I made a solo cello arrangement of Nessun Dorma. It's a great song and I managed to reduce a whole orchestra and opera singer into a single instrument. These are the sort of challenges I like!
Have a look at the youtube clip of it. could be better video quality…but you get the idea!
I will put the sheet music up on my store playcellomusic and then you too can play it, for only €3!
Video of new arrangement I just made of Pachelbel's Canon. I had alot of fun turning this stale staple in to "THE CANON"
You can play it, go to my music store to purchase the pdf!
I've made a video for Bach Air, of the solo cello arrangement available on playcellomusic. I need to learn how to use my recording/filming programmes better, but getting there….! It's a beautiful piece to play, and having only played the cello line for years is a lovely change to play the melody instead!
I am very excited to announce the opening of my new online store; PLAY CELLO MUSIC
Sheet music for my solo cello arrangements is available, as well as music for cello ensembles. More music to be added, but it is ready for sales and already there has been sales activity for pieces long in demand, so go and have a look. Any suggestions for new pieces to add are welcome.
More information to come and a great eBook of wedding favourites so you can get started gigging on solo cello. My aim is to help you have a repertoire to make you feel confident in going out and doing solo work.
Have a look, and PLAY CELLO MUSIC!
Another fun recording session for Caroline Fraher's new CD with the lovely and brilliant producer/guitarist Steve Cooney. As well as being a producer and guitarist, he has an amazing method for unlocking and teaching music, which I hope he writes the book for! Caroline has a lightly sparkling, shimmering voice, and is singing gorgeous songs. This CD is going to be a winner for her, very beautiful.
Recording sessions take alot of concentration on the fine details.
The important things to remember are:
Give every note the right feel and placement. This means keeping relaxed and open to the music, and finding a way for your sound to blend with the other recorded instruments as though you are playing in the same room with them. You have to become part of the band.
Listen to tuning constantly. Especially relative to the track. This can become very difficult playing along with out of tune instruments already recorded, and very easy with a nicely tuned piano. Although if you have been playing alot with other stringed instruments, playing with the equal temperament of the piano can take some getting used to. It can feel like the tuning goes against what the ear naturally wants to hear. Keep tuning your instrument regularly throughout the session and listen for the blend of your notes with the other voices. You are looking for a place for your note that doesn't poke out. Unless poking out is called for…
Keeping the arms, neck and body relaxed whilst playing is essential. It is easy to start letting the tension sneak up after a few hours or even a few minutes of intense concentration. Get up, walk around, have the breaks you need, but mostly, consciously relax your right arm into each bow stroke. Release all the arm muscles just before each new drop in point/entry. You should do this all the time anyway.
Be prepared. If you are not being given a specific part to play, make sure you have the songs sent to you beforehand, and write out at least the structure, but also chords and melody line as well as any ideas you might have. Writing out the bass line of the chords and the melody or lyrics on top helps. The more prepared you are the more relaxed.
Don't talk too much while recording. Try not to explain your mistakes. When given ideas, take them on, and try them. Be like a grassy field swaying in the wind!! Nothing worse than arguing and getting stressed about ideas. Be gentle… you know the rave. Big egos are not needed when you are hired to do the job!!!
And enjoy it!
I was recording with Marianne Lee, putting cello lines on 5 of her beautiful songs. She had an American sound engineer/producer, Kramer, come all the way over to Ireland to set up studio in her house. It's in Dublin and the road is busyish, so we were stuck to record in a tiny hot box room. Despite this, Kramer managed to get an amazing sound for the cello, using handmade microphones and Logic Pro. Check out his site and music!
| Who | Nigel Kennedy and the Cork Symphony Orchestra |
| When |
Friday, May 11, 2012
20:00
-
tickets available from Pro Musica, Oliver Plunkett St Cork 021421659
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All Ages
|
| Where |
City Hall (map)
East Albert Quay
Cork, Ireland Directions |
| Other Info | Brahms violin concert Dvorak Symphony No. 8 |
This is my composition/film called Love & Fissures. I recorded four cello tracks with the C-string tuned down to various levels of purr. The film is of my Irish hand woven blanket which I have had for 10 years. It has a life of it's own, and sneaking up behind it, I finally caught it doing it's strange dance on film!
Four hours of John Cage in the Triskel Arts centre in Cork last night with the Quiet Music Ensemble. Some incredible moments of freedom, beauty, peace, synchronicity, mirth (that was after in the pub) and incredible concentration from all 'sound artists' involved! I played Inlets with Sean McErlaine of QME and Mel Mercier who had performed this piece with John Cage! We had 4 conch shells each, of varying sizes. Water is swirled around inside and amplified, to create excellent glooping sounds. The music also includes pine cones on fire and a conch used as a horn. 32 minutes of glooping. Plus a short 15 minute version at the start of the performance while kids were around. Phew…
“If something is boring after two minutes, try it for four. If still boring, then eight. Then sixteen. Then thirty-two. Eventually one discovers that it is not boring at all.”
― John Cage
Also on the programme we played Four6, But what about the noise of crumpling paper and Ryanji, where I played the percussion part using the body of the cello and striking of the spike in unison, amplified to create an exciting yet funereal slow beat.
RTE Lyric F'M's Presenter Bernard Clarke and producer Eoin Brady were there to record the event, and Bernard did a stunning and pure reading of Cage's Themes and Variations, whilst various other Cage pieces were played around the venue, including Inlets, One10 violin solo from the balcony (lesya Iglody) Chaconne (Keith Pasco), harps, electronica of the Quiet Club and more…
To be broadcast on Lyric fm Nova tonight
PLAYING THIS KIND OF MUSIC (especially important if you haven’t done this much before!)
One of the most essential things in playing this music, and arguably the hardest, is that you have to ‘let go’ of the desire to make things go the way you think they should go!
For example, since there will be simultaneous performances, it is quite possible that something will be going on at the same time as the piece you are performing which makes it hard to hear what you are playing. You must, at all costs, resist the temptation to play louder in order to be heard! If you are drowned out, so be it. The people close to you will be able to hear what you are doing. Others may not be able to hear you at all. The audience will be mobile: what they will hear will depend very much on where they choose to be… So always think quiet! This is very important – it is easy for the whole thing to escalate out of control and become cacophonous.
Try not to let what you hear around you affect what you yourself are doing. For example, one of the other pieces may be getting louder, or faster, or rhythmic in some way: don’t follow it. Just play what you should be playing. Don’t try to ‘shape’ the performance or impose your will on the overall sound.Similarly, most of the music we are playing is extremely sparse. There will be long silences, and long periods in which almost nothing happens. This is fine. Do not worry about being boring or about having to entertain. You may be tempted to inject extra things into your performance in order to make it ‘interesting’: don’t give in to this! Be disciplined, and play precisely what you have to play without adornment or additions. In my experience, attempting to make very sparse and minimalist music ‘more interesting’ by adding things usually has precisely the opposite effect! Pare down what you are doing to its simplest; shave away absolutely everything inessential. Be calm. Be simple. Be sincere. You may feel quite uncomfortable for a while, but you will find a gorgeous transformation come over you as you get into the timescale of the music…
This is music of meditation, of serenity, of humility. It is not about us, the performers. Accept that, and it will be a transcendent experience!
Enjoy 🙂
Thanks to John Godfrey for this.