Learning the Cello

Patti asked in the comments about my cello playing. So I thought I'd make it into a blog post, instead of answering in the comments.

I started playing cello two years ago this October. I have played piano since I was five. However, piano is a solitary instrument, generally, apart from accompanying, and I've always been fascinated by string instruments. The Bible college president at the time I was at Bible College was a cello player and I've always thought it was a beautiful instrument. So it was on my "things I'd like to do before I die" list.

Three years ago, my oldest daughter started the violin. A year after that, my youngest child was three and a half and for some reason, I don't recall all the reasons, it seemed like a good time to start learning the cello. I really wanted something to work on to challenge myself. I had also found out through my daughter's experience that we could rent string instruments from a string shop in the city, which made learning a new instrument possible. $36 a month is a lot more accessible than $1200 upfront. Part of the motivation was also that my daughter & I could make music together.

So I started making some phone calls. After a couple of "interesting" phone calls with potential teachers, I found my current teacher. She's an experienced Suzuki teacher. She hadn't done a lot of work with adults but she was willing to take me on, even with once a month lessons. As we've gotten farther into the process, I've realized what a good teacher she is and how providential it was that I was able to find her.

This year, we've made the switch to biweekly lessons in the city for my daughter and that has given me the opportunity to go biweekly with my lessons too. Although I was learning and progressing over the past two years, it felt to me like I could be progressing faster and further if I had more regular lessons. Sometimes it would be six weeks between lessons, just depending on the circumstances. So I'm looking forward to being there every two weeks and to moving ahead with it.

Eventually, I'd like to play more for church or have other performance opportunities. My daughter & I play together sometimes but we'd like to do more. I'd really like to find some relatively easy piano trios (violin, cello & piano) that we could do with a pianist but they seem to be hard to find.

We have two younger daughters and so the girls have it all mapped out - the next one will learn violin and the 3rd one viola and in just a matter of time, we'll have a string quartet. Considering that the violin teacher we found this year also plays viola, we're actually somewhat hopeful that this could take place!

We're off to the city - I may add later reasons why I think it's good for adults to learn new musical instruments.