Cello for Adult Beginners

In this lesson, we'll talk about the history of the cello, and how the instrument as we know it today came to be. To do this, we also have to go through some of the anatomy of the instrument, so that we can learn how that changed a bit over the years, and so that we know the most important parts of the cello.

Here, we're going to go over some important considerations for how to find a cello, if you don't already have one, including talking about whether to rent or purchase. Even if you already have a cello, I recommend still watching this lesson, because we also go over some really helpful accessories that you'll want, and some of them (like rosin) are necessities.

In this lesson, we talk about some best practices for keeping your cello healthy...important whether you rent or own.

Good posture/physical form and relaxation are crucial at the cello. Not only can these help you to get the best sound and the most enjoyment possible, but they can also help to prevent injury.

This is a fun lesson, especially for those interested in science/physics/acoustics. It's just a short video where we go over some fundamentals about how sound and pitch actually work.

Following up on Lesson 4, this is another super important lesson to help prevent injury, so please watch carefully and implement these exercises accordingly, to the extent that it's safe for you to do so. CORRECTION: I misspoke around 4 minutes in. What I meant was turn your head to the right, not the left, and later to bring it down towards the right, not the left. I apologize for any confusion.

Ready to start playing? It's time! Here, we're going to start off with the right hand/arm, and talk about the intricacies of how to hold the cello bow.

Now that we've covered a lot with the right hand/arm, it's time to move to the left hand. Here, we'll go over the basics of the left hand at the cello.

Warming up well is absolutely critical to enjoyable and safe playing. Here, I'll take you through a suggested routine that's great for beginner cellists!

The first music that we'll cover is a set of two pieces I've compiled, and they're known as "études", which is French for "studies". These are great building blocks for your technique, and once you've learned them, you can play along with me (more on that in the lesson video).

Here we go...pieces! We'll cover some music by Bach and Dvořák, as well as a piece I wrote just for this course!

Effective practicing is key. So here, I'll give you some tips that will help you with the music we've just covered.

This is exciting, we're going to move out of first position! Here, we'll enter the world of shifting between positions, so that we can unlock more notes on the cello.

I don't see much point in learning a new technique if we can't apply it to music, so here, I'm going to introduce two new pieces. One by Beethoven, and one by Vivaldi.

With new techniques often comes the need for new kinds of practicing. So here, I'll take you through some more practice tips to help you maximize your enjoyment at the cello.

Creating this course has been an incredible journey, and I couldn't have done it alone. So there are some people I want to thank wholeheartedly with these closing remarks, including you, for entrusting your cello education to me.

In this lesson, we start from a very basic question: What is rhythm? Once we've talked about that, we go through all of the accompanying terms that are used when talking about rhythm, and then you'll learn more about how it works, and how it's notated.

In this lesson, I take you through the basics of reading music, and give you some ways to practice this new skill.

Practice suggestion:

I've linked to this on the resources page, but I want to highlight how valuable musictheory.net is for practicing your music reading. Just go to their website and set up your exercise exactly how I showed you in the video, and you'll be in business. I'm not affiliated with that site, but it's totally free, and I think it's fantastic for practice.

This is a lesson on the fundamentals of music theory, which is a broad field of study that basically helps us understand how music works. We're only scratching the surface here, but it's an important thing to introduce, and I hope you'll find yourself seeking out more information about it on your own after this course.

A great resource I wanted to highlight:

All of the resources you need will be on the resources page, which I've linked to throughout this course. However, I want to especially emphasize teoria.com. It's an amazing website that offers loads of music theory information in both English and Spanish. I don't have any affiliation with them, nobody is paying me to say this...I just think it's a great site that'll really help you out, and it's all totally free.