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Well, I am excited. I get my first cello lesson, with this instructor this Friday. After that, they will be on Wednesdays. I am so excited for a number of reasons (has taken away a lot of my blues from having to discontinue my violin lessons).

1. I do love the sound of the cello. I just wish it was more portable. But, alas, part of what gives it its rich deep tone is its size.

2. I finally have  an instructor who is not using the Suzuki book. Not only that, he is using the series that tends to work better with the way my warped brain thinks and learns, Essential Elements for Strings series.

3. The first string instrument I took lessons for when I started on this road, was the lovely cello.

Yep, my outlook and optimism has improved. I have been brushing up on my cello skills. I have been playing it while taking violin lessons, but not trying to advance further than I had with the first two go rounds because I wanted to get my violin skills up and running. 

I don’t have a good backup set of cello strings, so today I have ordered a set recommened by Pirastro based on a cello I have that I wrote to them about. I ordered them from Fiddlershop. Ada has a lovely sound, but she is so boisterous! She has a little different shape than my other two cellos. I describe that in another post somewhere, so will not get into it here. So, I have ordered the Pirastro Cello Student set recommended by Pirastro. It has Passione D and A, and Chromcore C and G. I have never heard a Chromcore String bowed. I have heard a Passione E on my violin. I love it and will put it back onto my violin when I rid myself of whistling my E string. So, I think the D and A cello strings will have that same nice warm tone as Pirastro said in their helpful email reply.

I also ordered Book 1 of Essential Elements for Strings Cello from Amazon. Should arrive tomorrow.

Today, I ordered Essential Elements for Strings Cello Book 3 from Fiddlershop, along with the set of cello strings. I didn’t think to email Fiddlershop to ask if I could order Book 1 from them, or I would have. That is how good their customer service is.

Anyway, I already have Essential Elements for Strings Cello Book 2. I have been using it on my own to keep up what I have learned. I figured I better have book 1 because the sequence of strings and fingers covered is different than what Suzuki does. Since my other cello instructors used Suzuki, there might be something in book 1 EE for Strings cello book 1 that was not in the Suzuki yet. Based on the two series’ formats, I am kind of a mix of Books 1, 2, and early 3, as far as what has been covered. So, I will have books 1-3 in the series.

I also ordered Essential Elements for Strings Viola Book 3 with my order, today. I do have books 1 and 2. I intend to keep up on my viola and violin.

@bocaholly I would like to take Ada to my lesson, but I need to bet the geared pegs installed first. Whe I put the new Aricore Strings on her, someone decided to be helpful and put the peg stuff on the pegs. There wasn’t anything wrong with them, but he was dying to use it. Well, they no longer hold. I push and push them in and two of the pegs keep popping loose, the A and D strings. Boys just gotta have fun! Can’t deny him that “fun”. He is pretty helpful with my endeavor. I spent most of the time I used Ada the last time retuning those two strings. The pegs pretty much unwind. The other two pegs are okay.  Would not be able to use her for a lesson until then.

So, the other two cellos came with the geared pegs and I love them on my cellos and my viola. So, we will make an appointment at the violin shop and bring her in for a “tune up”.

I will probably bring Belle with me. She is the Pawn Shop purchase. She is named after my granddaughter. I played “Happy Birthday” to her on it the other day. I recorded it for her and posted it on our special shared album. I tried to post it in the share your performance section of the forum, not critique, but I couldn’t break the video down into small enough segments. Weird, because I could do it for my violin “Lullaby” for the critique section of the forum. Oh well.

I played Monte today.