Play the Cello
The Cello (also known as the violoncello) is a bowed stringed instrument, which has a long learning curve to play well. Since you have to listen, notice how your body (arms,fingers, spine etc.) feels AND think about your immediate goal every time you play even just a few notes, the ability to focus is crucial. If you really want to learn how to play the cello, search for a good teacher, go to concerts, watch YouTube videos and check out the websites cellobello and cello.org.
Steps
- Think about why you want to play the cello. Do you want to be like your friends? Are your parents forcing you to learn? These are not good reasons. You must have a strong desire to be a good cellist, or you will waste a lot of time, money and effort.
- Have a goal. Be it a certain piece you want to play, a concert you want to play in, a competition you want to enter, or an orchestra or school you want to get into, having a goal will help you through practicing and give you motivation.
- Get a teacher. Ask your musician friends' parents how they found their teacher, or look in the yellow pages. Go see at least 3 teachers to get a feel of how they work, and then choose the one that best suits your schedule and your way of learning. Bring a parent to your lessons for the first year so you can have an outside perspective of your posture, sound and position while you are practicing at home.
- Learn basic notes, techniques, and rhythm Start very slowly, because the beginning is the most important part of your learning. If you learn wrong, it will take years to fix bad habits. Some bad habits can even be physically injurious. Please, start slowly.
- Practice regularly (every day), and take breaks if you get uncomfortable. During the first week, you may want to only practice for 15 minutes at a time: your fingers won't be used to the string and will hurt a little at first. Remember that it is always better to spread out your practicing rather than practicing a lot two or three days a week.
- Go to lessons and have 30 minutes a week to start, then go to 45 minutes, an hour, etc. You can also add a second lesson per week. Depending on the teacher, lessons can range from $25 to $100 or higher.
- Take advantage of all performance opportunities at school and in your community.
- Always practice scales and arpeggios. People tend to concentrate on what they are playing instead of how they are playing it, and scales are a good way to really think about it. Scales are also a sort of stretch before you play a song. Practice Technical Work and take theory classes. Do exams. Exams help you evolve and give you a goal to reach every few months.
- Alternatively, you can practice etudes as well. These are short pieces (look for Krane books or Schroeder and, in more advanced stages look for Popper and Duport) that test you on not only scalar technique and knowledge but bow stroke, vibrato, rhythm, tone, and many other aspects of the cello. In combination with regular piece music and scales, you can help improve yourself and mix up your practice schedule as well.
- Join a community orchestra. Orchestras are great for learning theory if you do not want to take classes, and teach rhythm, intonation, and how to play with other musicians. If you work hard, an orchestra will be very rewarding because you will move up and one day become the Principal.
- Learn the notes and get their intonation perfect 100% of the time, then learn Do Vibrato on a Cello effectively. Vibrato livens up the music beautifully and warms the tone.
Tips
- Get a good teacher, someone who will inspire you to do your best (it's extremely important to have confidence). A teacher that is nice but doesn't correct your intonation or ask you to do things that you don't want to do may not help you reach your goals.
- Your hand should make a C shape on the fingerboard when you're playing.
- When you get bored, start transposing pieces into different key signatures. Make pieces more challenging.
- Make sure to sit up straight, on the edge of the chair, with your feet planted firmly on the ground.
- Do not get frustrated. For a year or two, you will squeak a lot, you will play easy pieces and you may feel like you are not progressing at all, but know that you are making progress. At one point, you will start soaring through your pieces and move on to very challenging and rewarding ones.
- Many beginning students want to learn the Bach suites. If you're just starting, know that the first suite is probably about five years down the road (maybe three years if you're very talented and you work hard). They get progressively more challenging. The sixth suite is among the most difficult pieces ever written for cello; there are many professionals who can't really play it. Although you may be able to learn the notes, it is one thing to read them and completely another to play them musically.
- When tuning, make sure you don't stress the string! If you do, it might break, fly up and hurt you! To prevent this, tune it with the fine tuners, or have the instrument face away from you.
- Memorize your music when you learn it. Also do lots of slow metronome work to learn music more quickly. Be sure you start out very slow, and work your way up. If you have sixteenth notes in a passage, then start out at 50~60 to the beat. Take it slower if you must. Break it up into sections.
- Have fun! Try to find another cello student at the same level as you to play duets with or join an orchestra.
- Know that it may take a long time to learn how to make an acceptable sound on a cello, even for experienced musicians. (If you know how to play a double bass, then you can probably pick up cello bowing pretty quickly; violinists and violists may take longer, and everyone else may take a very long time.) It may be many months before you will sound okay and a few years before you will sound good. Sorry, but that's how the cello is. That being said...
- Set aside one practice per week that is just fun - just play whatever you like the best.
- Get involved in an orchestra or small group. It will teach you how to play along with others and you will progress faster, along with learning extra music.
- Record yourself regularly and save some of the recordings for future reference. Every few weeks, have a listen to some of your earlier recordings; you'll hear your progress very clearly. Recording or taping yourself can also be a very powerful practice tool as you will notice flaws and progress in areas which you didn't notice before.
- Create a weekly practice chart so you can checkmark your progress. This really helps to keep you focused and on task.
- Get creative with your music.
- You will need to learn to read three clefs to play the cello: bass, tenor, and treble. Bass clef is used most commonly, but after a couple of years, you will begin to encounter music with tenor clef, and then treble will begin making appearances. Most orchestral music will require you to know all three of them fluently.
- Learn other instruments too, especially the piano. Although you probably don't want to put as much time into secondary instruments, it is helpful to at least learn the basics.
- Try practicing one measure at a time. Practice slowly and you will improve!
- Always keep your fingers rounded when you play; it makes a much better sound.
- Make sure you buy the right size cello for you! When you go to buy one, always try sitting with it first; it should fit comfortably, the pegs should be up to the ears and the spike should be at least 1/4 of the way out.
- If you want new things to play, look up notes generators, practice those, then refresh it and play new ones.
Warnings
- Although doing vibrato does make your playing sound better, learning it incorrectly can lead to harder readjustment to the right technique.
- Always rent your cello before buying it. Ask your teacher to come with you to choose it, because it is a big investment. As with other string instruments, cello and bow prices are complicated. Remember that new instruments are not necessarily better than used instruments.
- For safety reasons, never face the cello when tuning in case a string breaks - always tune the cello by standing or sitting behind the instrument.
Things You'll Need
- A cello
- A bow
- A teacher
- A metronome
- A tuner
- A music stand
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