Thursday 26 March 2009

Thumb pain!

Owwwwwww Just played for 40mins and my thumb feels as weak as anything. I am definitely getting the hang of it though, I sort of get what I am supposed to be doing. Sometimes the sound is alright, and I can just about get through a few lines of music without it starting to slide into awfulness again. So things are sounding promising, and I feel better than I did last night.

I have another lecture in an hour so really cannot afford to abuse it any more! I will play again when I finish for the day at 5pm.

It amazes me how much there is to learn when playing the cello: left hand doing one thing, right hand doing something completely different. Both of them contorted into strange new shapes. Arms aching from sticking out everywhere and my poor back not used to sitting up straight for so long at a time!

When I played the flute years ago, all you had to do was learn how to shape your mouth right, and get your fingers in the right place and you could at least play a basic tune. String instruments seem so complicated in comparison. But I wouldn't have started playing if I hadn't wanted a challenge, so I am going to stop complaining and start improving!

Wednesday 25 March 2009

Lesson 3: I got my bow

My lesson this afternoon was a funny one. I got my bow (yay!) but I am finding it reallllly difficult to hold right at the moment, and my thumb hurts (boo). My lesson was supposed to be 4pm-4.30pm but the student after me didn't turn up for his lesson so I got a full hour (yay!) but both me and my teacher were super sleepy and the room was so warm we were both really drowsy (boo). Hilariously, I actually think my teacher dropped off for about half a second mid-sentemce, and then kept on talking as though nothing had happened. Hahaha ohhhh dear.

Anyway he said I was doing well with my left hand stuff, and so I could have my bow! Very exciting, I practised looooaaaads this week to make sure that he would be happy giving me the bow.

Total anti-climax. I can't even hold it properly yet. It is ridiculously uncomfortable, and sounds horrendous! I guess for some reason in my mind I figured that I would be able to play all the stuff I had been playing pizzicato right away with the bow. No. Definitely not. So I am feeling a little discouraged right now. Unfortunately, realising how unrealistic my bow-related expectations were has not made me feel any less disappointed.

But tomorrow is another day etc and I am already making slightly less gut-wrenchingly gruesome squawks with it, so I will stick with it!

No more lesson until 22nd April so I have ages to work on my technique. I am also going to confer with a cello-playing friend and get him to tell me if I am doing it right after I have had a bit of practise. We shall see..

Quick post

Just got back from job no.2 so just a quick post before bed. Lesson tomorrow. Practised for nearly an hour today, but I am still pretty sure that I will make a million mistakes in my lesson tomorrow as I keep making different mistakes in different pieces of music. Plus it still sounds terrible.

How long will it be until it starts sounding nice? Weeks, months, years?

But, I get my bow tomorrow for the first time. Yaaayyyyy!!

Monday 23 March 2009

What should I call her?

I have no idea. Part of me thinks that maybe she isn't a she, which is why I am having trouble naming her. But I am pretty sure she is. These are some of the names I like:

Rosa - rose
Bertha - famous/bright
Simone - listening
Olympe - from Mount Olympus
Eponine - horse goddess
Pearl - obvious
Ursula - little bear
Zoelie/Zooey - life

I am pretty sure she's not a Zooey. And Pearl doesn't fit quite right. I think Ursula is great, and Rosa is lovely (and she could be named after Rosa Luxembourg!). Eponine is so sweet, but maybe a better name for a smaller instrument?? I like the meaning of Simone, and would be a lovely homage to Simone de Beauvoir but not sure about the sound of the name itself. Bertha was suggested by a friend, and at first I really liked it, but when I looked at her again I wasn't sure. Olympe is an amazing name, but quite hard to make sound nice unless you have a French accent!

So the choice at the moment is Ursula or Rosa.

I am currently leaning towards Ursula...

Sunday 22 March 2009

Weekend practise

This weekend has been busy and fun, and I managed to fit in a good 3 hours of cello-ing (celling?) in the meantime.

After my lesson on friday I played for ages, I was so happy to have her back! I had to stop when my fingers started to hurt, but I managed to play for a full hour, even after a half hour lesson. My fingers are beginning to becom proper cellist's fingers!

Saturday was such a beautiful day, I spent it sitting in the park with the dogs. A man had bought his guitar along and was playing it on the grass. It looked like a lot of fun (if not slightly arrogant as he wasn't great), and it occured to me how much more portable guitars are than cellos! Or at least, my shoulders are not used to carrying cellos around yet.

I had a few drinks on saturday afternoon and then came home and played cello for an hour in a gin and tonic haze. Which I know sounds very irresponsible, but you know there is the optimum amount of alcohol where you suddenly become better at stuff? Like in Guitar Hero, I always get my best scores after a drink or two? Well, I managed to play more stuff from start to finish with no mistakes in this practise than ever before. Coincidence? I think not.

A more conventional practise today (Sunday) means I have now moved on to playing on the G String. This is pretty exciting, as I love the deepest notes of the cello. I am enjoying playing a German folk song, and there is a Russian folk song on the next page which I am looking forward to playing too. I like them because they are quick and fun, and so far have quite simple rhythms.

Speaking of rhythm, I am finding it really difficult to play anything but 4/4 time. I seriously cannot do 3/4 at all. It feels very weird, I think I need to talk to my teacher about how to count it as at the moment my counting seems to go "1 and 2 and 3 and... dammit!". Must remember to do that on wednesday.

Friday 20 March 2009

Second lesson, cello is back!

She's back! yayy!!

I was really excited about heading to my lesson this morning. For the first part of the lesson, my teacher just taught me how to twist the pegs to tune the cello. It is quite tough but he recommended that I practise and slowly turn the pegs until I feel more confident.

We played through a few of the tunes in the book, and I was pleased with how it sounded (the sound is slowly getting better), and my teacher seemed pleased too. We also worked through parts of the rest of the book, and started playing on the G string, which sounds niiiiice. It was a lovely lesson, and I am really happy with how things are going, and also relieved that I get on well with my teacher. He is such a nice man, and very patient. It must be horrible teaching absolute beginners, but he's very encouraging!

However, I stilllll don't get a bow! Not until next week, so I will practise practise practise to make sure that he is happy to start doing bow work next week. I have done an hour this afternoon already, and already got up to the part in the book he wanted me to get to. I can now play G, and low A, B and C sharp. Now I just need to get it to sound nice!

Thursday 19 March 2009

tomorrow

cello lesson at 12.30 tomorrow, I am excited! but mainly excited about getting my cello back!

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Wednesday 18 March 2009

People keep asking me..

...Why do you want to play the cello?

It's strange, no one would ever ask why you wanted to play guitar, or drums or even violin.

But anyway, in order to clear this up, I want to play because it is a lovvvvvely instrument. Plus it's big, and I want to play a big instrument and sousaphone teachers are hard to come by! Heh heh.

Seriously though, I have wanted to play the cello since my parents first asked me what instrument I wanted to play at the age of 8. It was big and made a lovely noise, and I really liked deep, low parts in music. But they said it was too big (they are right), and so I suggested bagpipes. Again no. So flute it was, as I already played recorder. So I never really enjoyed the flute, played for a few years, and quit when I was about 14.

My parents said that I would regret stopping when I was older, but I never did.

So now 9 years later I suddenly decided it was time to start playing an instrument again. And now I have my own house I get to decide what is too big, and cellos are NOT! (Double Basses are though, phew they are big)

So that was the story of my journey to the cello!

She's having a check up..

I phoned my teacher yesterday to ask him what I should do. I was so worried about about breaking something I hadn't touched her since saturday. he said I was probably just worrying about nothing and I just didn't have the knack for tuning, and I wasn't the first person to phone him in a panic! He told me to drop the cello off at his office and he would have a look. It was very comforting, and suddenly I had a funny feeling I had overreacted somewhat...

I immediately went and got her out and lo and behold the strings were still taut, I tuned her a teeny bit and played for half an hour (minus the A string!).

I dropped her off at the High School later that morning and felt very sad. I have started to anthropomorphise her and suddenly a non-gendered object had become a 'she' in need of a name!

Well, I will have her back on friday and in the mean time I can think of a name for her. Fingers crossed she's all okay!

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Tuesday 17 March 2009

And here she is.

spot the sleeping greyhound!

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Saturday 14 March 2009

Today I Killed a Cello

Oh dear.

Disaster struck today! I broke 2 strings (A and D). I don't even know how I did it! It was out of tune when I got up this morning (as usual), so started to tune it. The D string broke as I was tightening it. I figured that these things happen, so went and bought another string (£7.50 - pricey!), and replaced it. Just started tuning it again and the A string broke!

I am so worried that I am going to destroy it, that I just don't want to go anywhere near it again. I don't think I am over tightening it, but maybe I am. I just don't know.

So I haven't played today, and I am just going to leave it until I can call my teacher on Monday and find out what has happened.

This is so disheartening. Poor cello.

Friday 13 March 2009

Tuning Issues

Same problem with the strings this morning - they were completely loose again!

Decided to go out and buy an electronic tuner to help me tune it properly. A guitar-playing friend helped me tune it, and although it took a while it sounded really good! I had a long practise session and got up to page 18 in the book, which is where it starts making you read the music properly instead of giving you the names of the notes. I am taking a while to get the hang of it, but I can just about remember all the names of the notes while remembering where my fingers should be!

Something I found really helpful was playing each note into the tuner to get the right positioning for my fingers. I had been playing with them too close together for the last couple of days, and with the cello in tune and playing into the tuner it was much easier to figure out where I should be placing my fingers on the strings.

Hopefully this will sort out some of my tuning issues!

Thursday 12 March 2009

Painful fingers!

I got downstairs this morning to discover the D and G strings of my cello had become almost completely slack.. Hmmmm. I tightened them back up, which was surprisingly difficult. I got them a bit more taut in the end but it sounded horrible!

I was worried about overtightening the strings without knowing what I was doing so I just played the cello as it was that day. It sounded pretty grim, but I managed to get up to page 12 in the book, and now know how (theoretically) to play the notes D, E, F sharp, G, A, B, C sharp and D! My fingers were still sore so I was only able to play for about 15 minutes at a time. However, my teacher suggested "little and often" was the best way so I am not too worried.

I can now play Au Clair de la Lune and Hot Cross Buns - wowweee! I can also play the D Major scale. I had to stop this evening as my fingers hurt, but the next page is a whole page of new songs, including Old MacDonald Had a Farm. Incredible!

Wednesday 11 March 2009

My first cello lesson

I left the house at 3.30pm today. I walked up the hill to the High School for my cello lesson at 4pm, and I arrived early, nervous, and sweaty. The High School was traumatic! A mess of teenage boys in blazers getting ready to head home for the day. Thankfully I found the room with relative ease, and waited.

The student before me finished on time, and I was greeted by a lovely man - Tony, my cello teacher. He had a beard which always makes me like someone, and he was friendly and seemed a little shy, which made me like him even more. THEN he introduced me to my very own (rented) cello! It is a brand new student grade full size cello, and, to my novice eye, very pretty.

The lesson seemed to fly by as we raced through the first half of a beginners book. I seemed to spend more time talking than playing! I wasn't allowed to use the bow yet so it was pizzicato all the way - which I now know is just a nicely Italian way of saying 'plucking'. The lesson was hard work, my fingers hurt so much by the end of the half an hour lesson that I was glad to stop, even though I wanted to keep playing. You have to push the strings down so hard! My fingers still hurt now!

So at the end of the lesson, I was sent home with a heavy cello on my back (but still no bow!) and 20 pages of the book to get through by my lesson next week.

Despite my painful fingers, I can't wait to get going :D