My Big Baby

Guess what is it?

Well, many people don't know that I do play a musical instrument which is rarely learned by students in Malaysia -- the Violoncello!!!
It looks like a violin in shape, but not in size. It's much more bigger than a violin. Where you actually need to sit on a chair, open your leg wide,and lay it on your chest. The sound produced is quite similar to human voice, like a sugar daddy singing songs to get you asleep:)



I started to learn to play this instrument when I was in the fisrt form in secondary school. I joined the school's Chinese orchestra, and had the chance to choose among all the instruments available. I bought this handmade cello then after deciding to take ABRSM exams in the future. Well, it costed me exactly the same as a Nikon D80 kit set, plus a camera beg, cleaning stuffs, a CPL filter, and a UV filter.

I didn't really stop touching my cello after taking the fifth grade practical exam. I started to teach students actually under my first student's requirement, though I honestly told her that I am not that pro yet to keep her as a student. But guess what, she insisted to learn under me, and bought a very beautiful handmade cello which is the same range as mine!!! The difference is that, she is not really into photography for the moment, and hence not yet own a D80, so, no trouble huh:)
My cello teaching journey went quite smooth for years. Students came, students gone...



I found that a technique called " Vibratto" is quite hard to master for those who first learning the cello. It's a technique to produce warmer tones by "shaking" your fingers which stop the strings. Some argue that it's like a baritone singer or bassist to shake their throat when singing, like those you see in operatic performance in concert hall. But in order to really master it, you are encouraged to practise it when you have chance or do it in the air without touching your cello's fingerboard. I demonstrated the way to produce warmer tone for longer note value, such as a semibreve or a breve, and i suspected that the way i demonstrated was quite similar to the masturbation of guys, but at the higher position. Or else, i cant tell why my very last student decided to stop for the cello class when she was really learning the very important technique to make her cello sing!!!



Ok, nothing to complain, as she left me for more than half year already:)
But afterwards, I didn't really touch my cello for months.
Last year's Chinese New Year, when doing all the cleaning process at home to prepare for the festival, my brother accidentally casued all the strings lose in one afternoon, whthout telling me how he did it.
I was so shocked when I opened it few days later, and my brother didn't really dare to mention it until I asked every family member seriously.

When I took it to my couch who sold the cello to me, he asked if something crashed into my cello or i crashed it into something else purposely. Because to him, to you, to me, or to be specific, to everyone, it's sorta impossible to let my cello to become like this. My couch try to explain that this situation can only happen during car-crash accident!!!
Oh Gosh!



Then, I have sent my cello over for repair. And I could only get it back at this year's April!
I am not trying to blame, but my couch left my cello at my secondary school's Chinese Orchestra room for months after the repair without informing me through phone call!Gosh, the dust on the hard case was really disgusting. And I just put it in the corner of my house to make the condition even worse by not cleaning it for months:)
Finally, I encountered a lucky day where all my students are not coming for my piano lessons due to the 5th calender week of this month and also school exams. I finally had the chance to clean both the cello and the hard case.



After a tiring cleaning job, my whole body was energy-less and painful. But I realised that it's a good idea to shoot my cello as it's rarely shooted by photographers. Usually they are not a photographer. Why? Because the well trained Vibratto hands wont allow a stable camera hold, and result in camera shake,gegegegege...



It's beautiful isn't it? Yea, I tried shooting it for almost one hour before I went for a shower. This is nothing if compared to post it in this blog. Because I really don't know much about computing stuffs, but I had to work really hard to figure out the way to make my images appear as wide as those by professional photographers' blog:(
Well, I worked through the HTML coding, the template, the image size which allows the best resolution image quality for view on this blog and also the header's image collection arrangement. And finally I understand all the settings for future use.



Thanks to all the available forums to teach us all this.
Btw, I think I am going to learn back this beautiful instrument in the short future. Hoping to go at least until the 8th grade of the ABRSM practical exam.
Of course, there are reasons for me to be lazy in practising it, as I really don't want my hand to be shaky when holding the camera for any meaningful moment that I am going to record down:)