The #1 Hurdle for Adult Cello Learners
Drumroll…
It’s physical tension, hands down.
In our adult lives physical tension simply becomes a part of our daily routine. Our hands grip the steering wheel stuck in traffic, our toes grip our sandals while we walk, and our neck muscles work overtime as we sit hunched in front of phones and laptops.
The worst part is we don’t even realize it. We have become accustomed to operating with a little bit of tension at all times.
Now you give us a cello and a bow, neither of which feel comfortable at first to use, and you ask us to play a scale with a beautiful tone and maybe even a little vibrato in the left hand.
Most of us will have clenched various parts of our bodies before we even touch the bow hair to the string. Why? Because playing the cello requires physical effort and it’s hard to do.
However, physical tension left unchecked will inevitably lead to either injury or a plateau in progress.
As someone who has dealt extensively with this issue, I want to dive into a couple of areas in which physical tension is most obviously detrimental to one’s playing.
Then I will give you a few ways to test your physical tension levels and some solutions that helped me.
TENSION IN THE RIGHT ARM
For an adult learner, the first likely source of tension comes from simply holding the bow. The thumb and fingers work together in a balancing act that ideally provides complete flexibility in the fingers and also the supple strength needed to produce a wide variety of dynamics and nuance.
When the fingers and thumb are out of balance, however, the bow grip becomes fixed and rigid, like a plaster cast.
The main causes of this tension are a thumb that is locked straight or conversely fingers that are locked straight, keeping the bow far away from the palm of the hand.
Either of these situations will make the thumb and the fingers pinch the bow like a vice grip. Here are a couple of videos where I demonstrate exercises to promote finger flexibility in the bow:
A second area of tension in the bow arm can be the right shoulder. In my journey and in my teaching I’ve found that tension or fatigue in the right shoulder is usually the result of a few problems.
First, many adult learners tighten their core when they play because they feel that keeping their midsection rigid helps them feel more in control of their movements.
While it may feel secure to rigidify your core while you play, unfortunately you are now forcing your shoulder to do all of the work in powering your bow arm.
Ideally, we want to use our back muscles when we bow.
Try imagining a lightning current starting on a point in the right side of your back and running all the way to the tip of your fingers. Any time you allow physical tension to build up at any point in the current (at the shoulder, the forearm, the wrist, etc.) you are breaking up that current and no longer allowing your large back muscles to power your bowing.
Failing to adjust to the difference in physics of the bow can also put extra stress on the shoulder.
If you put the bow at the frog on any string you will notice that your hand can naturally sink into the string. Your arm is in close to your body and you feel powerful. Keep that sensation in your mind and now move your bow so that you are at the tip on the same string.
If you kept the same exact bow hold and heaviness in the arm, the bow would fly off of the string because allowing your bow hand to sink down while you are at the tip will actually push the tip of the bow into the air.
To correct this change in physics we have to pronate our hand and pour its weight and power mainly into the first finger on the bow stick. You’ll notice also that this pronation in the bow hand can also be felt in the right shoulder.
Essentially, we are creating torque so that we can overcome the weak position we find ourselves in at the tip.
If we do not pronate at the tip properly, however, we end up over-squeezing the bow and overworking with our shoulder because we are bowing against gravity.
TENSION IN THE LEFT ARM
For many of us, the first time we realize we are still playing with way too much tension is when we try to learn vibrato.
We see top players vibrating with such relaxation; they can easily adjust the speed and width of their vibratos to create unique musical effects and moods.
Then we try a little vibrato ourselves and something strange happens.
Even though we’re putting in a lot of physical work, our left arm from the shoulder down seems to have seized up and the vibrato we hear sounds like a hummingbird’s heart beat. The physical tension in various points along the left arm have rendered it stiff and we are unable to create a vibrato that is slow enough or wide enough to sound beautiful (nor do we have the control needed to produce different types of vibrato).
For this reason vibrato can actually become a trusted ally for us adult learners. Put simply, it is almost impossible to achieve a beautiful vibrato if you have excessive physical tension in either of your arms (or your midsection, or your neck).
Every joint from your fingertips to your shoulders needs to be supple and well balanced, and once you have achieved a balanced, tension free playing position, you can then send pulses through your left arm that will roll the fingertips of the left hand back and forth (vibrato) as you play.
In developing a good vibrato most adult learners will inevitably have to unlearn areas of physical tension on their body that have become habitual.
This is why it can be so hard to learn vibrato, but it also means that you are killing two birds with one stone, expanding your musical options and eliminating points of tension on the way.
Along with compromising our ability to create vibrato, physical tension also prohibits us from being able to play fast passages.
I remember the feeling of being in the middle of a fast passage of music with every muscle and tendon in my left hand tensed up and ready to pounce!
Of course, since my entire hand was tense, my movements were too large and actually quite sluggish, and combining that with overly large motions in my bow hand, that type of passage quickly fell apart into an uncoordinated mess. To unlearn this tension was essentially a two step process.
First, I incorporated a number of exercises that helped me recalibrate the amount of finger weight I actually used to play notes (below is a video showing one of those exercises):
Then I started working - both physically and mentally - on forming groups out of the notes in any given passage. In other words, in a tricky passage with 12 notes I would aim to form 3 groups of 4 notes or 2 groups of 6 notes. This way my brain would only send 2-3 signals into my hands instead of 12 signals (one signal per note) in the same amount of time.
Grouping notes helps with coordination and also makes the music actually feel slower since it’s easier to keep your mind just ahead of what you are currently playing.
As a result, I noticed my physical tension decreased dramatically whenever I was able to accomplish this grouping technique; it felt like I was effortlessly grabbing a handful of notes at a time like almond shavings out of a jar.
Those are the most notable situations in which physical tension affected my progress as an adult learner of the cello.
I have worked diligently over the years and have made great strides in freeing up my body and playing motions; but I can say with certainty that I will continue working on removing physical tension for the foreseeable future.
I view the physical act of playing cello like an enormous onion.
At the center is a small, solid core of pure musical intent, and surrounding it (especially for adult learners) are layer upon layer of physical tension and misguided sensory input. Every time we learn to exhale before making a large shift, or to draw sound out of the instrument instead of forcing sound with pressure, we peel a layer.
I like this analogy because after a revelation that causes an advance in technique, I often feel physically lighter and swifter in both arms since I have peeled away excess movement or effort.
And this onion analogy is especially apt for us adult learners, because many of us already have a strong core of musical intent that’s mature and ready to go, we just have to put in the effort to peel away the extra layers so that they don’t cloud the already beautiful core.
For those of you who are currently battling physical tension in one or more areas of cello playing, here are 3 ideas to investigate.
1. INVEST IN HEALTHY DOSES OF SLOW PRACTICE
I’m talking slow, and patient.
For left hand tension, practice slowly enough so that you can take a survey of your motions while you play in order to look for red flags.
Is your left thumb pressing into the back of the cello’s neck while you play?
Do your fingers continue to press the string into the fingerboard mercilessly even after dropping your finger into place?
Does your left elbow feel heavy or light?
Is your left shoulder raised unnecessarily?
Just realizing that you have a point of physical tension is the first major step towards working it out of your playing.
Knowledge is power, and your body is an eloquent teacher if you learn to listen to it.
Slow practice allows us to focus on one or two elements at a time while we play. Our brains digest information at a certain speed, and truly effective practice involves finding our personal processing speed and constantly feeding ourselves new information in perfectly sized bites.
When we want to focus on physical tension and not simply on the notes we’re playing, it only makes sense that we slow down the notes to open up some extra bandwidth.
2. START TAKING NOTICE OF WHETHER OR NOT YOU ARE HOLDING YOUR BREATH WHEN YOU PLAY, ESPECIALLY DURING PARTS THAT ARE DIFFICULT FOR YOU
If you are, learning to play while maintaining a deeper, calm breathing pattern can do wonders for alleviating physical tension, and it also helps you notice when tension begins to creep in, as it will likely affect your breathing.
With adult learners it is easy to allow our psychology to build mole hills into mountains.
We want to hit that shift, especially in front of other people, and we know it is a difficult shift for us.
By the time we need to execute it we have been gearing up for it for a bar and a half of music and allowing adrenaline to soak our muscles and coax them into tension.
Even if we hit the shift it will probably look and sound like those crime detectives on TV…“clearly there was a struggle.”
Learning to control your breathing will help you establish a repeatable routine to make the technical hurdle feel easier, and it will also help suppress that surge of adrenaline, since we can manipulate our nervous system and heart rate through breath work.
3. INVEST IN LESSONS IN ALEXANDER TECHNIQUE
Alexander Technique enables you to become aware of and to unlearn years of bad physical habits caused by stress and modern living.
Everything from your posture to the way you reach for a glass of water (or play a cello) can be optimized, and once you learn how to use your body the way it is designed to be used, it becomes easier to try optimizing more difficult tasks like playing the cello.
I personally came to Alexander Technique because I was starting to suffer a nerve impingement from practicing day and night with less than ideal body use, and I credit Alexander Technique as one of the biggest reasons I made a full recovery.
Learning to listen to my body has also helped me defend against future aches and strains as I can now register the earliest warning signs that previously would have gone unnoticed.
Here’s a video explaining the Alexander Technique by Julia Caulder. I did my private lessons with Julia and working with her was an amazing experience:
