unfair
I got a letter from your pinky the other day. I’m used to whole cellists writing to me asking for technical advice, but this was…a little awkward. What a conflict of interest! But I have decided to address the issues brought up in the letter, which I have included below. Click on it to enlarge. […]
Tax Man
I went to the tax guy last week. After reviewing my finances, he advised me to “go to school and learn some real skills” to ameliorate the situation. My first instinct was to go home, open up my in-progress Glossary of Commonly Used Terms here on SRCB and make a new entry under “A” (if […]
Avoidance mode
You have étude books. And in those books are certain pages that make your guts churn and your eyes sizzle. I know because I, too have Popper’s High School of Cello Studies. But you don’t need to bust out Popper or Bukinik or Duport to play coy. Schroder, Lee, and Dotzauer have lots of opportunities […]
a reminder
I’m in my Atlanta hotel room, watching tv. This show comes on about kids playing music, and this guy still has me smiling. There were some other kids too, including an amazing brass band made of siblings. Sometimes I hear adult players grumble about having it hard, watching kids depresses them, blah blah. What you […]
chop wood, carry water
Anyone who knows me knows that I love sports. In fact, with the exception of golf, I have a hard time walking past any television with some sort of sport on it without sitting down and talking trash. It follows that I listen to a lot of sports talk radio, and perhaps because the news […]
getting ready for a master class or one-off
I don’t know that I ever really got the most out of the master classes I participated in. I might have gotten marginally more out of the one or two-off lessons I had with visiting artists, but as I frequently point out: I was a less than ideal student. I just didn’t know how to […]
The impossible dream
Though we sometimes hesitate to admit it, even professional cellists and teachers have bits of technique that we develop “work arounds” for. It seems like forever ago that I developed one such habit to adjust for my weak left pinky (weakened from a nerve condition caused by tension and bockety technique) when it came to […]
take one!
What a learning curve this week has been with Final Cut Express. I’m posting this as an exercise in humility as much as a beneficial lesson for students. Clearly, I got the compression wrong…I recorded this in HD (without a good mic) and then when I muscled it down to its current size, something went […]
the secret Zen of clamshell packaging
So we are in yet another Hell house. I am now on a first-name basis with the people at all of the local plumbing, hardware, and lumber stores, which also means that I have had to do the self-checkout tango, the 3 trips to Anawalt in one day foxtrot, and most dreaded, the clamshell packaging […]
upon your return
The early stages of coming back from an injury or a long break can be like starting over, except that you have these remnants of knowledge, muscle memory, and expectation to tempt you right back into pain and frustration again by retracing old steps and bad habits. When you first pick up the cello again, […]
