Bassy/Shoulder Strapped Cello

I wrote this piece today for a tutoring agency I belong to, but it's also relevant to this blog...

Over the last year, I have been exploring playing the cello whilst standing. Inspired by metal quartet Apocalyptica, bluegrass/punk cellist Rushad Eggleston and Hungarian folk 'bassy', or shoulder-strapped three stringed cello, I set out to develop my own technique for playing whilst standing, walking and dancing. This was in conjunction with some serious study of klezmer bass line playing and trying out a German pattern double bass bow to get a real stomping bass sound.

I'm not going to write about the technique I eventually settled on, but point out some of the cellists I took inspiration from and explain why I enjoy the freedom my new technique allows. My technique works for what I'm playing when I'm standing up, which is slow-ish moving lines on the lower strings, with an emphasis on rhythm and sound projection, but it won't work for everyone and this is an unorthodox area and I'd encourage anyone who wants to try it (or anything other unusual technique) to experiment and find something that works for them.

I'll start my discussion of standing cellists with my favorite, Rushad Eggleston, former member of Boston bluegrass band Crooked Still and front man of Tornado Rider. There's a great video of him playing at the New Directions Cello festival here:

He's a phenomenal cellist and there's a real energy to his music and visual performance, as he is able to leap about the stage. I would suggest that, by expressing rhythm, energy and enthusiasm through his body, Eggleston is better able to express them musically. The music we make comes from a hollistic experience and you have to be engaged totally, I mean physically,mentally, everything, in your music to really communicate it fully to the audience and rhythm, especially, is something we understand through our bodies. Try clapping a complex rhythm whilst sitting at the front of a chair, feet shoulder width apart and back straight. Then cross you legs slouch, lean back in the chair and try again. Which is easier? So, my arguement is that Eggleston's performances are more engaging when he stands. You can compare and contrast with this video of him sitting:

How does he do it? Firstly, he carries the cello on a shoulder strap (a long guitar strap will do the job) over his left shoulder, attached to the instrument where neck joins the body (you can tie it on) and at the endpin (put the spike through the hole in the strap.The collar will stop it coming off). He positions the instrument at a 45 degree angle to his body. You can see from the video that the lower strings are easy to play, with the weight of the right arm being directed naturally into the string. About half way through the first video, Eggleston plays a solo which uses the top string. This is harder work and you can see he has to lift his right arm quite high to reach, leaving him without much arm weight to direct into the string.

Next to Zsolt Kurtosi, Hungarian folk and klezmer cellist and bassist and member of Budowitz klezmer band. He carries his instrument in the same way as Eggleston, but uses a German pattern baroque style bass bow. As he's playing exclusively bass lines, the awkwardness of accessing the top string just isn't an issue.

Last but not least, with a different approach, is Apocalyptica, four cellists (and sometimes a drummer) from Helsinki. In playing various styles of metal, their visual performance is almost as important as their music and they need to be able to move around the stage and interact with the audience. The following video shows them (mostly) sitting down to play Sepultura's 'Refuse/Resist', with a phenomenally virtuosic solo around half way through (practice those scales, guys!), by a standing member of the group. He plants his instrument, with the spike fully extended, on the floor, stands over it and just 'gies it laldy' (a nice Glaswegian term for really going for it, putting everything into a task). By placing his feet wide apart, he is giving himself a solid base and supports the instrument with his right knee and left shoulder and bending his knees brings him closer in height to a sitting position.

In brief, I've adopted a technique where I carry the instrument on a shoulder strap, like Eggleston and Kurtosi, holding it anywhere between 45 degrees to my body and almost horizontal (this is fun, as the up bow becomes the strong stroke and the down bow the weak. My bow holds are pretty weird-and-wonderful too, but that's for another discussion), depending on the style of what I'm playing, how fast it is and what articulation and timbre I need. The really great thing about it is that it's so liberating: I'm able to experience the pulse in my whole body (very imprtant for a bass line player and especially for me, as rhythm and pulse are not my strongest areas) by being able to walk and dance whilst playing. I've found a new freedom, as have the people I play with, who are no-longer physically tied to one place during performance by a seated cellist, to walk around and interact with my audience in a new way, proceed on and off stage, and integrate music with dancing when playing for dancers.

I have a few words of advice to anyone (whatever their instrument) setting out to experiment technically. Firstly, you must have a really solid technical grounding. I don't mean you have to be some virtuoso musician, but have an understanding of how your instrument and your body work efficiently and how they work together, be able to apply that knowledge to your playing, know how to listen to the aural and physical information that comes from your instrument and your body during playing and act on them and know how to practice efficently. If you don't have these skills, find a teacher who can really explain technique. Once you have this base of knowledge, then you can go exploring.