#beginner cellist

defusing a bomb

I've been "doing" music for 14 years. The first 5 or 6 were messing around, getting to grips with basic theory and playing the saxophone. From the mid-way point onwards was intensive practice and theory; I've been a part of 7 musical groups - several of which won awards up and down the country, played at various events for "important" people - and took music through to university level. At that point work and time became an issue so I gave it up, returning only 2 years ago to my old community band for a session. I decided now that I have the free time and the space (having moved out) that I would be able to pick music up again, be creative and bring back some kind of structure/discipline to my routine which is totally lacking right now. So week 1 was getting to know the instrument. When the cello arrived the bridge was down so I had to deal with an element of playing and ownership that I'd never considered. This also tied in to learning how to tune and subsequently how to re-string since the A-string decided that it needed to snap and whip across my face. It was a baptism by fire like most hobbies I try to pursue. It took a lot to find a good instructional video on holding the bow and a bit of reading to figure out how rosin works. Bass clef has also been a fun challenge. I know how it works and what the notes are but it's so hard to get it to stick in my very treble clef-ed brain. I started with a cello for beginners book and it's been pretty decent so far. It's focussed a lot on tunes in D and G major. My first few practice sessions were melodies using open D up to G (4th finger, first position). Once I was comfortable with that I moved forward through the pages and onto G with the same finger patterns. Week 2 was much more of the same but with the frustration of my hand cramping, the bow shaking because of my arm fatiguing and double stopping ALL THE TIME. I get that it's all part of the learning process but it's endlessly irritating to know what you're capable of but not be able to produce it due to inexperience. It's a bugger of an instrument to keep in tune too. It uses friction pegs which I'm convinced are pushed in as far as humanly possible while still allowing me to use them for tuning but as soon as I get my last string bang on, the first is already flat???? The one saving grace is that if i leave them all, they become equally flat. This descended into a ramble very quickly. The nice parts from my second week of practicing have been hearing a difference in tone, having more fluidity in my movements and playing melodies across the top 3 strings! I'm genuinely quite proud of where I finished today, even if I did stop out of frustration with my wobbly arms. I feel like I'm making progress and thinking back over the past few weeks has been a nice bit of proof to back it all up.

If only cello lessons were still this easy :’’’’D