Playing Cello

Hey, good to see you again. Sit back, kick your shoes off and enjoy the story.

A good friend of mine plays cello. She has been playing now for several years; spending time with her instrument has been a large part of her life since that time. She started when she was at the university and showed a certain talent for it right from the start. She advanced quickly and spent hours practicing difficult music.

She took lessons regularly in the beginning, but during the last years, between work and family obligations, she had not always found the time or the money for good instruction, and instead worked on her own. She liked practicing the tricky pieces best; they moved quickly and made her feel proficient; it was hard, but she practiced. She always felt proud of herself when she had finished a practice session filled with complicated passages.
Doing the hard stuff gave her a sense of accomplishment.

The other week, she signed up for regular lessons again. Life had become more settled, she had finished her education, work at the office was quieter and the kids were old enough to have interests of their own. She was going to start seriously working on her music again.

Her new teacher was a talented young man who played in several orchestras and was rumored to give good instruction. He did play beautifully, that was for sure; we had heard him play on a number of occasions and he had performed flawlessly each time.

She was very excited and nervous before their first session. She had played relentlessly the weeks before to prepare herself. She had practiced many intricate pieces and could play them with speed. She was really looking forward to showing her ‘stuff’.

The afternoon after her first lesson, we met for coffee.

‘How was it?, I asked, settling down into my chair, preparing myself for a long report.

‘Well’, she said, ‘it was different than I expected.’

‘He listened to me and was really impressed how far I had gotten along, especially considering how long it has been since I’ve taken lessons. Goodness knows I’ve practiced enough! I played all the hard parts pretty well, but I often had trouble with the bow changes. I also noticed that I sometimes had trouble organizing my fingers on the fingerboard, and doing the movements slowly and carefully. ‘

‘He wants me to practice slow scales and he gave several exercises me to improve fingering and bowing. I feel like a beginner again somehow. I’ve played all my life and now I have to go back to the basics.’

‘He could tell that I wasn’t happy about it. I really was looking forward to getting to play some complex cello sonatas. So he sat down next to me and said that this is a chance to go back and really play well; to really live my music. He wants me to breathe life into my scales and exercises. Afterwards, he said, after I’ve mastered that, I can go back to the hard stuff. But then I’ll really be able to play it well.’

I thought about it for a moment. There’s quite a bit of truth in what her teacher said. If you haven’t really mastered the basic steps, then you’ll never really play well. You’ll always be repeating similar mistakes – whether it’s an instrument, or your life.

It’s the little things – the ones that seem so insignificant on the grander scale – that often matter the most. When you’ve set yourself a goal, then it truly is about paying attention to the detail and really living what you do. Taking the time and the effort to go in depth and become one with your goal opens a whole new world of experiences and understanding that otherwise would have passed you by. It’s not just reaching the goal that’s important; it’s how you do it and who you become along the way.

But in the rush of daily life, just as in the rush of complex music, we forget about these things. Instead, we concentrate on the big, the obvious, the spectacular; and in the long run, we often end up short of success and shy of our goal.

If it’s worth doing, then it’s worth doing well. Learning to play music is a wonderful goal, but if you really want to be good, then you need to learn to live it.

Happy playing,
Lisa