Deryn Cullen Adult Beginners, Buying a Cello, Cello, Getting Started on the Cello

The Real Cost of Budget Cellos

Buying your first cello – whether for your child or yourself – is a tricky business. Twenty years ago the problem was the distinct lack of choice in the budget price range. Nowadays there are more budget cello brands than you can shake a stick at, each claiming to sound like an instrument worth a great deal more than its retail price. Add to this the fact that the average buyer’s concept of budget prices varies a great deal and the price of a single brand and model can vary by as much as £150 and you’ve entered a minefield. After years of assisting my beginner students with the purchase of their first instrument, I have some valuable advice to share with players, parents and teachers.

If you have a set budget for buying a cello you might be surprised (and annoyed) to find out that the cost rarely ends with the purchase of the instrument. I’m not talking about long-term costs such as string replacements, instrument maintenance and bow re-hairs either. The reason basic student instruments cost so little is generally because they cost very little to make. This means that corners are cut and production values leave much to be desired. I have never seen a brand new instrument in the lowest price range (up to £400) that didn’t need several crucial adjustments to get it into a playable state, often costing more than the instrument itself. To illustrate this point, here’s a case study of one of my students, who bought herself a cello before looking for a teacher.

She had wanted to take cello lessons for years, and had sensibly waited until her job allowed her the financial and time flexibility before buying an instrument and committing to lessons. Given how long she had waited for this opportunity and how much she wanted it, she knew it was more than a passing fancy and decided that she might as well buy a cello rather than rent one. She was pleasantly surprised when she went online to find out how little she could have her very own cello for. What was more, delivery was guaranteed the day after she paid for it, and only cost an additional £5. That was settled then: she had found a cello advertised as “perfect for beginner to advanced players” which came with a “reliable brazilwood bow” and a lightweight hard case apparently worth considerably more when sold as a separate unit – all for an amazing £175.

Her cello arrived the following day as promised, but she was a little taken aback when she opened the case for the first time: it didn’t look much like any cello she had ever seen because the instrument was shipped with the bridge flat and the retailers had failed to inform her at any time during her transaction that they were going to do this. Well, it was a very reasonable price after all, so she didn’t rush to the phone to complain about it. Instead she rummaged through the packaging to see whether any instructions had been included for getting the cello into a playable state. Sure enough, she found a single sheet explaining that the cello was shipped this way to prevent damage and assuring her that setting up the bridge was a very simple matter of aligning the feet with the nicks in the F holes and tightening the strings using the tuning pegs until there was sufficient pressure to keep it in place.

Things only went downhill from there. She stood the bridge up and began attempting to tighten the strings as directed. This was far from easy: the pegs kept slipping and the bridge wouldn’t stay put. Eventually she managed to tighten two out of the four strings enough to keep the bridge in place, but it was now far from aligned with the nicks in the F holes. When she tried tuning the third string, it snapped and one of the tightened strings unravelled as the peg jumped out again. The bridge collapsed leaving a fairly large scratch on the cello. At this point she decided that this was clearly not a job for a novice regardless of how easy the instructions insisted it was.

When she rang me up to discuss lessons she told me all about her flat-pack cello and my heart sank: I was familiar with the brand and she was not the first of my students to make this nightmarish purchase. I advised her to bring the cello to me as soon as possible so that I could have a look and see whether it could be set up or sent back to the retailer. By the time she brought it to me the soundpost had fallen and the instrument was so far from playable I suggested that she send it back and get a refund or replacement. We called the shop then and there, but were told that since she had already set it up and damaged it in the process the money-back guarantee was now void. Despite a heated conversation between me and various employees there was no persuading them to offer even a reduced refund.

So it was off to my trusty luthier to see what he could do to make this problematic piece of plywood resemble a cello. After working his magic and keeping costs as low as he could, my student had a cello she could use for taking lessons and practise on. These were the essential adjustments and repairs:

Bridge: refit feet; adjust bridge height and thickness – £25

Topnut: re-shape to correct string height, intonation and avoid premature string breakages – £15

A string: replace – £10

Soundpost: refit – £15

Saddle (ebony bottom nut): refit – £20

Tuning pegs: improve fitting – £20

Additional improvements were made, which might not have been essential but made the instrument considerably less unpleasant to play and listen to. If they hadn’t been done at this time, they would certainly have become necessary at a later date. They were as follows:

Fingerboard: shoot and re-ebonise – £50

Strings: replace D, G and C with D’Addario Prelude – £35

Fill and touch-in scratch on top – £10

So, another £200 later she had spent a total of £375 on a laminated wood (i.e. plywood) cello with a resale value of no more than 60% of the original purchase price. Given the cello’s serious limitations she would most likely be considering an upgrade within three years. She also found herself needing a better bow after only six months of lessons. The bow included in the outfit was best described as disposable: it shed its hair at a staggering rate and looked more like a weapon when tightened. Add another £150 to the bill. At least the new bow would be suitable for a lot longer than the cello. Had she known this could happen, she would have rented a cello after all, or bought a much better quality cello to begin with.

The above list of repairs and adjustments is very typical for cellos at the lowest end of the price scale. What about more expensive student instruments – do they offer better value for money? I’m afraid the answer to that question is a bit fuzzy. It depends on where you buy the instrument from (i.e. Ebay, other online outlets, musical instrument superstores or specialist musical instrument shops or workshops) and also on what level of instrument it claims to be. Prices will vary according to where you buy the instrument from as will its playability. The lowest prices are often found on Ebay, where there are literally hundreds of musical instrument retailers. The majority of these will not sell you a professionally set up cello and are likely to ship with the bridge flat. This is not necessarily a problem, so long as you find a luthier to perform a basic setup at least which will cost in the region of £50. It is also imperative that you know what you are buying before making an online purchase. The following tips should help you to make a more informed decision:

§  Do your research and ask for professional opinions from cello teachers on whichever brand you’re thinking of buying. The same applies to any other online seller or music superstore.

§  Do not let yourself be persuaded to set up a cello yourself no matter how easy the salesperson or website tells you it is. It really is a job for a professional and is most likely to lead to a damaged instrument when attempted by an amateur.

§  Smaller specialist stringed instrument retailers tend to be more expensive, but also offer the benefit of a workshop and trained in-house luthier who will set the instrument up to the buyer’s specifications. A beginner will not have any idea of how they wish their instrument to be set up, but a teacher, professional player or advanced amateur will be able to make informed recommendations.

§  If the instrument is in the lowest price bracket, check to see who else stocks it. Beware of bargain basement outlets whose emphasis is on their incredibly low prices rather than their expertise in the field of musical instruments (which is normally non-existent). These sellers simply import the very cheapest instruments China has to offer which reputable resellers won’t touch.

§  Beware of the following sales pitches when the price is below £250:

o    “Worth considerably more” (often a much higher RRP is quoted: a quick Google search will show the same make of instrument with varying price tags but nothing approaching the alleged RRP)

o    “Ideal for beginners and advanced players” (ask any advanced or professional player if they’d touch one of these cellos with a barge pole…)

o    “Beautifully finished” (unless you consider a chunk of wood for a bridge, a poorly cut topnut, a cheap plastic tailpiece with fine-tuners that don’t turn properly and a wonky fingerboard to be beautiful)

o    “Ebonised fingerboard and tuning pegs” (this means the wood used for these parts is something inferior to and much softer than ebony stained black to look like ebony)

From my experience, it is cellos in the mid price range that are the most dependable. They all require a few minor tweaks, but nothing like the catalogue of errors that come with the cheapest cellos. Then we have the “deluxe” models: always considerably more expensive than the mid range, generally more impressive to look at, but all too often no better in genuine quality than the mid range. Makers have tricks to make average instruments appear superior: the most common one being artificially created flame. In case you’re wondering, flame is the pattern found in maple, the wood used for the back and sides of stringed instruments. The better quality the maple, the more densely flames the back and sides will be. However, flame can be created with varnish, making plain wood look spectacular to the untrained eye. Other tricks include adding shiny bells and whistles to the pegs, end button and spike to make the cello look posh. These additions make no difference whatsoever to the quality or value of the instrument and often drive the price up exponentially. This is not true of all student instruments in the upper price range, so if you’re considering splashing out on a good cello be sure to have an advisor other than the salesperson on hand.

So there it is: the veritable minefield that is cello buying. These are the main points to remember: do your research, get advice from a professional, and beware of being a fool for a bargain. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is!

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© D C Cello Studio 2011

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Deryn Cullen Adult Beginners, Cello, Cello Positions, Elementary Technique, Intermediate Technique, Intonation, Left Hand Technique

Some Thoughts on Intonation

“Intonation is a question of conscience.” – Pablo Casals

So true on so many levels! A burning issue for all us bowed string players and the bane of many of our lives, intonation tends to remain a work in progress for many years. When examined up close this topic becomes less of a discussion and more of a doctoral thesis. And like so many aspects of cello technique, you’ll encounter significant differences of  opinion amongst players and teachers on how to tackle intonation problems.

I suppose this comes as no surprise – when I try to analyse precisely how I play in tune (I should point out that even after twenty-four years of playing this doesn’t always happen), I’m frankly stumped. There are obvious elements essential to good intonation such as accurate finger placement, an excellent grasp of the geography of your cello and well developed relative pitch (assuming you don’t have the rare gift of perfect pitch). But there is definitely more to it than that. Casals called it a question of conscience. Bunting suggests (quite refreshingly) that perfectionist attitudes to intonation annihilate freedom of movement in the fingers essential to so much more than just intonation. Both philosophies point to something other than a technical or mechanical  process. There is a strong  psychological aspect which I believe is all too often forgotten or discarded.

We all have specific feelings about intonation. For many of us those feelings may include fear, frustration and often denial – leading to a high tolerance for inaccurate tuning. Perhaps the ideal relationship with intonation is to view it as part of the artistic palette. Emphasising certain intervals (such as marginally sharper major thirds and sevenths in major keys, or flatter thirds in minor keys) can colour and define keys quite beautifully. To reach this ideal I believe one has to allow for a margin of error, which gradually diminishes as the physical memory becomes more accurate and the ear more exacting. This allowance should not be confused with the previously mentioned tolerance for poor intonation, which I have seen developed to an alarming degree in some cellists despite most of them having a “good ear”.  For a long time I was one of those intonation “deniers”, often thinking my performances had gone rather well only to listen back to those which had been recorded and cringe in horror at the glaring intonation errors.

Based on my own playing experience and that of my students, I believe there are three main negative emotions associated with poor intonation: fear, uncertainty and low self confidence. The first two are relatively easy to combat (although they take time to get rid of); the latter is trickier and varies a great deal from one individual to the next.

So, fear and uncertainty first! High register playing and large interval jumps are prime candidates for inspiring apprehension, which lead to physical tension, and we all know what impact that has on intonation. Take your pick of the major cello concertos for passages in the instrument’s upper range. How often do we hear (or give) performances of these works that are let down by those upper register passages when the sound is thin and some or all of the notes are off-pitch? Even after hours of repeating those passages ad nauseam in the practice room, they often let us down in performance. All too often the practice we do to eliminate the fear factor only perpetuates it. The root of the problem is not in the passage, but in the irrational fear of that portion of the fingerboard. So it stands to reason that getting familiar with that highest octave-and-a-half through slow, relaxed work on scales, arpeggios and studies is a much better use of our practice time than repeatedly trying to play a phrase or passage in an area of our instrument that frightens us because we don’t know it well enough. No matter how hard we try to make it sound beautiful, our attempts are undermined by inaccurate finger placement and incorrect bow placement. With enough repetition of the same high register passage, we might eventually become more familiar with that area of the cello. Equally we are in danger of constantly reinforcing incorrect finger placement and excess tension because our focus is more on trying to play the passage the way we think it should sound and not nearly enough on the mechanics behind the music.

There is certainly no shortage of technical material for the cello that covers the entire range of the instrument or concentrates on perfecting the upper register – Feuillard’s Daily Exercises for Cello, Yampolsky’s Violoncello Technique and the Galamian Scale System for Cello to name a few. Until we can comfortably play such technical material covering every inch of the fingerboard, it is unreasonable to expect ourselves to be able to play repertoire with these technical demands. However you choose to approach familiarising yourself with the full range of your cello, familiarise yourself you must and you really are better off using a method designed specifically for this purpose. When Elgar was composing his sublimely beautiful cello concerto I seriously doubt he ever stopped and thought: “Ah, this will do wonders for the bow technique!” He composed the work with those whose technique was already fit for purpose in mind. But I’m digressing somewhat. The point I’m trying to make is that through consistent, concentrated practising of scales and arpeggios of every shape and size we give ourselves a much better chance of making that magical and essential connection between internal pitch and physical memory – the marriage between the sensitive fingertips and attentive ears.

Low self confidence, as I’ve already pointed out, is a more elusive problem which can have its roots in such a vast range of places that it is not really possible to tackle with a single suggestion. I do believe however, that investing enough of one’s time in the aforementioned study of the fingerboard will at least serve to relieve some of the symptoms of the problem. I also know from my own experience and from watching my students develop, that intonation is often bad because we expect it to be. That expectation is built up over years: the majority of us start out with poor intonation, not because we can’t hear it but because we don’t know where or how to place out fingers. For some cellists the development of a dependable left hand technique happens in a nice upward trend and their fear of intonation disappears as their command of the instrument improves. But for many more – perhaps most – it is more of a jagged affair with frustrating flat lines and almost as many downward as upward spikes. Surely this trains us to feel negative about aspects of our playing and gives us reason to believe that we are more likely to be wrong than right in the placement of a finger or a shift to a new position.

Again, I refer you back to the good old-fashioned daily dose of scales and arpeggios. Add a metronome to that, and remember: it is impossible to practise too slowly whereas practising too fast is not only possible, it’s disastrous.

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Deryn Cullen Adult Beginners, Advanced Technique, Cello, Cello Literature, Getting Started on the Cello, Practising, Teaching the Cello, Tips and Resources for Teaching

The Race to Grade 8: a Cautionary Tale for Teachers and Students

I was browsing a forum for classical music students the other day. My eye was caught by a thread entitled something like this: “What is the shortest time you can take to get to grade 8?” At first I was annoyed at the silliness of such a question. I was about to write an admonishing response, telling him how ridiculous he was to be so obsessed with racing toward a relatively meaningless qualification when he should be focusing on how to become the best he could at expressing himself on his instrument. But then I thought about myself at that age – around fifteen.

In my mid-teens I was fiercely ambitious and deeply dissatisfied at not yet having passed my grade 8 cello exam with distinction. I had only been playing the cello for around five years, but had already managed to perform Bruch’s Kol Nidrei (rather messily) at the local Youth Concerto Festival, and was regularly taking repertoire far beyond my ability to my lessons and nagging my teacher to let me play it: the Saint-Saëns Concerto No. 1; the Lalo Concerto; both Haydn Concertos and more. I wore him down and he let me take on the Saint-Saëns. I can honestly say I put a brand new spin on it, and not in a good way! I used eye-wateringly bad fingering patterns throughout – especially in the double-stop passage. My tempi were all over the place and bore no resemblance whatsoever to the score directions; dictated instead by my technical inadequacies, which were numerous and getting worse rather than better with my hours of hacking away at music beyond my reach rather than working on my weaknesses.

I eventually abandoned the Saint-Saëns Concerto: by the time I got to the third movement even I had to admit defeat. I never touched that concerto again except in a few sessions in my practice room many years later, when I would set down a pile of my favourite pieces next to my chair and systematically read through bits and pieces of them. But I certainly didn’t stop taking on repertoire that required much better chops than I had in those days. I wasn’t alone either. There were several cellists in my age group at the music school I attended, and the competition between us was stiff to say the least. We all played in the regional and national youth orchestras together, and the annual seating auditions were a tense, unpleasant affair. This was typical behaviour for young people of our age, and perhaps it was a valuable introduction to the fiercely competitive and political nature of the world we were planning to enter. Part of the problem was that our teachers were no better, and in hindsight seemed a little too focused on who had the most advanced students; whose students had played the most challenging repertoire and whose students had the most achievements behind them. Amongst those achievements of course, should be the coveted certificate proclaiming Grade 8 Passed with Distinction. This meant that we were never discouraged from our competitive behaviour – far from it in fact.

I played my Grade 8 exam at seventeen and by some unfathomable miracle, managed to scrape a distinction for it. I played the Allemande from Bach’s Third Suite in C; the second movement from the Lalo Cello Concerto and an arranged piece by Hindemith called Meditation. Each of those pieces was a struggle to perform with the accurate performance of certain sections always a matter of hoping for the best but expecting the worst. I remember coming out of the exam room in a state, having barely managed to avoid crying during the exam itself. I was convinced that I would achieve a low pass at best, and during the agonising wait for my results began to have rather sensible thoughts about slowing down and paying more attention to my desperately unreliable technique. Then the certificate arrived in the post and lo and behold: it was a distinction! All thoughts about sensible and necessary technical practice went straight out of the window and once again as my ego expanded beyond its previous inflated size I began to think of myself as a performer of great and terrifying repertoire.

When I arrived at music college around six months later I felt ready to conquer the classical music world. I was going to enter and win all of the major music competitions, play in all of the concerto festivals and make my way abroad on some fabulous music scholarship. I hadn’t bargained for the fact that my teacher – one of the most sought after in the country – had attracted a frightening number of cellists from all over the country, many of whom had been given a far more disciplined grounding than I. I was now a very insignificant fish in a much bigger sea. Furthermore, she did not suffer fools gladly and was certainly not going to indulge over-inflated egos in need of a reality check.

I recall my first lesson with her as if it was yesterday. I needed to prepare a piece to play for her, and I decided to play it safe with something I had learned three years previously and played many times since: Vocalise by Rachmaninov. I gave my customary emotionally over-the-top performance with much face-pulling and moving about. Instead of the flattery I had come to expect at the end of it, she gave me the brutally honest and detailed feedback I was to become accustomed to from her. Although I failed to see it at the time, it was in fact very encouraging, and essentially told me that I had raw talent and musicality in abundance, but that my technique was really in need of an overhaul. I was a little put out – if she thought my technique seemed insufficient on a piece like the Vocalise, what would she have said about my rendition of the Lalo Concerto? I was going to become more than a little put out as a battle of wills ensued. Of course many of you already know this part of the story as I touched on it in my previous post about efficient practising. At the risk of boring you with tails of my youthful foolishness, I shall continue this story as it relates directly to the point I wish to make in this post.

It went like this: I – still flush with the success of my distinction and a few other orchestral and performance achievements that year – was in no mood to be told that I needed to go back to basics in order to develop better and more reliable habits. My teacher, by no means confronted with the first upstart of her career, put her foot down firmly and used my attempts at proving her wrong to prove me wrong instead. I would bring something like Beethoven No.3, Op.69 to the lesson, and crash spectacularly within the first twenty-four bars. I would then mutter about how much better it was working in my practice room and have another few unsuccessful goes at it. Then she would calmly and patiently explain why things weren’t working. She would turn the focus of the lesson to working on whichever aspects of technique had shown up as weak. Then she would provide me with relevant studies or exercises which would inevitably end up at the bottom of a neglected pile of books in my practice room. It was about six months into my first year at music college when she handed me a study I had played sometime in my early teens. It was a very sensible approach to working on my spiccato bowing without having to focus too much on tricky notes, keys or upper register playing. Unfortunately I didn’t see it that way at the time, instead taking it as a personal insult. Surely such elementary studies were far beneath me?! I didn’t do much to conceal my indignation, and my teacher quite understandably began to lose patience with me. How she had managed to be quite so patient up until that point is anybody’s guess.

At the same time I was starting to experience prolonged bouts of muscle soreness, tennis elbow and tendinitis. I was also beginning to realise that I really wasn’t all that. I was on the back desk of the college orchestra cello section, I was not getting invited to play in chamber groups and I knew that I was surrounded by musicians – not just my fellow cellists – who were a great deal more accomplished than I was. A slow and painful process eventually lead to me overcoming my RSI issues and changing my mindset so that I began to listen to and apply what my wise teacher told me. More than a decade later I am still enjoying the benefits of her wisdom, and I hope that my students are too.

The moral of this story is, quite simply, don’t be hasty. Aiming to pass Grade 8 is a fine goal and a satisfying one to work towards. But it isn’t the be-all and end-all of musical achievements. It doesn’t imply that you have reached cellistic genius. It is no guarantee that you have truly mastered the technique required to play the pieces you chose. If you’re a teacher, exciting as it is to see your students reach Grade 8 level, you will do them far more good in the long-term if their focus is more on becoming a musician than passing exams. All it really means is that you’re no longer a beginner.

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© D C Cello Studio 2011

Deryn Cullen Adult Beginners, Advanced Technique, Bow Technique, Cello, Elementary Technique, Intermediate Technique, Left Hand Technique, Practising

Tips for Cooling Down After Practice

In the same way that a vigorous exercise session needs to be followed with cooling down and stretching, the same goes for a practice session – especially a demanding one. Cooling down and stretching are just as important as warming up for injury prevention. Where the function of warming up is to prepare the body and mind for a strenuous practice session, Cooling down should gradually step down practice activity, returning your body to a pre-practice state. A gentle stretching routine after cooling down will also help your muscles to recover after intense activity, but over-stretching can have the opposite effect.

There are many different ways to slowly reduce your level of activity as you wind down your practice session. I have always found the following suggestions to be very satisfactory:

  • A selection of scales which decreases in tempo, bowing complexity and range
  • Three short studies that you are familiar with of moderate to light difficulty – each played under tempo with a metronome, starting with the most difficult and finishing with the easiest
  • Three short pieces as above
  • A selection from the piece or study you worked on during your session played 3 – 4 times at a slower tempo each time

At the end of your cool down session, which should take around ten minutes, stand up and stretch your arms above your head as you would just after waking up. Stretching is a fairly instinctive activity: you’ll know which muscles feel most in need of it. Generally the wrists, forearms, shoulders and neck benefit from gentle stretching movements. But as already mentioned, gentle is the keyword here. If you notice tension building in any of your muscles during your practice session, standing up to stretch and breathe deeply and slowly for a few minutes is a very good idea. While it is perfectly normal to experience tension or even aches and pains while working on demanding repertoire or new techniques, it should not be perceived as part of the technique but rather as a message from your body asking you to find a more efficient way of performing the task. Beware of entering into a “no-pain-no-gain” approach. You’ve heard me say it before and you’ll no doubt hear me say it again!

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© D C Cello Studio 2011