Mid Life Cello

John Holt was a controversial education reformer whose ideas I’d encountered years ago when we began homeschooling our children. He believes that most students in educational institutions are functioning from fear – mostly fear of making mistakes. I think he’s probably right and he has a lot to teach us about how we learn and how we can help children learn. So when I discovered that Holt had learned to play the cello later in life, I couldn’t wait to read the tale of his adventure. But the book was disappointing on two counts:

First, most of the book is the rather uneventful story of Holt’s musical life before taking up the cello. I found it painful plowing through the details of what seemed to be every concert he attended and every record he listened to. I just wanted to get to the part about cello playing, and these many chapters of ground work didn’t add much to the tale.

The second disappointment was not about the book. Holt’s story forced me to ponder my ambitions with the cello. He tells how he practices 3 to 4 hours a day, after a number of years of cello study, yet he graphically describes the struggle to keep up when playing with an amateur orchestra or chamber music quartet. You might say he dashed my hopes of becoming a virtuoso cellist in a few years by playing 20 or 30 minutes a day! Thanks, I needed that!

Seriously, it’s tough to be realistic about the goal of all this. When I started, I really just wanted to play hymns and ballads and such – sweetly and emotionally – and I’m getting to do that already. But as I get into it, and listen to great cellists playing great music, it’s easy to aspire to great things. After an hour playing simple tunes nicely, I’m full of confidence and ready to take on Bach. After an hour struggling with a few measures of Bach, I’m ready to quit. So it can be an emotional roller coaster if I’m not realistic.

My fiddling son Peter, and my cellist friend Sam, are learning faster than I can. Their neural networks are still developing and can adapt to this new challenge more adroitly than mine. They can listen to a recording and think “I can learn that!” I have to be careful. Somehow balance an optimistic “I might be able to learn that.” with a realistic “I might never be able to play that.” and be grateful that I can play at all. Content aspiration is my ideal.

Yo-yo ma started cello at age 4 – after playing violin and viola! I figure the only thing between me and him is about 100,000 more hours of practice.

The E string has been fun, but it hasn’t made the big cello into a fiddle. I envied my son’s freedom to snatch up his violin and go play anywhere he felt like it. And my fingers still struggle to move fast enough over the vast expanse of the cello’s fingerboard. I play the violin now and then, but it’s not so comfortable for me. And it’s enough different from the cello that I know I can’t pursue both very successfully. So another crazy idea was born. Why not get a child-size cello and play it on my lap, like the old fashioned Viola da Gamba. I envisioned the gamba players in Baroque paintings, lounging on grassy banks by quiet lakes, viols on their laps, serenading their lovers.

First, I made a crude mockup of an 1/8 size cello out of foam insulation board, just to see how it would sit on my lap and where the bow and left hand would end up. The position seemed pretty comfortable. Then I stuffed a pencil under the strings on my big cello at the spot where the bridge would be on the little cello. An 1/8 cello is really a 2/3 cello – all the dimensions of the full size instrument are scaled to 2/3 of their full size, so the playing length of the strings is 18″ instead of 27″. With the playing length shortened on the big cello, I tried fiingering songs and grew more excited. It seemed ideal – the fingers weren’t crowded as on the violin, but I could reach so many more notes easily without shifting or stretching.

So I started looking for a little cello. The first cello was an experiment, but I’m pretty sure I’m going to stay with it now. This second cello would also be an experiment, since I didn’t really know for sure if I would like playing a little one. I couldn’t find anyone else out in the wide web world that was doing the same thing. I was willing to spend a bit more, and I really wanted a nicer instrument, but there was the chance it would be a flop. So I was looking for a bargain this time – a nicer used cello outgrown by a child. Apparently everyone must rent the little ones and trade ’em up as the kids grow. No 1/8 cellos on eBay for several weeks. But then I found this one locally on Craigslist.

The ad said “Beautiful Cello handcrafted by Reuning & Sons of Boston. Asking $425 or best offer, original cost $1200. Comes with case & bow.” Well, obviously this wasn’t handcrafted in Boston. It only took a quick look at Reuning.com to know any cello they made would have cost a lot more than $1200. They do carry Chinese student instruments, so I guessed that this was one of those.

I bought it today. The seller said her sons had taken Suzuki cello but didn’t continue, so she couldn’t trade up for a larger cello. This one was about 10 years old. I loved the look and feel of it, and it sounded pretty good after about half an hour of tuning with those lovely ebony pegs. There is no label inside, but the cello is very pretty – carved from solid wood, real purfling, ebony fittings, etc. And in mint condition. I wondered whether a five year old could ever have touched it! She sold it for $350 and I think we were both very happy. A few miles from the seller’s house, I parked the car and played for a while. Imagine playing a cello inside the car! This is going to be fun.

Even though my new cello is just a kid’s model and not worth too much, it’s fun to play violin sleuth and try to solve the mystery of exactly where it came from. Could it really be the little cello Stradivari made for his daughter? Just kidding… every violin dealer tells stories of people finding Strads in the attic and hoping to strike it rich. There are probably tens of thousands of instruments with Strad labels – the makers didn’t always intend to deceive – they were just making “replicas” of Stradivari’s instruments. But my little mystery cello has no label, so it’s not exactly a fake.

Actually, it had a label at one time. Studying the cello more carefully at home, I saw that someone had scraped the label from the inside. Had the seller feared she wouldn’t get as much if it said “Made in China” inside? There was a crumpled strip of paper stuck in the bottom of the cello. I shook it out and it proved to be the edge of the missing label. The only printing was a double line border. On Google, I found a picture of an Eastman Strings label with the same border, and Reuning sells Eastman 1/8 cellos, so that’s a possibility.

I emailed some photos to Reuning & Son, not after an appraisal or anything, just asking what it might be. Chris Reuning replied “This would appear to be a modern handmade Chinese cello. We very well may have sold it.” When I removed the endpin, I could see another small label with some Chinese characters glued next to the top block. So the mystery is solved that far, and not farther. Imagine the challenges of identifying a 200 year old instrument!

The playing length of the strings on a 1/8 cello are 2/3 that of a full size instrument. To produce the same C-G-D-A pitches, the tension must be lower, or the strings heavier. On my little cello, both were true. The strings are just a bit thicker than on the big cello, and the tension is a lot lower. As a result, the C and G strings don’t play all that nicely. They feel flabby. So my first mod was to tune it to G-D-A-E like my big cello has been.  I restrung the big one back to C-G-D-A, and put the E string on the little one and shifted the other strings over. Better, but still not great. I was starting to have buyer’s remorse. Maybe this little cello won’t sound so good after all.

Well, the next logical step was to move it up to viola tuning, that is C-G-D-A like a cello, but an octave higher. I shifted the original 1/8 strings for D and A down to the C and G positions, put my Spirocore E string on for the D, and the guitar E string on for E. That setup sounds nice and plays easily, though the guitar string is just a bit shrill. With this arrangement, the fingering is the same as the big cello, and I can play a lot of fiddle tunes at the same pitch as a violin. I’m not sure what to call this thing… a cellola? a lap cello? an upright viola? a tenor cello? Oh well, whatever it is, it’s a lot of fun.

The ebony pegs had to go – I’m sold on geared tuning! I thought about investing in pegheds for this one, but I don’t like the G peg poking me in the neck. So I went with standard acoustic guitar machines. I didn’t want to drill out the tapered peg holes, or otherwise damage the pegbox on this cello, so I made some wedges of maple to match the angles of the pegbox, and screwed the machines to those. The heads have an inside-threaded tube that fits in the hole on a guitar, but won’t fit in the smaller peg holes on this cello. I cut those down so they would be flush with the inside of the wedges. The outside-threaded bushings do fit through the peg holes and secure the machines to the pegbox. It’s easy to tune with the left hand while bowing with the right, with the cello in its normal playing position.

The next problem to be solved was at the lap end of the cello. It needed something to keep it from sliding off my knees. Trying to squeeze the lower bouts between my legs made it pop out – like squeezing a wet pumpkin seed with your fingers. I tried buckling a belt around my legs just above the knees and tucking the cello endpin under the top span. That sure held the thing securely, but it wasn’t too handy. After all, one of the benefits of the little cello is the ease of moving around the house with it. Moving around with a belt around the legs is just a bit awkward! I wanted something that would stay with the cello when I picked it up.

My wife suggested some rubber no-slip stuff that we use under throw rugs.  Draping that across my lap under the cello works fine, but it’s a little inconvenient.  I didn’t want to glue or tape it to the cello, so I invented a clip-on arrangement. I bent a piece of 1/4″ aluminum bar stock to match the curve of the bottom of the cello, then closed the curve just a bit so it would squeeze the cello gently. I made a similar shape from 3/16″ round aluminum rod. Then I cut a strip of no-slip rubber shelf lining (from WalMart), folded it twice and Suzanne stitched it lengthwise on the sewing machine. The aluminum bar and rod slide into the two resulting spaces in the rubber, and the whole thing snaps lightly onto the bouts of the cello, with no possibility of scratching. Since it’s clipped on the edge of the bouts, like a violin shoulder rest, it doesn’t affect the tone. It comes off easily, but won’t fall off when I carry the cello or lay it down. It holds the cello securely on top of my knees or when squeezing it lightly between the legs. Perfect engineered solution!

I enjoy playing hymns on the cello. They’re usually pretty simple melodies with pretty simple rhythm, but they mean a lot to me and it’s relaxing to play with feeling these songs that I know. Sometimes, I just open a hymnal and leaf through it and play whatever I remember. I’m still not very quick playing from the treble clef – where the hymn melodies are – but if I remember the tune I don’t need to read the music.

I made these fingering cards to help with playing by ear. So many hymns and folk songs are in the keys of C or G or D that I get used to the fingering in those keys and I have trouble picking out a tune that’s in some other key. The fingering cards make it a lot easier. On the 1/8 cello with it’s easier fingering, and with the help of the fingering card, I can learn a tune in 5 flats in nothing flat.

Most string fingering charts show all the notes on the fingerboard, so they are confusing to me, just like the piano keyboard. It was always hard for me to remember which black keys to use  for a particular song! There is no confusion with these cards. Just pick the card  for the key the song is in and you know which notes to try and where they are. An occasional accidental isn’t a big problem. The cards help me learn to associate note names with fingerboard locations, which is not really necessary in playing, but it helps a lot when I play with someone else and we have to talk about the notes.

The fingering diagrams are upside down relative to standard fingering charts I’ve seen, because that’s the way the fingerboard looks to the cellist. The gray bars correspond to the reference locations I still have marked with bits of tape at the side of my fingerboard.

If you think you might find these useful, you can download the XLS and PDF files.