Calling all Cellists
Before you read this, go ahead and watch this awesome YouTube video.
Back?
Cool.
I… uh… I actually watched it twice, so if you want to go watch it again, I totally understand.
Really back now?
Cool.
I too played the cello.
That bit brought back memories of picking the instrument. Man, I really wanted to play the bass, but I was “too short,” which anyone who knows me now would find hilarious, as I have grown to 6′ tall. But the cello was an acceptable alternative.
I grew to love the sound of the cello. I love Yo-Yo Ma. I mean, love him. The sounds he evokes from his instrument, named Petunia, are just… sublime.
I wasn’t bad at it, though I could never hold a candle to the master. I did get to be first chair of the youth orchestra at the Hartt School of Music in Connecticut. They wanted to “promote” me to the top level Suzuki orchestra, and I tried it out, but it wasn’t as much fun. I had to sit in the back, and the director was boring. The director of the second-to-best orchestra was much more fun, the music was much more fun, it was a full symphony orchestra, rather than a string ensemble, and I was the most important.
Man that was good times.
I kind of left my cello on the curb after my sophomore year in high school. I picked up singing as my primary instrument and haven’t really looked back. I did play the cello in college until the director fired me because I was incapable of being at two dress rehearsals at the same time. (God forbid I chose I-8 over him, I mean, really, the last chair cellist not being there for the dress was really ruining his life? In Interstate 8 I mattered, in orchestra, I was filler. Obviously I didn’t matter that much if he didn’t let me play in the concert. Which he didn’t tell me directly. He told my roommate when she brough my cello down to the truck because I had church that morning. And by the way, my parents were in town to see both the I-8 and the orchestra concert. They stayed the night so they could see both. Great, thanks, professor. …He did, three years later, give me an A on my MQP though…)
I literally haven’t picked up my cello since. The poor thing is probably lonely. I wonder if I still know how to play. I mean, I’m sure I still have the mechanics, but I wonder if I can still make pretty sounds.
Man, I love music.
But boy, oh, boy do I hate Pachelbel.
In middle school, we had this special group called the Chocolate Cake Orchestra. We were the best of the regular orchestra, and we did one extra piece a semester, rehearsing after school on Tuesdays, I think it was. The best part, the late bus ran an hour and a half after the regular bus, and we only used the first hour for rehearsal. The last half hour was for eating chocolate cake. We took turns bringing in chocolate cake. Really, how can you go wrong with music and cake?
But we did play the wretched “Canon in D” one year. She had special clinics with the violins and violas to get them to feel the drama of their lines or whatever. The cellists? Bah. We had it memorized after one rehearsal.
D
A
B
F#
G
D
G
A
And now I’m going to notice as it takes over my life…not to mention it’s totally stuck in my head now…at least I wasn’t a cellist…though I definitely remember one song from band that I repeated the exact same thing over and over…it wasn’t quarter notes but it was the same measure 64 times…though all that’s going through my head now is Pachelbel…ahhhh!!!
Pachelbel invented the three-note-song. You can thank him for Rock & Roll. And by extension for Pop, Punk, Country, Bluegrass, and pretty much any genre that didn’t evolve from Jazz. One gaping exception – The Beatles, who were so bad at music theory that they invented chord progressions that otherwise make no sense. Good thing for them they were cute. Now everyone wishes they could write like The Beatles, but they study too much. Every song you study makes you less Beatle-riffic.
The comic mispoke by the way. They weren’t quarter notes. They were slow-ass whole notes. Because playing only eight notes wasn’t punishment enough, he had to make you draw each one out while shaking your left arm to a pulp trying to vibrato-ize the sound, which really could use it, because it was so boring. Even Yo-Yo Ma, who can make any song sound beautiful, can’t help Pachelbel.