The Hardest Thing about Learning Cello as an Adult | My Dirty Little Secret
I’ve already addressed the question, “Is it hard to learn the cello?,” but the question is so interesting, especially for us adult learners, that I’m returning to it to make an argument for what I think may be the single absolute hardest aspect.
For adult learners, there are a lot of options to choose from: physical tension, ear training, carving out the time for consistent practice….
For me, I’ve found that the hardest aspect is actually a psychological one.
I’m sure you’ve heard the stigma surrounding stringed instruments that “you have to start as a child if you want to become a real player.”
It’s a sentiment I’m well aware of, because I heard it constantly from most of the people who found out that I had started learning at age 25 from scratch.
Don’t get me wrong, there were a number of people - faculty I met when I went back to school for cello along with most of my cello teachers - who encouraged me to become the exception to ‘the rule,’ and I’m beyond grateful to them for their support.
But most people, upon hearing when I started, instantly put a limit on how good I could possibly be without even hearing me play.
Because of this, as I progressed and eventually started getting called for various types of gigs and work, I felt like I had a dirty little secret that I had to hide at all costs.
Who wants to hire an adult learner when this town is filled with players who started before kindergarten?
I would get panicky the moment the conversation with a potential employer or student arrived at my experience…
“So, great. You’ve been playing for a while then, I bet! When did you start?”
Warning! Warning! Initiate evasive manuevers.
“Oh, it’s been sooo long….I can’t even remember my life without the cello in it…”
I felt like Hester Prynne from Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter; I too had a red “A” stitched onto the chest region of anything I wore. Only, instead of “A” for adultery, it was “A” for adult learner.
On the outside, I was the first to tell people that anything’s possible and that this societal view that you have to sacrifice your childhood to achieve greatness in something like cello was total bullshit.
But I realized eventually that even against my own best intentions, the stigma was actually limiting my progress and to be honest, it’s something I still battle today.
The most basic way it limits an adult learner is it influences you not to believe in yourself and what you are capable of.
Since we all “know” that only kids can grow up to be real players, most adults immediately close that door to unqualified greatness and tell themselves that this is only going to be a hobby and that, even if they fall in love with playing, there’s a long list of their favorite cello pieces that they know they’ll never play.
Whatever our goals with the cello happen to be, the limitations we put on ourselves due to this stigma are totally unnecessary and can only slow us down.
I mean, come on! Especially in the beginning months, I would argue that a 30 year old beginner has a great chance of taking out a 5 year old every time!
Okay, that was a weird sentence. But you know what I mean.
The second, more subtle way the childhood stigma affects adults learners may not happen to all of us, but I have noticed it in myself and I want to share it with you because it is probably the biggest obstacle I’ve faced in recent years.
I found myself becoming more and more obsessed with routines in my practice.
I would do whatever I could to get the best instruction possible - and I’ve been fortunate to study with a number of world class teachers - and then I would devise practice routines that would systematically work their instruction into my playing.
This approach would work up until a point but then I would hit a wall.
I kept hitting a point where I understood theoretically how to bring my playing to the next level, and would even achieve it momentarily during lessons, but then on my own the routines I devised - ironically out of fear of losing what I had been taught - would slowly bring my progress to a mere trickle of what it should have been given the amount of work I was putting in.
I was slavishly following the prescriptions of my teachers, and the luckier I felt to have had such an incredible lesson, the less I would trust myself to seek out creative ways of implementing the instructions.
I think this is one area where most kids have a distinct advantage over us.
They’re not wondering, ‘am I really even good enough to play at x level?’
They just try things.
They experiment more freely, and this allows them to learn from themselves, to teach themselves at times during practice.
My rigid, well-intentioned routines were sapping the creativity out of my practice.
I wasn’t trusting my ear enough or trying to make certain techniques my own; I didn’t feel qualified to do so.
Realizing this was a major milestone for me, as was the realization that, behind the block I was experiencing and deep deep down in my core, I still somewhat believed the stigma, “you should have started as a child.”
I have a real life story that provides a perfect example:
In the summer of 2018 I was super fortunate to get a chance to study at the Meadowmount School of Music.
It’s a summer program for very talented kids…..so I felt slightly out of place considering I was old enough to have fathered most of the students.
I was older than the camp counselors.
Like 40-year-old-attending-high-school-prom level of awkward at times.
But I didn’t care, I was there to learn cello and I had a chance to study intensively for eight weeks with a truly world class teacher.
As an adult, Meadowmount was almost like a fantasy.
You live in a spartan cabin nestled into the woods, you walk along dirt paths shaded by the canopies of the surrounding trees (photo) on your way to anywhere.
There is very limited cell reception so you can’t really use your phone.
You don’t have a car, you don’t spend a portion of every day in traffic.
You don’t even have to figure out your food.
You have all day to practice, to take lessons, to watch others perform. Total immersion.
It seemed like the perfect recipe for success and rapid progress.
And it was, for about the first four weeks. But then, something happened.
Each lesson my teacher pushed me to shatter whatever barriers I had in my playing, and then the next lesson we aimed for the next set of barriers beyond those, etc.
In the weekly group workshops I would hear the kids to the right and left of me, kids less than half my age, and they were absolutely flourishing.
It’s like they were young healthy plants being fed miracle grow and water every 6 hours.
I, too, was making rapid progress, but halfway through…I buckled.
The pace was fast and I became so worried about keeping all the new progress I had made that I was frantically trying to ingrain the previous week’s concepts without being present and open to the current week’s teachings.
I started to worry if maybe I was a little too old, maybe I couldn’t really learn at that same pace, etc.
A voice inside me told me that I was an adult and so this was going to be much harder for me.
I believed that voice and started practicing 6 to 7 hours a day, but instead of using practice as a time for creative experimentation and growth, I turned it into a merciless regimen of rote, mirthless repetition.
My rate of progress slowed and after the program I could tell that my teacher was bummed out somewhat because I had seemingly hit a wall that I just couldn’t seem to climb over, certainly not in the span of a single week.
Looking back, I realize that while I was willing to spend as many hours a day as needed to make the progress, I wasn’t willing to experiment, to free myself up and take a childlike approach to learning.
I didn’t trust myself to creatively use the instruction I was being given.
Ironically I didn’t feel like I had the time for experimentation, because I needed results ASAP! So I kept putting my nose to the grindstone, trying to tunnel my way through a boulder I could have probably circumnavigated if I had taken the time to try a new approach.
Letting go of my hangups with having started cello as an adult is something I’m still working on today.
I notice it as a reflex whenever I tackle a difficult new piece of repertoire, it’s that little voice in my head that just says, “woah! are…are you sure?”
Yes, godammit, I’m sure.
I think the faster we can identify the psychological barriers we have, the faster we can break through them.
For me personally, after these moments of honest introspection and insight I always feel like the path has been cleared and I’m ready to speed along towards my ultimate artistic goals.
