A Violinist Learning the Cello

June 29, 2022, 9:17 PM · I'm learning the cello! A friend of mine (whom I played my own compositions with back in high school) let me borrow their cello, which hasn't been used in a few years. I took it into the shop to get it checked on, and had some fun last night playing on it. I definitely need to spend a little time getting to know how my body is positioned and how the angles for the bow on the strings are vastly different to what I'm used to on violin, but otherwise, I can figure out intonation okay (and I know the finger patterns from guitar), and mechanically, I have general strings knowledge anyway to help.

The reason I'm picking up the cello is to help one of my students learn it, but I am really looking forward to trying a new instrument myself along the way. Even if I don't end up playing the cello very seriously or for very long, I still think it would be a lot of fun to use in covers and recordings in the future - of course, very simple things to start, but I was able to scrape together the first few bars of the Bach Cello Suite in G Major, and the big introductions to the first and fourth movements of Dvorak 8, in yesterday's practice...

Anyway, this is super exciting as it's the first instrument I'm teaching myself from scratch, and it will be made even more interesting to work with a student on it in the process. I haven't picked up a new instrument in years, and it's getting me intrigued in continuing to try more instruments as more opportunities might come my way, at least for music production. I'll try and share more of this journey alongside everything else I'm doing on the violin (which is a lot! I'll explain in another post!) in the future.

If anything, maybe I'll gain a new appreciation for the tenor clef after all this...

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A Violinist Learning the Cello

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