MY OTHER CAR IS A CELLO

posted by James Reel

    Harry, my cello teacher, sent me a link to an interview with his old teacher, George Neikrug, who spent some time talking about one of his old teachers, Demetrius Dounis. Most of Neikrug’s comments fall in line with what Harry has been telling me for two years, including this:

Dounis believed that technique is essentially based on "evenness," the goal being to give the impression that everything is on the same string. One should be able to get the same vibrato with every finger in any position on any string, the same tone with the bow on every string, and to make unnoticed string changes. Any deviation from this evenness would then be for musical reasons, not due to technical deficiencies.

    That’s all well and good, except that I still have trouble getting the same sound from the same finger at the same position on the same string every time. Sometimes I feel that I shouldn’t be wasting my time working when I really need to be practicing the cello. At least I’ve gotten to the point at which I can have some pretty decent moments during some of my practice sessions (note the liberal use of qualifiers). All I have to do is figure out how to do that consistently. Harry is great at getting me in shape during the course of a lesson; it’s a matter of remembering to apply all the techniques and advice simultaneously when I’m not under professional supervision.
    Why is it that we can get a license to drive after just a few months of supervised practice, yet it takes us so much longer to be turned loose with a musical instrument? Yeah, driving makes fewer simultaneous demands on our attention, and doesn’t require such refined motor skills. Still, a car is much more dangerous than a cello (but watch out for that endpin!). If there were cosmic balance, we’d achieve instrumental facility within half a year, but we wouldn’t be on our own behind the wheel without a decade of hard preparation.