew how to practice.  I had a “piece” and I’d play it a few times and be done.   We all know that doesn’t really work and it’s not surprising that I didn’t last long taking piano lessons.  My sister, however, did practice.  At one point she changed to a high level teacher and would spend what seemed like HOURS sitting on the floor, playing one note.  Yes, she was playing the piano.  One note,  over and over.    It was dreadful and I don’t know how she did it.  You should hear her today.  She is amazing and can play anything with both technique and musicality.   I didn’t try again until I was 50 and decided I’d play the cello.  Again, I didn’t understand the concept of practice and for years did the same thing.  Got a piece, came home, played if for a week and moved on to the next piece.  And for 4 years I sounded the same.   Like a 7 yr old learning to play.   Fortunately alone the way I met a variety of new teachers.  I learned that there is so much more to practice and that while practice may include playing, it often does not.

Some basics to learning are that repetition works.  It helps to have a set time and place to practice where you are organized with your chair and stand, good lighting, pencils, markers, your metronome, and anything else that makes this process easier for you.  A place without interruptions is best.   You also need a plan.  Start with whatever you want to play the least and end with the dessert, or whatever you want to play the most.    The point is that this has to become a habit, like brushing your teeth.   You want to play, you want to improve, and practice is the path to that end.  Besides, you do love to play! Just make the process easier and you’ll enjoy it more.

You love the cello.  You love improving slowly but surely.  And you love to play with others.   Don’t you think it would be incredible to play with 200 cellists?  ON ONE STAGE?  I’ve done it twice and I promise you, it is amazing.  And here’s a really cool thing:  If you make a mistake, absolutely NO ONE knows!  Not even you.  So pull out your calendar and mark down Sept. 22-23 at the University of South Carolina to be a part of the 38th South Carolina Cello Choir.   The icing on the cake is that Zuill Bailey is one of the clinicians.  You can’t beat the price of $20 (early registration) which includes a Guest Artist Recital.   Cellists of all ages and ability levels participate.  Last year I was having trouble seeing the music (small!) and within minutes I had my own blown up copies.   There are many vendors that support and participate (Cellos2Go and Stephanie Voss were there last year) so you can see new music or try out new instruments.   Friday there are master classes- fabulous to watch and learn.  Friday night is the Guest Artist Recital, and Saturday is the day to play, culminating with a performance late Saturday afternoon.   There are so many cellists that it’s just a day of pure joy!   Here’s the link.  Click on it and be inspired when you see the picture of all the cellists.  You should go!

http://www.sc.edu/study/colleges_schools/music/community/community_events/sc_cello_choir.php

P.S.  If the trek to South Carolina is more than you can handle, look around in your area for something similar.  If you can’t find anything, I guess you’ll have to come to South Carolina! 😉

Many many years ago I was listening to an NPR show where Itzak Perlman was the guest speaker.  He is an amazing, awesome, lovable violinist, and was speaking to the Washington Press Club.  At the end of the program there was a Q & A.  One question posed to Perlman was something like, ‘I’m 40 years old and I’ve always wanted to learn to play the violin.  What do you recommend?’  Perlman’s answer was “Get a piano”.   This was probably 15 or 20 years before the thought of a cello was even a spark of a thought in my mind.  But that comment has stayed with me throughout the years.  It’s possible that Perlman was saying that playing a violin (or any stringed instrument) is laborious, time consuming, and frustrating.  Much easier to press down on a key and get a sound.  (Although pianists would take exception to this as well.)  Maybe Perlman only thought of performance in a major symphony orchestra or teaching on the college level as the end result of studying a string instrument.   What I’ve learned throughout this endeavor is that the process of learning to play the cello has been exactly as Perlman intimated: Laborious, time consuming and extremely frustrating.  I probably owe my teacher a case of Kleenex for all the tissues I’ve used up while crying tears of frustration during my lessons.  But it’s also been the most joyous times of my life.  You can play in a community orchestra.  You can teach beginning cello students.  You can go to string camps.  There is nothing that compares to playing duets/trios with newly made cello friends.  There is nothing that brings a smile to my face faster than sharing cello experiences with cello friends that have been on the same journey for many years.  So yes, this is, as I say repeatedly, this is complicated.  This is not easy.  This is a mountain that never ends.  And this is the journey of a lifetime.  I’m so glad I came.

P.S. Dear Itzak, a cello may be big, but it’s a helluva lot easier to tote than a piano!  Hugs.

I’m watching the Wimbledon men’s finals and Roger Federer comments on an early game where he lost an important match.  He said something like, “I’m never going to win if I just stay in my cold room in Switzerland and keep practicing.  I need to focus on the details.”  Oh Roger, right you are.  We all spend lots of time in that cold room practicing, yet missing something important.   I was practicing an etude where I have to play a scale of octaves.  Every time I played the A♭ to B♭ it was never quite right.  I’d go back or go on, but I never stopped to say WHY is this not correct and what can I do about it.  That’s the missing detail.  Seems so obvious, but like all of us, I want to play it all and keep going.   All I’m doing is training my left hand to play it incorrectly.  Over and over, now my arm (it’s actually the arm that’s making the shift) and my hand landing and making the octave space smaller is off every time because my repetition has taught it to do that.   So instead of continuing on, I need to take my post-it notes and cover up the next measure to insure that I will not continue.  Sometimes I use 4 post-it notes and cover above, below, before and after the measure so I can’t see the next notes.  Then I am forced to focus.  These are the details that need attention.  This is what makes progress up this huge never-ending mountain of celloing.   How do you notice the details and what do you do?

After I watched this I remembered “The Music Man” and the “think method”.  I guess Professor Harold Hill was on to something.  My other thought was that I’m not really wasting time when I’m thinking about my music.   It counts as practice.   Now I’m wondering if myelin is produced as effectively in older adults as in mice.

I just read a post from another cello site.   She said, “What colour /texture/flavour/taste/mood is that D?”   I don’t know the answer and this is a problem for me.  It frustrates me that I don’t see my notes in colors, flavors or tastes.  Moods, maybe.   I can get down to the bridge and put some arm weight into the music and make a ferocious sound (is that mood?) or I can pull a fast bow with little arm weight close to the fingerboard and make a kind of wispy sound.  I guess that’s mood. It’s difficult for me to get to this next major step in playing because it seems like such a far reach.   As a late starter, I concentrate so much on the notes, the shift, counting, the tempo.  It’s just adding another layer and I can’t quite get there.  My teacher suggested making up a story to the music.  This actually did help.  I was playing a slow movement from a concerto (yes, very slowly!) and made up a complete story about the movement, phrase by phrase.  I even wrote it down and said the story out loud as I was playing it in my lesson.  I got so emotional about it I was in tears!  (It was a sad story.)  Perhaps I needed to know the music so well that I could get to this next step.  It probably helped that I practically knew the music by heart so I wasn’t relying on my eyes as much as my ears.   Anyway, I still didn’t see colors or flavors, but I did play it more musically.  I guess that’s what it’s all about.   What do you think?

Do you ever feel like you’re guessing at where a note is?  Or where you are shifting to? I’m a firm believer that there is no guessing in cello, even when I’m playing ridiculously high notes. (Past the end of the finger board- yes, there are notes there too!)   I had never seen a fingerboard chart that shows all the notes on all the strings and it took me a long time to realize that WOW the D on the A string is right next to the G on the D string.   And it took me even longer to realize that this continued up the fingerboard.  So I go back to my original premise, that there is no guessing in cello.  There is a place where the note rings true and if you practice going to that place, that note will be there.   Shifting is a common culprit in this endeavor.  You are playing “The Swan” and there is a big shift … you’re going “somewhere” up there.  Not sure where and after a while you find the note.  The trick is now to stop.  Go back to your starting note and make your shift, remembering that it’s the arm that does the motion and then the finger lands on the note.  You have to practice doing the shift on one bow stroke from the lower note to the destination note, then back again on another bow stroke.  And you have to do this many times, over and over, so that your muscle memory will learn where your note is.   You have to pay attention to how your  arm feels as it starts and how it feels when you get to your destination note.   You have to be the teacher of your arm and your shifts because there really is no guessing in cello.

Helter Skelter just means confusion.  Which is what I am feeling lately.  I thought I was making progress on the piece I’m working on.  Little by little I was working through the many sections, practicing the 1/16 note runs with different rhythms, backward and forward; playing the sweet parts slowly with as much vibrato as I can muster.   Over the weekend I went back to the beginning and was playing when I got to 4 measures that I thought I had worked out (wrong!), only to discover I had no idea of what the correct notes were and how to play them.  Mass confusion.  How could it be that I had it down and then it was gone?  Well, the obvious answer is that I never had it down to begin with and was just swooping through that section so I could move on to the next.  I spent much of my lesson getting advice on this problem.  Those four measures needed a lot more attention than I had given them and this week will bring focus on helping my left hand learn the drill.  And make no mistake, it is  merely a drill to practice and engrain the muscle memory of what to do.  There’s no way my meager mind can REMEMBER  all the intricacies of the fingering and changing hand positions of the ONLY 4 MEASURES that I’m playing.   So the plan is slowly move from one note/hand position to the next, and repeat.  and repeat.  and repeat.  Then move on to the next set of notes.  In a week of repetition, I should have it.   And if not, it may take another week.  Progress, not perfection.

and Two for “C”.  If you’re an older adult beginner (as I am) you may know that original tune.   I love playing duets with other cellists.  We can really hone in on the music, or we can just have a good time playing together.   You may have your own favorite stash of favorite duets, and if so, please share them with me!  Certainly many cello duets can be found for free on numerous sites, but I wanted to mention some that have become my go-to favorites.  Most of these can be sight read, and are in mostly first or second position.

Number One on my list is Rudolf Matz 12 Duets for Two Violoncellos. Everything else is Number Two.  That’s how great these duets are.  Other favorites include:   Kummer 6 Duets for Two Cellos, and Offenbach Six Duos for Celli.   These are nice as the parts are very similar so C-1 = C-2.     A really fun book is Flying Fiddle Duets for Two Cellos by Myanna Harvey.  I’ve only played in Book One but she does have a second book out now.   At first glance you may be intimidated, but I assure you they are fun to play and sound great.  First and fourth position only.   Lots of places to purchase these, but I know you can find them at Cellos2Go.com, Sharmusic.com, or Amazon.

If you don’t have a duet partner, you need to find one.  Try a high school orchestra player, or local college.  You can and should play duets with your teacher.  It’s inspirational!   I sometimes use my recorder (or the recorder on my small keyboard) to record one part so I can play duets with myself.    After all, necessity is the mother of invention, so get creative!