cello Archives – Structured Procrastination

Rethinking traditional scale practice on the cello

Adam — Sat, 20 Dec 2014 01:28:00 +0000

(Please note that while this post was written with the cello in mind, several of the principles apply to other instruments too.)

I’ve previously blogged about how back in 2011, I decided to get serious about trying to become a jazz cellist. Since then I’ve had some really interesting and fulfilling musical experiences, but it’s also been a struggle in some areas. I studied and performed classical (in the western sense) cello for many years, but the demands of jazz are so different to most things I worked on during my classical training that I’ve had to fundamentally rethink many aspects of the way I practise.

Scales are one good example of this. I was taught to practise B♭ major something like the following:

The first interesting thing to note about this is that it omits almost the entire bottom octave of the instrument! There’s really no good reason for this; the bottom octave deserves attention just like the rest of the instrument. It’s only taught this way because the tradition has become incredibly “tonic-biased”, with no awareness of the different modes which even beginner jazz students get taught about.

So one of the first adjustments I made (and I probably stole this idea from one of my mentors, the great jazz violinist Christian Howes, who calls it “extended range”) was to always start from the lowest note of the scale reachable on the instrument:

Similarly, if the top tonic is not near the top of the range you want to practise in, just keep going until you hit a note high enough to make you think “OK, I don’t need to practise any higher than this!” Whether or not that note happens to be the tonic of the scale should be irrelevant; the most important thing is that you are practising the full range of the instrument which you need to use when performing.

Turning it all upside-down

Another bias which exists in the western classical tradition for dubious reasons is that everything is bottom-heavy: almost all exercises start at the bottom, go up to the top, and come back down again. This inevitably results in the bottom end being practised more than the top, which is particularly bad because the top end is way harder to play well. So let’s swap it all around!

(By the way, along similar lines I recommend this great blog post on back-to-front learning by Anton Schwarz.)

Developing new “real world” fingering systems

The next odd thing to note about the classical tradition is that scales are almost always played using a single fingering, and that fingering is typically tonic-biased in another way: the tonic notes are very commonly played using first finger. Perhaps the classical pedagogy evolved this way simply because a single fingering system for each scale was perceived as easier to teach and also for students to memorise. But this approach is hopelessly inconsistent with the real world. If you don’t believe me, take a look at every fragment of a B♭ major scale present in the solo part of Boccherini’s cello concerto in B♭ major, and count for how many of those fragments it would make sense to use the fingering system shown above. If we don’t use those fingering systems when playing actual music, why spend so much time practising them?

So it seems clear to me that practising multiple fingering systems is beneficial for technical reasons, and in the case of jazz for musical reasons too: the improvisatory nature of which means that unless you rely very heavily on licks, you rarely know far in advance what notes you want to play, let alone what fingerings to use. So for any given tonality and position on the instrument, you should practise as many fingering positions as possible, so that when you are in the moment of improvising a solo, whichever hand position you’re in, as many notes are physically accessible from there because you’ve already covered those transitions in practice.

A system for practising all fingerings

But where do we draw the line? After all there are an enormous number of different possible fingerings for a 3-octave scale, and there’s just not enough time in the day to practise even a fraction of them. Or is there?

Violin fingerings

On the violin, this is a bit simpler to understand because pretty much any scale can be played in any hand position without shifting (at least, until you hit the top or bottom notes in that position). So on violin, you can simply practise any scale in any position, and carve up your available practice time accordingly: for example on Monday you could focus on 1st position, on Tuesday 2nd position, and so on.

Cello fingerings

On cello, it’s not possible to play any diatonic scale without a considerable amount of shifting of the hand position, so the problem of how to methodically practise all possible fingerings is far less obvious.

I think the answer lies in considering how to group notes into hand positions. It’s clear from the above examples that typically the hand position shifts every three notes, i.e. the majority of notes in scales on the cello are grouped in threes: 1-2-4 or 1-3-4 in the lower octaves, and 1-2-3 when playing higher up the string. Most exceptions to this are when the open strings are played (but they could be considered as “outside” the groupings anyway), and in the higher octaves of most cello scales, where 2-note groupings are common (e.g. the 1-2 1-2 1-2-3 type of fingering system is very commonly taught in the classical tradition for the top octave of a 3-octave scale).

My opinion is that practising 2-note groupings is really not that useful (at least to me as a jazz cellist), because

the shift distance is smaller so the shift is easier,
2-note groupings require 50% more frequent shifts when compared to 3-note groupings, which is a big hindrance when attempting to play at speed,
every 2-note finger grouping is already covered by a 3-note grouping, and
I’ve already logged years of classical practice covering 2-note groupings anyway!

So I decided to practise all my scales in only 3-note groupings:

Notice here that I’ve also stopped using the open strings (except for the bottom C, since there’s no other way to play it). I made this decision for three reasons. Firstly, in jazz it’s important to be able to transpose to another key at any moment, so I don’t want to become too reliant on scale fingerings which use open strings, since they only work in one key.

Secondly, it makes it very easy to extend this system so that it covers every possible fingering of the scale using 3-note groupings! This is possible simply by shifting the starting hand position by a single note:

and then shifting it once more:

String variations

Thirdly, it allows freedom to introduce variations on which string is used for a particular group. For example bars 5 and 6 of the above example could be played like this:

I don’t use a strict system to ensure I always cover all possible string variations; instead I like to improvise the choice of string on the spur of the moment, since this matches more closely what can happen when improvising on stage.

Connecting the dots

Of course this system of 3-note groupings with 3 different starting positions for every scale triples the amount of scales to practise! However since I would normally practise each scale more than once anyway, I aim to seamlessly join up the different offsets in order to cover all combinations without requiring significantly more practice time:

and so on. Actually the hand position “offset” can be changed at any point in the scale, and this is also something I like to improvise on.

Changing the tonality

So far the examples have all used a major scale. The classical tradition also covers harmonic minor and melodic minor (which is different ascending to descending). In the jazz world (especially for more modern jazz), the ascending form of the melodic minor is particularly important, so I practise that in both directions:

Jazz also uses the harmonic major scale and many other scales, so I mix some of these into my practice, although I find it easier to spend a few weeks/months focusing on one particular scale rather than attempt to cover all scales in every practice routine, which just seems too ambitious. Incidentally, back in 2013 I built the “Scale Matcher”, a web application to show which scales can be used for improvisation in any given chordal context.

Changing the key

Fortunately not all music in the world is written purely in B♭. Unfortunately this means we have to practise other keys too! I try to change key seamlessly without stopping, because this is one of the most fundamental requirements in jazz for improvising over a series of chord changes. Again I like to avoid any tonic bias by changing key on other degrees of the scale. For example, after completing one cycle of all 3 hand positions in B♭ minor, I could shift tonality up a semitone to B minor, changing near the top of the instrument:

or on the lowest note of the instrument:

or even somewhere in the middle:

This is a fun workout for the brain as well as the fingers!

Hand position “windows”

Above I’ve suggested a system for dealing with the cello’s limitation of not being able to play a continuous scale in any key without shifting the hand, which ensures that every possible fingering of a given scale can be methodically covered during practice.

However there’s a completely opposite approach, which is to embrace this limitation and simply fix your hand in a single position and only play the notes of the scale which you can reach from that position, dropping the others! This is particularly useful when improvising at speed, since it drastically reduces the amount of shifting required. I learnt this idea from three of my all-time cello heroes (Erik Friedlander, Mike Block, and Rushad Eggleston), and then extended it to apply to every scale I work on:

I’ve found that improvising within a given “window” can result in some interesting melodic shapes.

Patterns / shapes

Rather than simply ascending or descending, there are an infinite number of patterns to choose from for varying the shapes generated by traversing the scale. Here are a few simple examples:

(The last two were shamelessly stolen from Christian Howes.)

Rhythm / metronome usage

So far I haven’t said anything about rhythm or use of the metronome (which in my opinion is an essential part of scale practice). In fact this topic is so huge I’ll leave it for another blog post at another time! But of course there are an infinite number of ways to vary rhythm, and the western tradition tends not to examine these in much detail. One thing I enjoy doing is freely improvising the rhythm when playing scales, even if everything else (notes, fingerings etc.) is fixed.

Articulation

How to articulate with the bow is another huge topic, but this post is already way too long!

Conclusion

It’s clear that there are zillions of ways to vary scale practice and keep it interesting whilst challenging yourself in new ways. Perhaps the most important thing for any diligent musician is to constantly invent their own new practice systems, rather than just copying someone else’s verbatim.

If you’ve made it this far, congratulations! This is pretty dry reading, but I hope you found it useful or at least interesting. If you have any feedback of any sort, I’d love to hear it, so please leave a comment!

P.S. For the curious geeks, this blog post was created from a single text file with the combination of some incredible free software: the GNU Emacs editor, GNU Lilypond music typesetter, Org mode, org2blog, and the Org-babel-lilypond backend to Babel.

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London Tango Orchestra featured in BBC Persia documentary

Adam — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 21:06:24 +0000

These days I have the regular pleasure of playing in the London Tango Orchestra with some wonderful musicians. A while back we did some filming for a BBC Persia documentary, and we recently received copies of the videos, which came out pretty well! Take a look …

This next one is the gorgeous Piazzolla tune Milonga del Angel. Unfortunately the video and audio don’t match for the first half, but it gets back in sync at 3’35”:

and finally …

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cello lessons from a dead genius

Adam — Mon, 28 Jan 2013 19:05:50 +0000

Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time …

In the summer of 2011, I quit my job to resume full-time music studies. During the summer semester at the Berkeley Jazzschool in California, I started learning John Coltrane’s solo on the title track of his famous album Blue Train. It was really tough going, but addictive – I was getting my arse handed to me on a plate on a daily basis by a dead person, but I felt like I was way off the well-trodden path and that was really satisfying!

After 3 months studying in various places in the USA, I got back home and resumed work on this transcription in earnest. It became part of my daily routine, and I craved the day that I could play the whole thing note perfect at the same speed as the original. There were so many notes to fit in that I had to come up with totally new ways to use my left thumb, on which the normal cellist’s callus grew to epic proportions. Trane became the best cello teacher I never had. Unfortunately, just around the time I was getting close to being able to nail it, real life intervened, and I had to refocus on earning money. Inspired by Benoît Sauvé’s incredible rendition of the same solo on recorder (recorder?! what a mofo – check out his other videos), I did a couple of very rough recordings with my compact camera for posterity, and moved on.

Sometime later, I discovered a John McLaughlin video on YouTube (sadly no longer available) which had an awesome animated transcription at the bottom – a really cool glimpse inside the craft of a master musician. Then it occurred to me that I could do the same kind of thing with my video, and publish it in case there are any other jazz cellists out there who would be interested in it. I put a lot of effort into notating and fingering it, so it seemed a waste to just let it rot and never see the light of day. After all, I already had the source files and a video, so it was just a simple matter of combining the two, right? How hard could it be?

Very very hard, it turns out. I had to write two new pieces of software, completely overhaul a third, and fix some obscure bugs hidden deep inside a fourth. But I didn’t discover that until I’d reached the point of no return …

I’ll probably blog more at some point about the software engineering hoops I had to jump through in order to make this all work. Email me if you’re interested.

In the mean time, hope you enjoy the video! (You can also view it on YouTube.)

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Rediscovering music

Adam — Fri, 12 Aug 2011 03:18:08 +0000

I’m sitting on a plane from LA to Chicago. This is my fifth flight in the last two months, having already been to New York, Ohio, Florida, and California, and it’s probably about time I explain what the hell I’m doing, as I have friends and family who have seen various confusing status updates I’ve posted on Facebook and Twitter whom I owe the full story.

Just over two years ago, I blogged about taking a leap of faith and turning down two great jobs because they didn’t involve doing something I was truly passionate about. It was a gamble, but even after two months I could tell it was going to pay off. Sure enough, two years later, I found myself with a wealth of new experience and knowledge which I’d had a ton of fun acquiring, plus a healthy boost to my CV and set of friends and connections within the industry.

Then the stars aligned again, and I found myself with another life-changing dilemma: take an even more awesome job than the one I was in, or quit IT altogether and face an indefinite period of zero income. Pretty obvious what to do, right? I quit.

If that sounds crazy, it’s because it probably was – definitely another leap into the unknown. But I’ll try to explain my decision. I’ve had a number of life-changing decisions to make over the years, and I’m gradually learning to trust my gut instincts in those moments, because they’re generally right. I think they work out well because they’re usually based on my need to keep doing things I love doing (or to put it another way, my pathetic lack of tolerance for things I don’t enjoy), rather than concerns about money and other tedious “real world” distractions.

But wait, I hear you ask – didn’t I just say I decided not to pursue an even more awesome job than the one I loved doing for the last two years? How could my instincts guide me away from that? There are two parts to the answer.

Firstly, I had a bit of luck recently which combined with existing savings and investments meant that I could afford not to work for a while. Secondly, I’ve had an itch for a long time to play more music, and it just wouldn’t go away. In fact it kept growing and growing, until (20 years later than would have been ideal) I identified it as a basic need that I’m stuck with for good. When I say “play more music”, I don’t mean the kind where you go off and play along with CDs in your bedroom every now and again, or join an amateur orchestra. That’s enough for some people, and I totally respect that – but for some reason (false pride, perhaps) I could never bear to think of myself as a hobbyist musician. For better or worse, I only ever enjoy playing music when I’m playing to the best of my ability, and experiencing real progress.

Unfortunately, in music as with many things in life, progress requires hard grind – the standard blood, sweat and tears formula. Jazz musicians call it “shedding” which is short for “woodshedding”, because the idea is you lock yourself in a woodshed for 6 months and practice non-stop. If a 15 year career in IT has taught me anything, it’s that you can’t develop your musicianship quickly alongside a full-time job outside music. So I quit. Or at least, I’m taking sabbatical. To be honest I have no idea what will happen. Maybe I’ll go back to IT full-time, maybe part-time, maybe never. Right now I’m just focusing on studying, practising, playing with other people … whatever I can do to improve.

I decided that I’m most interested in developing my non-classical skills, especially jazz but also various types of folk, pop, Indian, and whatever else takes my fancy. I’ve played (Western) classical music my whole life and had some of the most incredible experiences from it, but now I want to explore what can be done on the cello outside that – cello is such a versatile instrument and there’s a whole new sound world which is a mostly untrodden path at this point.

That’s all I have time for now, but I’ll blog again soon about the amazing experiences I’ve already had around the USA in the last two months – I have a whole ton of photos, audio and video, so watch this space!

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Flying with a (carbon fibre) cello

Adam — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 21:17:46 +0000

When flying, most cellists are faced with either buying an extra ticket or getting a flight case, paying oversized baggage fees, and praying. Experiences vary widely and are in places well documented and full of useful advice, e.g.

My situation is different because I have a Luis and Clark carbon fiber cello which is incredibly robust and generally does not even go out of tune when checked in as normal baggage and placed in the hold of the aircraft in a normal hard case. My case is a Bam Hightech measuring 54.5 × 21 × 13.75″. It seems virtually all airlines policies regarding oversized baggage operate in “linear” or total dimensions, which generally means by summing up the 3 separate dimensions together (although in some cases the wording is so confused, even that’s not clear). This means my case has a linear dimension of 89.25″ which unfortunately is outside the 62″ standard limit, and even just outside Delta’s second tier limit of 80″. Having said that, so far I have always managed to get it treated as normal sized baggage just by behaving exactly as if it was a normal suitcase, or even need be simply by confidently pointing out that the height is 54.5″ which is under 62″. In my experience, most staff at the check-in gate are not familiar with the exact terms in their airline’s policies, so having the right attitude (confidently knowledgeable and up-front but non-confrontational) can go a long way.

I’ve done some research on the policies of some popular airlines and referenced the relevant extracts below, with one section per airline. The quotes I’ve taken are focused mainly on national flights within the USA, because despite being from the UK, I’m currently flying around the USA a lot. However the policies for international flights seem similar, although sometimes with higher fees.

N.B. In addition to the below fees, most airlines typically charge around $25 for checking an extra bag.

Delta Air Lines

http://www.delta.com/traveling_checkin/baggage/special_baggage/musical_instruments/index.jsp

What Musical Instruments Can Be Checked?
Musical instruments or equipment can be checked if the total linear dimension (length+width+height) does not exceed 115 inches (292 cm) and provided the weight, including the case, does not exceed 100 lbs. (45 kg).
Standard rules and fees for overweight and oversized baggage

http://www.delta.com/traveling_checkin/baggage/excess_baggage/index.jsp#oversize

175 USD/CAD* for bags measuring 63–80 inches (161-203 cm) in combined length, width, and height. Some Specialty Items may be exempt from this fee.

300 USD/CAD* for bags measuring 81-115 inches (204-292 cm) in combined length, width, and height. Some Specialty Items may be exempt from this fee

Summary – could cost over $300 but been lucky so far.

Jetblue Airways

http://help.jetblue.com/SRVS/CGI-BIN/webisapi.dll/,/?St=351,E=0000000000047971896,K=4928,Sxi=18,Case=obj(2132)

Musical instruments as checked baggage:
There is no charge for Musical instruments as long as they are within size and weight requirements. JetBlue accepts no liability for damage to Musical instruments. We suggest packing them in a hard-sided container designed for travel.

http://help.jetblue.com/SRVS/CGI-BIN/webisapi.dll/,/?St=351,E=0000000000047971896,K=4928,Sxi=18,Case=obj(634)

63 – 80 inches (203.2 centimeters): $75 per bag
Bags over 80 inches: Will not be accepted

Summary: could be forced to buy an extra cabin ticket, or even turned away. However they have a good reputation amongst cellists.

United Airlines

http://www.united.com/page/article/0,6867,50773,00.html#music

Maximum weight/size for musical instruments as checked baggage
50 pounds/62 linear inches
(23 kg/158 linear cm)

However standard oversized baggage allowed up to 115 linear inches:

http://www.united.com/page/article/0,6867,52907,00.html#oversize

for fee of $100:

http://www.united.com/page/article/1,,53403,00.html

Summary: musical instruments discriminated against and limited to max of 62″ whereas other oversized baggage can go up to 115″ for cost of $100.

Frontier Airlines

http://www.frontierairlines.com/frontier/plan-book/travel-info-services/baggage/baggage-chart.do;jsessionid=5DBD43BCE9C1368C59705E648F626AD4

For musical instruments, no extra charges but excess, oversize and overweight charges apply if applicable.

http://www.frontierairlines.com/frontier/plan-book/travel-info-services/baggage/checked-baggage.do

We know it’s a weighty issue, but please remember items which exceed 62 linear inches (length + width + depth) or weigh more than 50 pounds will incur a fee. There is a $75 fee for bags exceeding these weight limitations and a $75 fee for exceeding the size limitation. These fees are charged separately and one item can incur multiple fees. You can read more about baggage in the Contract of Carriage (PDF).
We take the safety of our passengers and employees very seriously. Frankly folks, our employees have to lift and carry these bags to get them to your flight and we’d really like to keep those checked bags under 50 pounds each. And, as much as we’d like to help, we don’t accept baggage that weighs more than 100 pounds or exceeds 110 linear inches (length + width + depth). If you need to transport items this large, please check with your favorite package delivery company. Thanks for your understanding of our policy.

Summary: $75 worst case – the best policy I’ve found so far.

Continental Airlines

http://www.continental.com/CMS/en-US/travel/Pages/BaggageExcess.aspx

Oversized Baggage

Customers who travel with checked baggage exceeding 62 linear inches (157 cm) (total length + width + height) will be charged at the rate of $100.00 per piece for travel within the U.S., and between the U.S. and Canada, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Customers to Mexico, the Caribbean, Central America, and South America with oversize baggage will be charged at the rate of $200.00 per piece.

These charges are in addition to any charge assessed for additional or overweight baggage.

Baggage measuring more than 115 in (292 cm) (total outside dimensions; length + width + height) will not be accepted as checked baggage.

Summary: $100 worst case.

American Airlines

http://www.aa.com/i18n/travelInformation/baggage/baggageAllowance.jsp#overweight

Checked baggage which is larger than 62 in/157 cm will be charged at the rate of $200 per piece.
Baggage measuring more than 126 in/320 cm will not be accepted as checked baggage.
…
Instruments may also be transported as checked baggage, however, due to their fragile nature AA does not accept liability for damages and has limited liability for loss. AA is also not liable for any damage to checked musical instruments not presented in a hard-sided case. If the outside of the hard-sided case does not have visible damage, AA is not liable for any damage to the musical instrument inside the case.

The implications of the last two sentences don’t make any sense – if they do not accept liability for damage (as in the previous sentence), why even bother specifying requirements for hard cases and visible damage on the outside?

Summary: as bad as Delta, and with highly ambiguous wording regarding liability for damage.

Conclusion

Any cello case, even a non-flight case, will exceed the standard 62″ limit for oversized checked baggage, and unless you are lucky at check-in, will incur a fee typically around $75 to $100. Most cello cases are unlikely to top the overweight baggage restrictions. Generally musical instruments are subject to a slightly different “special baggage” policy to normal checked baggage, but usually this amounts to a disclaimer of liability and similar or identical rules regarding dimensions. Some airline policies are much worse, e.g. Delta, will potentially charge a whopping $300 for exceeding 80 linear inches, but having said that I have travelled with Delta several times and they didn’t charge me any oversize fee at all, just the extra checked item fee. United could potentially require a cabin ticket, and Frontier have the cheapest and most tolerant policy I’ve found so far.

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kids are pretty cool

Adam — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 15:25:00 +0000

If you want a shining example of how to get kids to enjoy making music, look no further than Pete Churchill and the Merton Music Foundation. Last night I played in the Music is for Life concert at the Royal Albert Hall with about 1500 kids (some aged over 30) and it was a complete riot. Well, I guess anything involving that many kids is going to be a riot, but this one was very organised and massive amounts of fun. Great music too, coming from Pete whose composition career is so successful that (in his own words) it’s taken him as far and wide as Australia and Woking.

Unexpected side effect: the cravings to play jazz more often are getting too hard to ignore. If you see me starving on the sidewalk in a few years’ time with a big “will play bop for food” sign then you’ll know how it happened.

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Jazz cello

Adam — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 21:14:00 +0000

Doing a gig with Pete Churchill and some mates from my band in the Royal Albert Hall on Monday – haven’t played jazz cello in a while so really looking forward to it. No improvisation but I’ve heard Pete’s writing is really great so should be fun.

Also following hot on the heels of a mad mid-carnival gig, the next monthly installment of Guanabara goodness from my band is on April 4th – come check it out!

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