Back to earth...

Finally, my dissertation is finished. It's at the binders, and I am handing it in on Friday. Phew. It has been a long summer, and a very enjoyable one, but I am looking forward to getting back to normal life.

I just picked up my cello today to play for the first time in 2 weeks. I had been putting it off, because I couldn't face spending any more time in my study that I already was, and as such I approached it with some trepidation! I was worried that I would have forgotten everything, and it would sound horrible. It did take me a few minutes to refamiliarise myself with the stuff I had been working on, but once I got into it, I'm sure it sounded just the same as before!

My fingers have lost a bit of their strength unfortunately, and my arms ache a bit now. It's amazing how quickly it all goes. I am looking forward to a practise tomorrow, I'm going to go over some old stuff and see how it feels.

Glad to be back.

Sore thumbs...

After being oh so pleased with myself for my hour of practise on friday, I woke up on saturday with a SORE left thumb. I don't think it hurt while I was playing, although I did feel a bit achey afterwards. It was seriously painful until about lunchtime today, but has subsided almost completely since.

I am thinking that I will leave it until tomorrow to try playing again and see how it feels. If bad, I will have to cancel my lesson on Thursday.

*sad face*

Simple things...

My teacher suggested that I try slurring the scales while I was playing them, two notes at a time. It took me a little bit to get the hang of it, but it is surprisingly fun!

I just did an hour of practise, and a good half of it was spent on scales. Then I started being silly and playing the entire scale up and down on one bow as fast as I could. Fun game, but probably not the point of the exercise...

New music?

Finally I am beginning to enjoy the bow! Although my shoulder and arm is aching from playing for a long time yesterday evening. Maybe I need to start warming up before I play.

It is difficult learning to find the new position on the strings, I feel like I am not confident enough to go as far as I need to to get the note right, because I find it difficult to move my hand back up to the first position. Although I imagine that over time it will become easier as I learn how it feels. It does amaze me how far you need to move though, it seems like a much bigger distance than closer to the top of the neck. And now I think about it, aren't guitars like that? I wonder why that would be?? I will ask my engineering husband!

I love how relaxing I find it when I play now with the bow. It is hard work, but really doesn't feel like it. I am writing essay at the moment for my masters course, but at the end of a day writing essays it is so enjoyable to sit down and play for an hour.

It's my birthday in a month, I am going to get myself some new music to play just for fun while I work on the stuff for my lessons. I need something really easy, but with slightly more difficult parts that I can work towards. I wonder if Phantom of the Opera is easy enough?

Uh Oh...

One of the fine tuners on my cello has snapped off! Don't hve any clue how this happened, but engineer husband reckons that it was low quality metal and so had some fatigue. I was turning it and it felt quite stiff, and suddenly snapped off in my hands. It's the g string tuner, which is one of the easier strings to tune so at least i can keep playing until my next lesson. Going to have to give the cello back to my teacher I think. He is not going to be impressed..

All in all, this cello has been a total nightmare. I do feel bad for her, as she is really suffering with such a clumsy first owner, but she is not exactly very robust and I am not doing anything any other beginner wouldn't be doing, I don't think!

Seriously, when it comes to thinking about getting my own cello I think I would rather rent for ages and get a really good quality cello when I can afford one rather than buy one as soon as I can afford it, and get a lower quality instrument. I rent from my teacher, and he said any money I pay on rental I can have off the final price of the cello I rent, but I am not sure about this cello.. I feel worried it's going to fall apart all the time! But on the other hand I have absolutely no spare moeny to save up for any cello, let alone a good one! Well, I have ages to think about that so I'll wait and see.

With respect to practise, things are going a-okay. well, definitely okay anyway. My thumb hurts less and I am able to concentrate on what my left hand is doing as well as my right hand. Up until now I had been totally ignoring my left hand while bowing! I need to get a better seat for playing though, as I don't have any that are really the right height at the moment and I feel all scrunched up.

Speaking of which, I have a spare half hour so I am off the practise!

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!

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!!

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.

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!