One Year of Cello

I’ve been playing my cello for one year!  Honestly, sometimes it feels like my progress is disgustingly slow, but when I frame what I now can play in light of the fact that a year ago I didn’t even know how to hold the cello, I really have learned a lot.  Sometimes I still feel like an imposter when I am carrying a cello case around, but I am determined to keep learning.  In 11 years, I’ll be in a very different place in my cello playing, and I’m aiming for proficiency.

Here are some big and small things I’ve learned and reflected on in the past year because of my cello:

• Learning a brand new instrument from scratch has affected they way a I teach my students so much.  Who knew that duets could be so hard?  Your ear just doesn’t know what to listen to first!  I also had to learn to really break things down into little pieces and put them together.  And Even though I am a good note reader, I had to think about bass clef notes very differently with the cello.
• Each instrument needs to be practiced a little differently.  I always did practice piano, voice and clarinet very differently, but because I had been playing them so long, I didn’t realize how my practicing was so different for each one, and how differently I think about music while I’m practicing.  The cello is an entirely different lady, and I am still in the process of learning how to best practice.
• Everything I’ve read about string players becoming more susceptible to repetitive stress injuries is completely true.  Yikes.  I’ve had a few issues.
• Oh that elusive vibrato!  Someday.
• String players need to analyze their music and movements very differently.
• I love the smell of rosin.  Love it.  And good rosin is so worth it.
• Cello is  in some ways like learning to sing well. Sometimes you have to trick your brain and body into doing what it needs to do.  I just don’t know all the tricks yet.  Also, when I teach voice lessons, I often have to choose which aspects of my students’ singing to work on first, and that answer is not the same for every student.  The cello is a lot like this as well.  Which problem to do you focus on this week?  Just when you fix one problem, you realize there are about three more underlying problems that need to be addressed.