Feb 14 2006
I Want A Cello
A few years ago I had a vivid dream about learning to play the cello. It’s been on my mind ever since, so today I finally looked into getting one. Costco.ca has a Marquis one for sale for $469 Canadian, which is cheap, but I suspect too cheap; Before You Buy A Cello has some advice, but what does Proper placement of the bridge, not too high or too soft mean? Not knowing how to buy one, I looked into renting one. Kevin Cairns (no relation, to my surprise; I never met a Cairns that wasn’t a relative) at Musicstop said I could rent one for $50 per month for a minimum of three months. If I decide to keep it, the rental cost goes towards the purchase price, which is about $1,000. They have to tune and clean one in Halifax, which will be shipped in a couple weeks.
As to learning how to play it, I think I’ll buy a beginner’s book and go from there. I taught myself how to play the guitar fairly easily, so I figure this shouldn’t be too different. I’ll post a picture of it when it arrives.
Email This Post
Tags: cello
Jody: The mellow fellow with the cello. Hello!
Cool. You should master it and form a jazz band called “J0dy and jazz airliners”.
Learning the Cello as an Adult is an interesting article. I’m thinking I should start a betting pool to see how long I keep at it.
I’d never learn a musical instrument, there’s enough musicians out there that they don’t need me crapping things up. Although the acordion has always interested me, mostly because I’d get to wear lederhosen. I find it’s always good to get back to one’s Bavarian roots.
Hey Jody… I am in the same boat! While I play fiddle, I have always loved cello and had the opportunity to pick up an old beat up cello from a friend. We traded… he wanted my hegner scroll saw and I wanted a cello. I love the tone but man it’s ugly…haha. Lots of scars. Vanity got the better of me and I ordered one from guitaronline on Ebay. While it’s pretty, it doesn’t have the tone of my old one. Perhaps the day will come when common sense will reign and I will trade them both in on one of reasonable quality, but ONLY if the tone is as good or better that the old beater!
Here’s a website that I found extremely useful. It has some really good exercises for us novice cellists!
http://www.erikfriedlander.com/cello.htm
enjoy! Time to go and practice again!
Lynda
I phoned Musicstop today and they said they’d have one for me by Friday or early next week; he’s going to call me when it’s ready. Cool.
MusicStop phoned me today: the cello was ready to be picked up. I go there after work, sign my life away ($50/month plus $8/month insurance for a minimum of 3 months), and take it home. It’s in a blue, soft-shell case. It’s a lot smaller than I expected; I was thinking it’d be as tall as me, but it’s only up to my belly without the stand. Unfortunately, when I take it out of the case I see one of its strings are broke (G, I think; the 2nd one from the bottom if you were holding it like a guitar). That’s a pain, but it shouldn’t be a big deal to buy a new string. I called Musicstop and ask how much cello strings are. “One one six”, the fella says. “What?”, I ask. “One one six,” he repeats. “Do you mean one hundread and sixteen dollars?!” Yeah, he does. Fuck. So I tell him I just rented it today and what does he recommended. He passes me to Kevin Cairns, the main instrument rental guy, and he says bring it in and they’ll restring a new one for me. I brought it back in and they’re going to put a new string on it for me. I’m going to pick it up tomorrow.
So, that’s my first day with a cello.
A hundred and sixteen dollars. Jesus.
So, your rental is paying for the fix. Nice!
how do you get this thing around on the motorcycle….its getting warmmmmmm….no snoww……
I rode the bike the first time this year today. It took about 10 minutes to warm up, but then I took it for a ride and no problems. So nice. Dawn and I drove around for about 45 minutes. I’ll be taking it to work from now on, unless it snows; and it will snow.
What the hell you going to do with a cello? Do you play it like a stand up bass? Will you cart it to friends houses to accompany a guitar, or do we come see you? And whatever happened to your guitar and electric bass?
116 dollars?
Thats weird.
I played cello for 8 years and probably broke 20 strings in my lifetime and never paid anymore then 30 (30 for a C string) and about 10 for an A.