play the cello more

The trouble right now is that there are too many people living in the house with me and I am not 100% comfortable playing so they can hear. Tonight, enough of them were gone that I pulled out the old thing and sawed away ‘til my bowing arm was sore… which actually wasn’t very long. Wow, I’ve lost my “cello muscles!” How strange is that!

I worked on Irish Wash Woman, fiddling around with a few variations, a couple different octaves…

I am prepared to change my take on this goal to be: perform at an open mike night. I’ve been monkeying around a bit off and on, finding my way again on the strings. While trying to find my “voice” on the cello, I stumbled across a lovely podcast of roots music called the Woodsongs Radio Hour. Their house band has a cello-player.

And to solidify everything, my mom bought me a nifty ELECTRIC cello off eBay for my birthday. It’s the most improbably non-cello-shaped device you can imagine. But it’s SOOO cool. So my goal now is that sometime before my birthday in June of ‘07, I want to perform live in front of strangers. If I can do this, maybe I’ll get a tattoo to mark the event.

The next intermediate step is to pick out a piece. I’ve written a musical setting to John Donne’s “Batter my Heart” sonnet that I kind of like but if I wanted to hide behind a cover song, I’m fond of Stephan Foster’s “Hard Times,” Leadbelly’s “Midnight Special” or Rev. Gary Davis’ “Sampson & Delilah.” Still thinking, still thinking…

For 3 days this week I took the cello out of the case and sawed away at it for a half hour or so. I’m trying to learn the “Irish Wash Woman” which was my Grandmother’s favorite Irish reel.

I’ve got it down pretty much in two different octaves and I’m playing around with doing the whole thing using double stops (bowing two strings simultaneously.) I want to know how to play that in various different keys as well, but I’m getting ahead of myself, I suppose.

What I’d really like to do would be to play my cello at a folk-y open mike night. Maybe that’ll be when i mark this goal really accomplished.

My cello has been my companion for well over two decades. Once she was a source of great joy and personal pleasure. (I never got good enough to play for others unless well lubricated by beer.) Her tone was usually soothing but she could challenge me when I needed a challenge. We’ve been apart so long now that I don’t think I remember any whole pieces. I’d like to re-acquaint myself with her, possibly in an entirely different idiom like celtic jigs and reels or even Delta-style Blues.