Category Archives: Cello

Gnarr

I have thrown up my hands and walked away from the computer twice today. This last time I did it because the computer thought it would be a good idea to rename the drives, and then told me it couldn’t find any of my music because the G drive had mysteriously become the H drive. Apparently my computer has previously nicknamed my printer the G drive, so when I turned my printer on for the first time since adding the external hard drive to the family it remembered that the printer existed, shuffled everything down one step, and the poor hard drive got bumped. I tried turning the printer off and restarting the computer, but no luck.

So it came down to renaming my drives, or rebuilding the media library again. I chose option B, because I’ve done it before and nothing blew up.

But before I restarted it, I practised the cello some more to calm myself down and change my headspace. Spiegel im Spiegel! Go me!

Yet still, no actual new words in the book. It seems to be either feast or famine when it comes to actual production these days. It’s a low-energy day and I’m trying to cut myself some slack, but it’s hard when the deadline is muttering in the distance and I have to handle those pregnancy copy-edits next week or the week after that. I’ve been listlessly reading through the existing document today, trying to find something that my brain jumps on and wants to expand. Recipes. I should do recipes. Right. That is what I will do for the next hour, before HRH and the boy get home.

Today I Have…

– done a load of laundry

– practised the cello (that second movement of the Gounod symphony, and my fifteen minutes stretched to twenty before I deliberately stopped because I could have gone on but I really don’t want to push things and ruin it for myself, and why is it always that I can play things perfectly well at home?)

– handled the day’s news and correspondence

– actually put make-up on for the first time in ages, because Sandman7 will be here in a few minutes to pick me up for our lunch date. Yes! I am leaving the house! It is so exciting!

– made an optometrist appointment

– tried to make an appointment for a haircut, but was foiled

– opened the hearthcraft file and messed about, but no new words of reportable consequence yet, only resequenced ones

Not bad at all. I’m trying to feel better about all the other things that have been accomplished instead of fixating on the no-new-words part.

In Which She Gets Introspective About Cello and FMS

Last night was my first post-FMS diagnosis orchestra rehearsal, and I was observing my energy levels and physical activity and things like that in a completely different way, instead of just being tired and depressed about my inability to pull it together and play properly. The concentration problems that have slowly crept into my orchestra experience — focusing on the score on the stand, staying in the rhythm, predicting the next bars of music rhythm- or note-wise– may very well be connected to FMS. I used to be able to know what came next without being there yet, when listening to or playing a piece of music. I used to be able to do this with a piece of music I’d never heard or played before: I could predict it, and if it wasn’t dead on then it worked musically with/against what actually did come next. I’ve slowly lost that ability over the past year. I’ve been having problems feeling the music, getting inside it in order to feel what comes next so that what I’m playing now flows into it the right way. It’s not related to how many times I listen to a recording to be familiar with the way the music goes, or how often I practice it, either. It’s a disconnect that happens somewhere in my mind as I’m playing. (Thanks so much, cognitive dysfunction.)

My fine motor control has grown a bit clumsier, too. I can’t do finicky things like trills or mordents like I used to, or throw out thirty-second notes in rapid scale-like patterns without lots of practice at slow speeds. I was putting all this down to not enough practice and the natural ageing process, but looking back I can admit that these sort of things don’t hit to this extent within the space of seven months. My hands and fingers are clumsier, which makes sense from a medical viewpoint now I know that FMS affects the musculoskeletal-CNS dynamic and creates a weakness in the limbs (and by extension, the limb extensions, hello clumsy fingers!).

The drive home had me thinking about the commitment to orchestra. At its most basic, it’s a way to make sure I play at least once a week. Now I need to look at it as a way to work on my hand and finger fine motor control, my focus and concentration, and the process of wrapping my mind around the image of the music as a whole to help me get from point A to point B. I have to cut myself some slack about my level of performance, which has, I admit, decreased: I can’t handle quick complicated passages like I used to, or be as accurate rhythm- and phrase-wise all the time. And yet at the same time, my position work has improved even more over the past six or seven months, which confuses me. Evidently shifts don’t require the same kind of fine motor control that quick fingering does, although it asks for fast precise movements in a different way. Somehow my understanding of how notes relate to one another in high positions and how my fingers have to move to play them has developed without conscious work on my part. It’s good to know that positive things are still happening in my brain beyond the fibro-fog while other musculoskeletal-related things are experiencing technical difficulty.

Last night I didn’t hurt as much as I used to after or during the rehearsal, either. Hurrah for medication.

I have to allow myself to accept that it’s not all my fault. I’m not playing less well because I’m not practising; I am not failing to be as good as I was because of lack of application, but because my mind and body aren’t co-operating. Practice would help, of course, because as I keep hammering into my skull (with limited success, evidently) if I’m this good without regular or structured practice, just think how good I could be if I did practice more often, and properly. But with the challenges and limits the FMS is trying to set on me, practice could be a very good exercise in pushing back the cognitive fog and keeping hands and arms limber, with the bonus of, you know, helping me play better.

I need to carve out a routine where I play at home more. Fifteen minutes in the morning before the computer gets turned on on work days, at the very least, would be better than nothing. I think repetitive work on the places where I fall apart at orchestra is a good place to start. (Gounod second movement of symphony numero uno, I’m looking at you, you example of rhythm going somewhere other than my brain expects it to go every single time, you. Behave.)

Reimagining Classic Design

When luthiers say that the basic design for the violin family of stringed instruments hasn’t changed in four centuries and talk about ways to improve upon it, this isn’t exactly the kind of redesign they mean.

In a clever feat of musical ingenuity, an orchestra playing instruments created entirely from car parts performs the soundtrack to the new Ford Focus television commercial. […]

Milbrodt’s team took apart a Ford Focus five-door hatchback that had, literally, just come off the production line. “When we got it to the mechanics shop, it had less than a mile on the clock. We took the doors and fenders off, but we had the body shell intact and we later cut out of that the parts we wanted,” said Bill Milbrodt.

By the time the orchestra had been assembled for the photo shoot at Universal Studios in California, Milbrodt’s team had constructed 31 instruments. Each has a name that instantly identified its origins, such as the Transmission Case Cello-Dulcimer, Clutch Guitar, Rear Suspension Spike Fiddle, Fender Bass, Hatchback Kick Drum, Handheld Gear Tambourine and Door Harp.

No doubt the commercial will be uploaded to YouTube the night it airs, or maybe it will be available on the Ford web site.

I wonder what it’s like to play.

(Did you notice the bow? It’s a windshield wiper.)

Meer Meer Meer

I give up; this afternoon has been a write-off, as I was afraid it would be. There are now 20,052 words in the MS. I’m tired and achy and I need to lie down for half an hour before I go get the boy. I have no idea what to do for dinner; my dinner-from-nothing mojo has been exhausted.

It’s orchestra again tonight, and I have no idea how it got to be Wednesday. The cello hasn’t even come out of its case.

Orchestra Musings

Wednesday was the first rehearsal of the year, and we got our new music, hurrah!

I am a complete sucker for ancient airs and dances, and lo and behold, we are playing Delibes’ dances ‘in the ancient style’ from the play Le roi s’amuse. I’d never heard of it, but really, when you’ve heard one suite of ancient airs and dances, you’ve pretty much got a good idea of what the rest of the genre’s like. It was very enjoyable to play until we hit the Lesquercarde, which is insanely fast pizzicato with stretches and reaches all over. I got lost in the third bar and spent most of the piece staring at the little black squiggles on the page wondering where the hell we were. Well, maybe it just seemed insanely fast because I couldn’t keep up. And when I did figure out where we were, I promptly lost it again because there was a stretch across three strings and I couldn’t figure out the fingering in time, and… oh, look, here I am lost again while the rest of the orchestra carries on. The rest of it was lovely. There’s a bonus piece after the Finale for mandolin and accompaniment, and our conductor asked somewhat jokingly if anyone knew a mandolin player. Somewhat to his astonishment there were two people in the orchestra who each knew someone different. This piece calls for the first two cellists to pluck a very soft accompaniment to the as-yet-unheard mandolin solo, with the section coming in tutti now and again. The accompaniment alone was beautiful and meditative. There are good things about sitting second chair, and this is one of them… assuming we do the mandolin piece at all. I’m just thankful it’s an easy piece to play, otherwise I’d have been sinking into my chair with embarrassment after mangling it.

We also played through Ravel’s Pavane, which is typical of the French school of the time. It’s very impressionistic, using bits of musical phrases to make a larger, well, impression of something else. It reminds me of playing Delius’ On Hearing The First Cuckoo In Spring. And like that piece, it will take attention from everyone in order to fit the little sighs and quotes from all over the different sections into the right place to make up the greater sense of music. But it’s lovely to play. (And I giggle every time I read the full title: Pavane pour une infante defunct. A defunct infanta. It amuses me, just as the term ‘neiges usagées’ does. It means ‘removed snow’ but the literal translation is ‘used snow’. It’s no wonder the Ravel is usually translated to be ‘Pavane for a Dead Princess‘.)

What else? Oh, our overture is the Caliph of Baghdad comic opera overture by Francois Adrien Boieldieu. (No, I hadn’t heard of the opera or the composer before last night either.) Very snappy, fun to play. And we didn’t get to the Fauré Pavane .

In case you hadn’t figured it out yet, the concert has a French theme. The secondary theme is dance, as all these pieces were either written for ballet (the Delius), have a dance somewhere in the work (the Boieldieu), are written on dance forms (the Ravel, Fauré, and Delius), or have been choreographed for dance (I hadn’t known that Balanchine had choreographed Gounod’s first symphony for New York City Ballet).

And let it be said here and now that while I appreciate the time and effort that goes into professionally hand-written scores, they reproduce terribly and are hard for me to read. Things just aren’t as clear and well-defined as a printed score.

It feels good to be back. I was leaden by the end of the night, though. If orchestra is going to be my Thing this year, it may have to be the only Thing until I get the fatigue and pain under control.

I found a second-hand cello listed for sale within my price range, and I’m trying to figure out if it’s worth setting up a date to try it. The seller is in Sherbrooke, and so either she’d have to come to Montreal or I’d have to go out there. The cello was purchased new in ’99, has an intermediate bow, and is a Karl Weber model 27. I know nothing about Karl Weber cellos other than they’re done in a workshop in China, so I’ve been trying to find out more, but there’s no info available on-line. I suspect it’s equivalent to my current cello, which is an anonymous make of Hungarian origin. Thirty-five to forty years of playing has developed its tone, though, whereas this other cello is new and won’t have that played-in bonus. What’s catching me is the fact that it’s a solid top, whereas mine is a laminate. It all comes down to what it sounds like and feels like, though, and if it were local I’d set up an appointment to try it and decide that way. Right now I’m trying to figure out if it’s worth the time and effort of someone commuting. If it’s another entry-level instrument, even a high-end entry-level, then chances are very good it will sound only as good as/worse than my current instrument. At the moment I’m leaning towards not bothering, and waiting. I’m not ready to start my search yet: I don’t have the energy or the right mindset. This cello would cost half of what I’m projecting as my max budget, which again, while thrifty, I suspect means not buying as high quality as I could. When in doubt, pass.

Hearthcraft Book Update

Total word count, hearthcraft book: 18,031
New words today: 1,164

Cauldron stuff today.

I was determined, determined to hit 18K. So much so that I let HRH go fetch the boy, and worked past when we were supposed to eat dinner.

Orchestra tonight! First rehearsal since early December.