zbd1960

I didn't really start playing cello until I was over 50. Fortunately, I could already read music, so I had none of the issues around that. You can make decent progress with the right teacher. I'd also strongly recommend joining your local community orchestra/band/group. Playing with others like that can really help you to improve. Once you've got past the basics of coordinating fingering with left hand and basic bowing with right hand, you'll make good progress. Personally I wouldn't tune in 4ths as that would make using any fingering marked in a part useless and for me would add layers of confusion.

Optimistic... It's a pain in the butt to get to from the north end of Shropshire in the north Midlands as it's all cross-country so-called A roads... I hope to make it... but it's very close to my final project submissions for my degree AND I'm moving house... Will update on that nearer the time.

"Okay, I want good walking bass line...", tick "Improvise bridge passage in style of a Bach fugue.." tick Has to be Nina Simone

I'm sure what I'm going to say won't be a surprise to regular gigging players... I was at my nephew's weddign at the weekend and they had a live function band: singer, guitar, bass, drummer. They were using IEM. I don't know what THEY were hearing, but what WE were hearing was utterly abysmal. The drummer blasted everything else out of sight - it completely dominated the sound to the point thta hearing much else was tricky. A lot of people commented on it, not just me. My guess is they adjusted the IEM to suit what they wanted, but no one checked what it sounded like. We were all moved to a different room whilst they set up so they had a chance to do a sound check. The constant incessant very hard hitting of the drums was just unbearable.

I had my hearing tested at local opticians (yeah, I know... they seem to be the default option these days). Fortunately, the only issue was what you'd expect, loss of the top octave, but most of us lose that by the time we're 25... Whilst I've never had a formal diagnosis, I suspect I have some symptoms of 'confusional deafness' which is the ability to discriminate one sound from another - e.g. one voice when there's other noises around.

I know better than to click on that link... 😇

I haven't posted for a while... being a full-time student I had major projects to get in for the end of the semester and that included my dissertation... Music has been low key as Monday orchestra finished for Christmas at the beginning of December and Chester was the same. It all kicked off last Saturday though as the Chester one hosted a 'play day'. This is where people sign-up for a day of playing something. In this case it was three of Haydn's early symphonies: 6, 7, and 8 known as Morning, Noon, and Night. Stylistically, these are more akin to concerti grossi but in the classical style. The concerto grosso was a late baroque form where you had a group of soloists (the 'concertante' group) and the accompanying orchestra (the 'ripieno'). Handel wrote two well-known sets, and those by Corelli are well-known as well. Haydn was writing these in 1761, so he's definitely writing in the style of the early classical era and not baroque, but the format of the symphonies is more like a concerto grosso as there are designated soloists in most movements. Some of the solos are highly virtuosic. I had one of the less virtuosic ones in #8 which was in the slow movement. I was solo together with a violin and a bassoon. There were two solos for double bass in there as well, which is extremely unusual for this time. Haydn is a lot of fun. He spent two extensive periods in London in the 1790s and he seems to have been very popular. He seems to have been one of history's "nice guys". Below is a recording of #8 - the last movement (about 18 minutes in) is a depiction of a storm.

You rang? 🙂 OK, interesting thread... Yes, Haydn wrote 104 numbered symphonies - there are various other bits and pieces making the grand total anything up to about 110... but 104 is the standard list. 104 is known as the London symphony, as that was where it had its first performance and it's fun to play. I was playing Haydn 6, 7, and 8 at the weekend in a workshop - great fun and there are two bass solos in there... Okay, suggestions of 'what' to listen to.... There are good suggestions above. I always sit someone down and I do a musical history tour to cover of the various genres and try to find a style or period that someone likes. Loosely speaking, the music falls into various time boxes, bear in mind these often overlap in time by a lot...: medieval (pre 1400); renaissance c.1400 - 1600; baroque 1600 - 1750; classical 1750 - 1820; romantic 1820 - tricky... roughly 1900. You've got impressionists writing in late C19th (not romantic) and Richard Strauss writing up until 1949. Anyway, styles explode in late C19th. For 'easy listening' the baroque era is good. It splits into three roughly 50 year periods: early (1600), middle (1650), late (1700). Late is where your well-known composers are: Bach, Vivaldi, Telemann, Handel. Music of this era has a strong structure with a bass line that is controlling what is going on. Suggestions: JS Bach - Brandenburg concertos, Orchestral Suites, harpsichord and oboe concertos. Organ music try the trio sonatas And less well-known items such as the toccata and fugue in F. Vivaldi ignore the usual suspects and listen to concerto sets like La Stravaganza or La Cetera, or the Concerto di Amsterdam. Telemann wrote a lot... his Tafelmusic (table music) is good. Handel try the Concerti Grossi - there's the opus 3 and opus 6 sets of those, the 'concerti a due cori' are fun (wait until the horns come in...). English baroque composers include Avison, who was from Durham. Early baroque tends to be dominated by French and Italian composers - a lot of good recommendations in earlier posts. The Monteverdi Vespers are fun to sing. I will write a couple more posts covering different periods. If you want the 'heavy metal' department of classical music... then you're looking at things like Wagner (Entry to Valhalla from Das Rheingold), Siegfried's Funeral Music etc, Bruckner (symphonies 4 and 7 perhaps), Tchaikovsky symphonies 4, 5, and 6. Big music with tunes - Dvorak symphonies 7, 8 and 9. Really big orchestras - Mahler. Possibly symphonies 4 and 5. I'll write more later...

Some of the stories here have all the hallmarks of people having to fulfil "performance targets" or else... which is why I detest them because they distort behaviours. Instead of doing what is right or best, people do whatever it takes to tick the box. It's stupid.

Apart from Royal Mail and Parcel Force, none of the other couriers are covered by any form of regulatory oversight. I had an outrageous experience with DPD over the last few weeks - I won't bore you here about it. I have written to my MP asking that courier companies are subjected to a review by the competitions authority as I believe we have a complex monopoly in operation to the detriment of customers, business that use them, as well as the zero hours contracts in use. They should be brought under the same rules as govern RM/PF or they have an unfair advantage in the market place, especially as they are not obliged to provide a universal service.

OK 16" viola... enjoy. I did think about playing the viola, but I found the left arm position tricky. I'd strongly recommend getting some lessons from a teacher, not least to avoid long-term arm/neck/shoulder issues. Getting the set-up right is critical. I do play instruments that use alto clef (tenor and bass viol). I think you will need to read notation (stand to be corrected if I'm speaking from a position of ignorance!) as I think that you will struggle to find tab for it. I doubt there is lute tablature written for it (which there is for the viol).

For clarity for me - are you talking a standard (apart from the five strings) sized viola that you play with a bow? I'm assuming 'yes'. I'm a cellist and obviously the viola is similar in that it's tuned an octave higher. The two obvious issues are they are tuned in fifths not fourths and they're usually fretless... so 'fretted' is new to me. Five string cellos (and presumably violas) were a thing in the cross-over period from the demise of the viola da gamba and the rise of the violin family around the mid to late baroque period. What is not obvious is that instruments like violas are not symmetrical. You cannot just 'flip' the strings around. It has a bass side and a treble side. There is a bass bar on the inside of the top (on conventional acoustic instruments anyway). The finger board and the bridge are not symmetrical. The reasons for that are mostly to do with bowing. There are fingering patterns for cello but unlike the bass they are not quite as 'fixed' (because of the tuning in fifths). Viola fingering is not the same as cello fingering. On a cello for scales, apart from some open string ones, the 'standard' pattern is to use 1, extended 2, and 4. If I were to play E major two octaves starting on the C string it would be: C string: 1E 2F# 4G#, shift back whole tone G string: 1A 2B 4C#, shift back a semi-tone D string: 1D# 2E 4F#, shift forwards and stay on D string 1G# 2A 4B, shift back A string: 1C# 3D# 4E Above that E you're in 'upper positions' and fingering pattern for an octave changes to 12 shift 12 shift 123 because fingering is now nearer to violin fingering as the spacing has narrowed a lot. The awkward thing there is the 2 shifts needed on the D string.You could avoid that by opting for the open A string and putting 1 on the B, 3 on C# then small shift to 1D# 2E. Viola is not as large as a cello so you might use 'violin' fingering which is different - because they're smaller, you can have semi-tone or tone between all fingers, which you cannot do on a cello. The elephant in the room: viola uses a C clef - C3 aka alto clef. For entertainment, cellos use bass (F4), tenor (C4) and treble (G2)... Hopefully someone more familiar with the 5 string viola will be along to provide better info.

Yes you could play it on a bass. It does spend some time in the tenor clef as well as bass clef. Tenor clef isn't that difficult to read - the fourth line up from the bottom is 'middle C' rather than the F you expect on a bass clef. You can buy books of music for cello with CDs for play along from absolute beginner level upwards.

OK - it's been a weird week or two... I've lost two of my music teachers in the last few weeks. I'm rather disappointed to have lost my singing teacher. He moved a few months ago making it over 100 mile round trip. It's a particularly irritating rural A road journey, half of which you have zero chance of getting past anything slow. For various reasons, but travel logistics is a major one, I've had to call an end to them. It will not be easy to find a replacement. Given that, there's no point until I've moved house. I lost my bass tutor as he opted to teach at a Rock School set-up that was only a few miles form him, rather than the 50 to here. I entirely understand that. I persisted with the alternate week local 'jam' sessions. But, there's now no dedicated bass teacher, and a guitarist for a tutor that a) can't read notation, b) doesn't understand bass, is just a waste of my time and money. I haven't had a sax teacher (read carefully) since Covid, so I just have my cello lessons now. Started work on the Brahms E minor cello sonata this week.

I went to a grammar school -careers advice was a joke and boiled down to little more than what was your strongest A Level subject and which university that suited. I wanted to go into astronomy, was advised to do chemistry. I didn't have a clue really. Randomly ended up working for a bank. Some years later moved into programming and IT, none of it thanks to careers advice though. I'm at university now in my 60s after I retired...

It's a well-known quote... When I was a youngster at school, Casals (1876 - 1973) was held up as the "greatest living cellist". Time and styles of playing move on and much of his way of playing is now out of favour...

Yesterday I went to an ad-hoc string orchestra day on the Wirral. Usually there are three of these days a year (roughly September, January, and May). This was the first since January 2020 due to the joys of Covid. About 60 of us (8 o cello) for the day which was mostly focused on the Vaughan Williams Fantasia on a theme by Thomas Tallis. It's written for double string orchestra plus a string quartet. In reality it splits into many lines - can be 27 or more independent lines. I was in 'orchestra 2' and at times it split into three separate staves with two parts per stave i.e. 6 parts and that's just cellos in second orchestra... There were only 2 celli assigned to the second orchestra. It's a work I like and I was pleased to have the chance to play it as I hadn't done so up until yesterday.

The 'Midlands' is a rather amorphous zone. I'm at the extreme northern end of it, and I have a 30 mile drive in any direction to get to a motorway... I accept that wouldn't locate something at one of the extremities as people wouldn't turn up. I also know that there is no easy answer to the venue selection as availability dictates as much as anything. I was thinking that somewhere like Telford would be suitably inconvenient for most people, although I don't have nay specific suggestions for a venue (I will ask someone I know for ideas). For me, Nottingham is roughly 90 miles away - depends on the route, via M6 it's over 100.

Well I have one of those....

I'm at the very north end of the Midlands (a few miles short of the Cheshire boundary and 1 mile from the Welsh border)

I saw the Ludlow pin, remembered someone saying 'Bridgnorth' so assumed 3? The pins are very very slow to load in my browser, so I can't always tell if I've got a full picture or not. Anyway, another tumbleweed zone

And lo, it came to pass in the land of the Marcher Barons, that the Low End Lords were dispersed far and wide... aka - I think there's now three of us in the entire county. My nearest fellow bass chatters are in Cheshire and Staffordshire, not Shropshire where they are 40 and 50 miles away.

Nearest to me seems to be around 25 miles

Orchestra rehearsals in Chester resumed last night. Looked at suite #1 fro Bizet's Carmen and Haydn Symphony #82.

Similarly end up on the platform of my local railway station