Why Did I Want To Start Cello?

I wrote about this a little bit in my last entry, "About Me."  But I figured I could go a little more in-depth.  :)

As I previously mentioned, I've been in love with the cello since I was a little kid.  When my mom decided to have me take piano lessons, I was very disappointed.  She told me that if I succeeded in piano, I could go on to learn other instruments.

Now, I am very glad I started on piano those eleven years ago!  Having the keyboard in my brain has been very beneficial to me as a musician, and it was wonderful to help me learn chords and music theory.  I've been taking piano lessons with a professor at my college now too, and she has helped me grow a lot as a musician!

In 2012, I started playing the guitar.  Guitar lessons seemed to just open up the world of music to me.  I already knew about major and minor chords, but learning guitar taught me about sevenths and augmented chords and all other kinds of things. 

In 2018, I began to take voice lessons as I knew it would be beneficial to me as a piano major.  But with all of these instruments, I still loved the cello and wanted to play it!

I didn't know this before I played cello, but it's so expressive.  You can do all sorts of things with your bow to give a piece of music a completely different feel!  What piano and guitar lack for expressiveness, voice and cello definitely make up for.

Cello is special to me now because I use my three other instruments for college.  Cello is a hobby; a hobby I'm very glad I started.  It's something that I can do for fun and still be involved in music, and for that reason I find it much more relaxing right now than piano.  For piano I have to prepare for recitals and music school auditions and other high-stress things; for cello it's just my teacher and me listening.  I may have to give recitals or play in an orchestra in the future, but those will almost certainly never be as strenuous as the things I do on the piano daily. 

As for why I was originally wooed by the cello: I think it has such a velvety, round sound to it.  When I listen to someone like Jacqueline du Pre, I feel as though I'm privy to a special story told only to me.  I love the different techniques and all of the little things that make the cello so expressive, like being able to slide between notes -- something you can't do on a piano! 

It's all the same 12 notes, but Shostakovich can use techniques that Faure didn't use and make his piece sound completely different.

Of course, for now I am relegated to French Folk Song and Lightly Row, two songs from Suzuki Book 1.  But that, in my eyes, is better than nothing!

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