Call me mellow cello

My weekly cello lessons are always an interesting way to pass an hour. Of the millieu of unpredictable activities that occupy this wonderful little moratorium that my life has become for the summer -- very light school load, no work -- this and is the one thing that has been on a constant schedule for the summer. (Except for my tendancy to wake up around 10:30 and lie in bed until 11 every morning. That's pretty predictable, too.)

My youthful teacher, Annie, has a fabulous enthusiasm to her: She's encouraging, knows how to correct without making you feel like you've been reprimanded (which is crucial with music, because you get corrected all the time) and knows how to speak to an adult learner while still keeping things curiously clear and simple.

So even when I went in feeling nauseated this morning, I passed the hour without noticing my continuing discomfort (props to S2's husband for sharing his cooties: that's who I'm blaming it on anyway).

I've talked a little about my cello playing, but mainly as it relates to how weird it is for me to be practicing and instrument I'm just learning and knowing that it's sometimes like I'm playing in public, but behind a curtain. Also, performing in front of friends seems like I'm putting on silly middle-school recitals (especially with the laughter!).

But I haven't examined, for myself even, the real progress I'm making on my path from musical illiterate to ... what shall I be? ... would-be virtuoso. Excuse me: wanna-be virtuoso.

Thus, a description of today's lesson:

After tuning, I tell Annie that I'm really struggling with finding the top finger placement. I know when I'm out of pitch, but the movement up or down the fingerboard can be so fine in getting it *just right* that it's frustrating me and cutting into my practice time.

When I first started playing, there were three pieces of fingertape on the board to show me the correct finger placement for the pitch. Two weeks ago, Annie removed them. This happened the day before my loft party. (It was a good thing only three people were subjected to my off-pitch renditions of a couple songs. Even intoxicated, I would've played considerably better if the tape were there. I'm not looking at the tape or my fingers much while playing, but I need the tape to show me where to place them initially.)

So today, I told Annie I think I needed the tape back -- but only one piece of it, not three. If I can find the top fingerplacement, I can find all the other notes myself. So she put one tiny piece of tape on my fingerboard.

"Don't worry," she said. "I had a piece of tape on my cello for two years." (Supposedly that's not because she was like, THREE, when she started playing.)

Then, she said to me (much to my inner lesbian's dismay): "You know, you might want to trim your nails, too. They're really too long for you to get solid contact with the string."

My inner lesbian looked at my fingernails and thought: That is just what I was talking about! Godammit! My outer cellist said: I haven't trimmed them in a week. They grow fast. I'll have to clip them when I get home.

She started digging around in her bag, looking for her clippers. Fortunately, she couldn't find them. I was relieved about that. (I still haven't clipped them, but I will before my next practice session.)

We started the lesson with scales, and I found that with one piece of tape back, I was playing quite beautifully. I'm starting to get a lot more "crunch" in my bow stroke, which means the cello is putting out a rich volume. Also, I'm regularly clearly the other strings and not skating so much on the ones I am playing. This is necessary for nice, clean sound.

The positioning of the bow and the way the wrist and elbow move while the upper arm and shoulder remain relaxed ... that posture stuff is *hard* because there is *so much* to pay attention to, while you're also reading music, keeping tempo and changing strings. I had no idea how much was involved. Holding the bow in a relaxed manner is the most difficult thing for me. I'm supposed to be letting gravity do its work, but I'm fighting it.

After we did some scaling, we hopped into a fiddling tune, "Cincinnati Hornpipe."

A couple weeks ago, Annie said at a lesson's end: "You've run right through the beginner's book. Time for a new one so you can be challenged. What kind of cello do you want to play? Classical or something else?"

Naturally, I replied: Oh, I want to learn to play Tango.

Annie's eyes widened. "That's pretty cool music, but it's also hard, and the pieces are going to be heard best as part of an orchestra. Many students go a classical route, but it seems you like more lively music. What do you think about fiddling?" Then she played me a few quick bars to let me hear what cello fiddling sounded like.

That's *totally* what you're teaching me next, I told her.

So I've been picking at this piece for the past week, mainly learning how to play eighths and make quick string changes. That's pretty cool. Unfortunately, real progress on the piece had been thwarted by the difficulty I was having finding my initial fingerboard placement. So with a little piece of tape returned, we worked on it in class.

I was very pleased. When I left the studio, Annie told me, with sweetly goofy enthusiasm, "You're ROCKIN now! You're going to have fun practicing this week!"

After leaving the studio, I was driving up the Interstate with my windows rolled down and my radio turned off. Despite all the freeway noise, I realized that I could hear, inside my own head, the "Hornpipe" song -- in perfect pitch.

I get songs stuck in my head all the time, but usually it's the singer's voice and the words, not the music itself. So I listened to it for a while, and I was rather amazed by it. I remember thinking: Boy, that's good! It's probably Annie's playing that I'm hearing, but ... whatever. I suspect that being able to hear the music so clearly, in perfect pitch, in one's imagination is probably essential in developing an *actual* ear for the pitch.

If so, I seem to be doing that. The next time anyone hears me play, I'm going to have a little something fun in my repetoire, too.

Perhaps it bored the shit out of the rest of you, but writing this little piece has helped me see the progress I'm making. It reminds me that I need to tape record my playing now, so in a couple of months, I'll be able to *hear* the progress I'm making, too.

Just gotta clip these nails and get on with it....