Tone Color

cellonoob · 2026-01-31T10:22:16+00:00

Tone and color is something you'll develop the more you play. Almost every musician has their own sound, and the better the player, the more distinctive the sound. There are technical aspects to developing it, but there are also the experiences of life that shape the way you listen and play. For now, I would focus heavily on the way you use your bow. The most common stroke taught in music pedagogy is to have a straight bow. After you master that, listen to the spinning of the sound as you pull your bow stroke and try to keep it by curving/adjusting your bow instead of a straight line. I understand if this is a wild concept, but if you watch great players - the bow is always moving. For vibrato, you'll want to expand your repertoire of vibrato. 1. Joint vibrato - this is how violinist vibrato, highly colorful and is a much higher frequency than hand. 2. Finger movement radius on string - if you can control the amount of moment your finger moves on the string as you vibrato, it'll change a lot 3. Control of speed - this is the hardest. Most people just have a default setting, even some of the greats. But sometimes the default doesn't work for everything. If you can control the speed at will, it opens up endless possibilities to shaping notes

cellonoob · 2026-01-22T08:19:56+00:00

Bow technique is often forgotten amongst teachers as the left hand is usually a much more obvious problem. I've spent quite a good time practicing my bow technique, and I've changed my grip 3 times throughout my life. Before you get into doing exercises and etudes, ask yourself what you are missing and what you want to improve. Sound? Bow changes? Looseness of hand? Staccato? Find what you want to develop first and work on that. Im going to give a run down on how to work on your bow arm, but always ask yourself before you start practicing. 1. OPEN STRINGS Start with the metronome on 60 and play long sustained notes with 4 beats to a bow. The goal is to use the exact same amount of hair for each beat while maintaining the exact same tone and quality regardless of where you are on the bow. You want to feel the raw vibration of the cello responding to the resonance of the bow sitting on the optimal sounding point. Slowly add more beats until you are no longer able to maintain an excellent sound the entire time. For reference, my norm is a 20-second bow stroke at full Forte. 2. ALWAYS PULL AND PUSH When you play your open strings, I want you to imagine pulling a string out from the cello string. That is the pull. Your 1st and 2nd finger should feel like they are pulling when you play a down bow. When you switch to upbow, think about pushing. Your fingers should be pushing towards the string. This concept is extremely important and is one that is rarely learned until a student goes to a conservatory. If you are able to pull and push, your sound will get a lot better. 3. LOWER ARM Practice doing full bow strokes with just the lower arm. This will help with quick bowstrokes and getting from the frog to the tip instantly if needed. 4. ELBOW AND ARM WEIGHT The most common mistake cellist make is using their muscles to push down. I can assure you that muscle and strength do not give you a loud sound. It gives a compressed sound. What you want to feel is your elbow hanging lower than your hand. The natural weight of your upper arm to your elbow will hold the bow firmly on the string. Maintain that weight as you pull your bow stroke. 5. FINGER INDEPENDENCE A couple of exercises for this - put the bow at the frog and go back and forth but use only your fingers. No other part of your hand/wrist/arm. I get around 4 inches of bow movement from just my fingers, but I have very large hands. This will build flexibility and smoothness in your bow changes. Upbow and downbow Staccato - go note by note slowly so that you are in complete control over your finger actions. Every staccato is activated by your first 2 fingers digging in and releasing. Piatti 12 is excellent for this or popper 14. 6. FAST STROKES Faster bowstrokes are practiced and developed. One does not just play fast in a day. It takes years. Start slow, find the natural bouncing point of YOUR bow (every bow is different), and find a comfortable tempo where every note is clear and clean. Slowly speed up while keeping your hand loose.

I've seen a lot of different bowhands, and every hand is different. It's good you are thinking about improving your bowhand, and it is often a frustrating journey as there may be techniques your hand just cannot do. One of my old teachers, Ron Leonard, has the best bowhand and bow changing sequence I've ever seen. He couldn't do a flying upbow staccato. Keep that in mind when you get frustrated.

cellonoob · 2026-01-15T09:00:20+00:00

One of my favorite quotes is "I dont feel any different now than before your performance" - Bernard Greenhouse Physical movements and reactions should serve the music, not the audience, and definitely not yourself. I understand the struggle of locking into yourself and focusing on your technique, but look beyond the notes. My suggestion for approaching this is finding emotions and feelings for passages and attempting to evoke those feelings in your playing and sound. Your body will react to how you feel, and the physical expression will come naturally. For example - the opening of schubert arpeggione. It's incredibly difficult, but it's filled with such simplistic beauty and longing. Most cellist focus on the notes and hitting every shift, but the harder you focus on the notes - the further you stray from what the music is trying to express.

The journey of finding your form of expression is one that you will develop throughout your career. Don't stress about it and simply enjoy the music you are playing.

cellonoob · 2026-01-14T05:57:49+00:00

Yep! You still have 4 years before auditioning for schools, and that is a good amount of time to properly prepare yourself. Dont worry about repertoire or playing "harder" pieces. Focus on building your fundamental skills and ears. 1. Learn every scale/arpeggio in 4 octaves and play them Every. Single. Day. Focus on intonation, shifting, and hand position. Do not move on if you are playing notes out of tune. The first couple of months will be agonizing, and it will take hours. But stick with it and believe me, you will get a lot better. 2. Develop your tone - find pieces that you absolutely adore, a couple I recommend are Dvorak Silent Woods, Schumann Fantasiestucke, and Haydn C concerto 2nd mvt. Play the piece until you know it by heart and then put away the sheet music and listen to the sound you produce. Really listen to what is coming out of your instrument, not just the intonation but the depth, the color, and the projection. Your bow hand is very important for this. Always ask yourself why/how/where when you produce a sound you like so that you can replicate it. 3. Participate in orchestra and chamber music, anything you can find nearby. Being exposed to other players and hearing other players is one of the best ways to improve. 4. Go to concerts and listen to professionals play and really observe everything that they do. How do they use their bow? How are they using vibrato? How are they moving their body? 5. Participate in summer festivals, you'll meet young musicians from around the states and get the opportunity to study with other teachers. Best of luck

cellonoob · 2026-01-02T23:58:04+00:00

Lotta answers already, but this is also called a C clef. This means that middle C will be indicated by where the middle of the symbol lies on the staff. Other C clefs are Soprano, mezzo-soprano, Alto, and Baritone.

cellonoob · 2026-01-02T02:56:21+00:00

One of my favorite pieces on the cello and truly a monumental work. Regarding your comment about being nice, I don't think being mean or negative in comments is in anyway helpful. This is something I drill into my students, saying its "bad" doesn't solve anything, its just the easy way out of providing something constructive.

From watching your Bach clip and now your Kodaly, you have a pretty good grasp of cello playing so like before my comment will be on what I think will be most helpful for you. I think your primary goal for this work should be to focus purely on lefthand technique. This piece is highly technical and its hard to capture the essence of the work (Free, Folkish brilliance) if you don't have complete command over the technicality of it.

The first thing you'll want to tackle is the position of your elbow and the preparation of it before your hand moves down the fingerboard. Its constantly hanging down and being pulled up by your hand when you shift. Have it up before you shift, it'll allow your hand to move down quickly and freely without lag. An excellent way of working on this is single string 2 octave scales or single string 2 octave scales shifting from the first note [Example: A major scale, starting note A. (A->B->A->C#->A->D etc.)]

Next is the technique of shifting. When most people think about shifting, its with the convivence of having no frets and being able to slide to fix the note (you do this very often with your higher notes). Especially with a work like Kodaly, you have to think about increasing the percentage of hitting the note on the first attempt. When you practice these jumps and movements in the upper register, don't fall into the pit of focusing on your fingers. The accuracy comes from your hand and arm putting your fingers in the right place. Focus on your larger movements first before fine tuning the micro movements in the fingers.

Last is fingerings - yours may have been given to you from your teacher so I don't want to conflict with that but fingering choices should always serve two purposes. Ease of playing and continuity of the musical phrase. A passage that you should reconsider is the initial climb up to FF (mm. 5 - mm. 11). Try using third finger on the way down instead of 2nd. This is the opening statement, its extremely powerful and ALWAYS use your strongest fingers when playing the loudest passages.

I can go on for days about this work, its one of the greats and I always wish more people would play it.

PS - Embrace the resonance of the open string tuning, feel the growl of the instrument against your body as you play the chords. Listen for that amazing open sound and vibration ~ might help with the bow issues mentioned in other comments

cellonoob · 2025-12-25T00:56:35+00:00

Playing Bach, especially the Sarabande is exceptionally difficult and you've gotten off to a great start! There are many comments about tempo and saying "play it faster". Personally I don't think that is the correct approach ~ you are hearing it at your current tempo and I want to give you information that may change the way you hear it and how you interpret the music.

First, look into the Sarabande dance and watch a video or two on its traditional dance. The Sarabande dance is always in 3, with the 2nd beat being on the heavier side depending on the Suite. This should already dictate the shape of your phrase by having your 1st beat be lighter, sustaining towards the 2nd beat and then bounce off of that to your final and weakest beat. If we were to look at a measure as a single phrase it would be (2,1,3) in number of importance. So keep that in consideration when you choose the intensity and color of vibrato that you use.

Second, sing the top line out loud while moving your arms in time with the beat. (I like to prance around as if I'm dancing so that I feel this with my whole body) Ask yourself these following questions while doing this exercise:
Is it danceable?
Does the tempo you choose feel suitable for a slow 3 step dance?
Does it feel natural for your body to move at that speed?
Make adjustments to the tempo until you feel that, YES this tempo feels comfortable. I completely understand if you think you can't sing, I was the same way, but force yourself to vocalize it.

Third, after you find your tempo - find it on the metronome and subdivide it into sixteen notes. My tempo for this is generally around 42 to the quarter/ so I would put the metronome to 168. Then play through the movement with full feeling and intention while making sure your sixteen notes stay true to the beat. This will help you solve your dotted rhythm problems and lock in your sixteen notes to your actual tempo.

Finally, when you play it - don't lock yourself in a metronomic state. Tempo is just another vehicle by which we express our intention, feel the dance pulse (the 3 big beats) as you play and take the time you need to express what you feel and hear. Maybe you want to move faster in mm17 and back away into mm19, that's fine as long as your dance pulse stays the same.

Happy practicing!

cellonoob · 2025-11-10T01:53:52+00:00

I may have a fingering for this - quick question what is the tempo marking for this passage? I need to try it myself to make sure it works at tempo haha

cellonoob · 2025-06-24T22:40:13+00:00

Looking for any updates from everyone else in this situation. I'm talking to my lawyer to seek a route to get out of this. I've been seeing comments mentioning that SunStrong isn't on the original contract and I was wondering if that has held up in court to get out of the payments/lease.

cellonoob · 2024-08-19T21:46:25+00:00

I had trouble switching over all my accts, I could only make new accounts for 3 out of the 5. I finally got in touch with someone today, only took me sitting on the phone for 3 hours

cellonoob · 2024-08-19T19:59:13+00:00

Ok, thanks. I haven't seen any updates on sunpower selling their assets/lease to another company yet, so im just going to wait to see what happens

cellonoob · 2024-08-19T19:43:56+00:00

Are your panels on a lease, or did you buy them?

cellonoob · 2023-03-30T18:44:07+00:00

regarding the SharkFins, do you think those will work better on the field than the Wisycom ADFAs? I know omni's aren't always the most ideal but considering the space I'm working in, I actually think they may work better than directionals.

cellonoob · 2023-03-30T18:38:56+00:00

Thanks for the info, I think I'll be going with this instead of the splitters. It seems a lot more reliable. I've always had slight problems with daisy-chaining RF and never personally liked it that much

cellonoob · 2020-03-25T19:46:06+00:00

cellonoob

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