Electronic Music 411 - Things Cello Has Taught Me (so far)

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Things Cello Has Taught Me (so far)

StoreTags: balls, cello, me, you, hard

Author: Roshi on January 03 2007

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--> I realize it’s been a while since I’ve updated people on my progress of learning the cello. These past few months have been alternating between frustrating and tiring and fleeting moments of joy. But it’s been worth it.

Here are (a few) things that learning cello has taught me so far:

1) Practicing and discipline. I’ve heard that cello is an “honest instrument” - that there are pretty much no shortcuts to learning how to play well. Consequently, I’ve been trying to practice at least an hour a day. When I was a young whippersnapper and learning the saxophone, I never saw the point of practicing. I usually could scrape by. Well, now that I’m older and paying for lessons, scraping by isn’t acceptable. I have to be disciplined and tackle the technical issues I never tackled when I was younger.

Real world application: I think I am a little more disciplined with using my time musically. Concentrating on aspects of a song, as simple as it sounds, helps me to organize my arrangements.

2) Expressivity in instruments. The cello has so many dimensions of expressivity it’s almost scary. My teacher has mentioned that the bow is the “voice of the cello” - and there are so many different ways to bow that produce vastly different effects. Your sound can become scratchy, thin or full depending on how much hair from your bow is in contact with the string. Not only that, you have a lot of control over your volume. Pablo Casals in “Casals and the Interpretation of Music” (a must read, IMO), describes this in details. One of the eye opening pieces of advice he gives in that book is that repeated notes and phrases must never sound identical - the dynamic shape of the phrase must be discovered in the context of the piece.

Real world application: I am no longer satisfied with static looping sounds. When a phrase is repeated, there needs to be a new spin on it, a reason for its existence. I think I am learning how to make my music more dynamic and make it breathe more.

3) Instruments have natural decay to their notes. One of my greatest challenges has been learning how to play legato (connected notes). This is especially hard to get right when crossing strings - the bow angle is different for each string. The name of the game is anticipation and reading ahead. This seems to ready your fingers and your body for the anticipation and release, the ebb and flow of one note to the other that seems to be the essential part of legato. My teacher stresses that tension and release is the key to playing well - accenting is the key to not hurting yourself while playing since you build the tension with the accent and release it afterwards.

4) Be more daring and not afraid to fail. I am starting to learn 4th position, which requires a large shift from 1st position in the left hand to reach the notes. If I don’t try and try again, I would be afraid of this and wouldn’t progress much farther past this point. Janos Starker notes that sometimes the physical sensation required to make the jump to a higher position isn’t enough; sometimes you must “aim for the feeling” of hitting that note.

Real world application: I am trying to “aim for the feeling” more when writing my music. I’m excited to jump into the unknown more - I don’t feel like I’m writing electro in a box anymore.

Anyway, have a great new year all.

Edit: Here's another one:

5) The True meaning of Amateur. We think of amateurs as not being good enough. Well, the latin root of amateur means love. An amateur is someone who does something for the true love of it, not necessarily for professional gain.

I'm proud to be an amateur.

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Comments

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01/03/07 + astroid

nowhere near as intense, but i've rediscovered these, which i've started doing on my axiom.

Recent blogs: generative music speculations pt. #fu, thank you, wetf

01/03/07 + Lara

keep staring that 4th position in the face. he's scary

Recent blogs: It is my birthday!!!!!!, Space & The Future, Thinking too much

01/03/07 + astroid

what i really need is all the scales fingered out for two hands on piano. i don't know what the hell i'm doing, let alone with pentatonic scales.

Recent blogs: generative music speculations pt. #fu, thank you, wetf

01/03/07 + Roshi

OMG, Hanon. I think I started these when I got a little decent at piano but kinda gave it up.

Technical exercises suck when you are doing them but they make you better.

Recent blogs: Cello at 32, I heart Ondes Martenot, Summer Reading - The rest is noise

01/03/07 + airliner

That was a really thoughtful and insightful post, and fun to read. It's interesting how venturing out of your comfort zone can make you really rethink your approach, and question the habits you've already formed.

Recent blogs: Decibel Festival, Odd Request, Hjalti Album, plus Split EP

edited: Jan 03 2007 + Roshi

Oh yah, astroid, I was poking around and saw this: link

Don't know if it's any good.

Edit: also: link

Recent blogs: Cello at 32, I heart Ondes Martenot, Summer Reading - The rest is noise

01/03/07 + Roshi

airliner said: "It's interesting how venturing out of your comfort zone can make you really rethink your approach, and question the habits you've already formed."

Yah, most definitely. It's nice to have a box for awhile, but I think like hermit crabs, we grow a little too big for them and need to find new ones every once in a while.

Recent blogs: Cello at 32, I heart Ondes Martenot, Summer Reading - The rest is noise

edited: Jan 03 2007 + astroid

[deleted grumpy post]

practicing an instrument for real is irreplaceable. i have done it on the sax and the guitar, as in really sitting with a metronome and following a schedule for months. i've learned similar stuff to you...

1. sax-practicing long tones for an hour a day. they do this purely to train the muscles in the jaw to the task of playing the sax, and initiating the practice routine. it's the worst thing ever to listen to-an hour of "haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa" "hooooooooooooooooonk" at soft volumes.

real world: the idea of having a physical connection with your sound, and giving it the room in your life, letting it take the time it needs to become a part of you. training your body and mind to relax and percieve longer units of time.

2. sax-choosing one piece of melodic material and transposing it to all twelve keys. this is the best mental exercise I've ever done. i'd take 12 bars of charlie parker and learn it in all 12 keys, or coltrane, or a line of sonny rollins. do that for an hour a day, you blast through walls of technique, but also give yourself the ability to understand intervallic progressions very well.

real world: it's the essence of all western musical language, transposition and modulation. i rarely get stumped for lack of communication with others. also, when trying to figure out melodies (during sessions or just out in the world) a little vst saxophone pops into my brain, and i can hear the intervals that way. quite handy.

3. guitar-learning fingerpicking of various kinds, especially bossa nova and folk patterns. i had to use a bunch of ways to get around these obstacles, including writing elaborate fingering charts to memorize the patterns. after doing it a bunch, I learned how to abstract the patterns into polymeters (mainly to imitate african music i heard at the time), and got the essence of polymeter from that-playing two different patterns intertwined to the same fingers.

real world: being able to take complicated things and process it into a type of binary that the muscles will understand-knowing that i'll have to slow it down to a crawl and make my body understand it before my brain will.

4. sax and guitar- metronome, metronome, metronome. work with one on everything you ever do, and you'll never have a problem concentrating once the engineer tells you to play

real world: besides the aforementioned studio chops (mine are questionable at best), you can really benefit from hearing microrythym. metronomes always "feel" the same to me: i start playing, and then once i get the feel right of whatever i'm playing, it feels like the metronome slows down. if i'm grooving, i can feel an intense subdivision of the clock, aka 'groove'.

Recent blogs: generative music speculations pt. #fu, thank you, wetf

edited: Jan 03 2007 + astroid

link

there we are.

all good music lessons boil down to five minutes that takes you a year to learn.

Recent blogs: generative music speculations pt. #fu, thank you, wetf

01/03/07 + astroid

link

best yet

that'll take me a while!

Recent blogs: generative music speculations pt. #fu, thank you, wetf

01/03/07 + daswesen

astroid, how did you practice the transposition thing? Would you take the 12 bars charlie parker, and transpose them in your mind, and then play them? Or write them out?

Recent blogs: Sounddesign and techno on the machinedrum, Game of Life Sequencer Screencast, Wesen stickam liveset tomorrow!

edited: Jan 03 2007 + astroid

in the mind

but i started probably two years earlier by practicing scales in all the basic arrangements. this book helped: link

and then by the time you start mastering the "iiVI patterns" in all 12 keys, you're probably ready to move on to longer harmonic stuff.

i'd also pick a key per day to improvise some changes over, like one day it'd be f# and i'd solo over "confirmation" changes in that key. i had the intervals written out and would reference those but not the key area. here's what an 8 hour practice day would look like on the sax:

1st hour: long tones
2nd hour: charlie parker solo in key of the day
3rd hour: confirmation changes in key of the day (improv)
4th hour: giant steps in key of the day (improv)
5th hour: learn the solo to giant steps or syeeda's song flute and play with recording
6th hour: any weird techniques/patterns i could think of
7th, 8th hour: free jamz until parents bust in and murder me with pick ax

Recent blogs: generative music speculations pt. #fu, thank you, wetf

01/03/07 + astroid

i realize that^^^ sounds intense, but you have to frame it in the lense of jazz. eric dolphy practiced for 16 hours a day when he was a teen, charlie parker for 12 hours a day for three years. coltrane, at a bare minimum, practiced 4-12 hours every day for his whole life. the reason i stopped playing sax so much was because my body couldn't handle it-i developed tendonitis and had to change tack.

Recent blogs: generative music speculations pt. #fu, thank you, wetf

01/03/07 + delete

i've always been fascinated when i read stuff like this. i've tried for many years to play n instrument well but i always fail. so far i've tried the piano, drums, melodica, guitar & baglamas (a small bouzouki instrument: link i've come closer with the baglamas, but still never made it. any books on patience and how to achieve it astroid?

Recent blogs: it's raining, damaged good - walkman distortion box, ragga + jungle + death metal = ?

edited: Jan 03 2007 + astroid

i had a timer that i'd set for 20 minute intervals. i'd play and then take a little breather, drink some water, read a book.

look at it as meditation and don't worry about your progress. it's all about gently pushing the limit of your agitation- not smashing against it. if you think "well i have the rest of my life to learn this stuff, might as well slooooow it waaaaay down and learn it right." you'll get better quicker. don't expect to hear the results of your practice-others will, but you may not.

as bad as it sounds, marijuana taught me patience. i didn't need to keep on smoking it (as much as i did), but it opened the door for me. lesson learned and now i'm (relatively) patient.

roshi probably has some good practice advice now, too.

Recent blogs: generative music speculations pt. #fu, thank you, wetf

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