How to tune a cello with audio for open strings using the app or recording Sarnia Music School.

hi telltalers um welcome welcome to the sales hello club if you've just um popped by today i'm going to explain to you how to tune a cello it's the most basic necessity if you want to be a cellist it's actually something that can take a few years to um maybe six years maybe 10 years to get really really good at um now there's no such thing as perfect pitch really i mean i met i did meet one person who was actually a piano tuner who had pretty much perfect pitch but generally speaking it's a bit of a myth it's almost impossible if you don't have a starting point a reference point to name that note so if somebody just said out of the blue nobody was talking nobody was playing any music sing an a it would be quite hard to be absolutely spot on scientifically exact okay so don't beat yourself up too much most people are not they don't will never have this ability they need a starting point once you have a starting point say our a there tiny weeny bit sharp our a then you can perhaps sing the d

perhaps not depending now this let's let's first of all start with the note names of the cello so we're going to start with the big fat one i call this the deep sea now this is c2 and if you're using an app which i recommend any app download them for free if you can't if you don't have a phone a smartphone um or a laptop or an ipad or something that you can use download a recording perhaps get your teacher to record the notes so if your teacher or a friend another cellist recorded that c and just put it on a recording on your phone most phones do have some sort of recording facility then that would be really helpful or have it on your laptop okay but you need to hear it this isn't going to work if you don't hear it okay but the app is really the best way to tune up it's very reliable now if you pluck the deep c string and look at the app you'll see that it registers differently than if you bow it so the key is to bow it as it were or you really need to bow it now if you've never used a bow just try and keep it horizontal um well no perpendicular to the string so you've got a right angle between the bow hair and the string and just try and pull if put put the middle of the bow on it um for now i'd i always use the base but when you use the base you have to have a bit more control on this c but if you go halfway up you can just allow gravity to pull it down gravity can do all the work and you'll get a smoother sound okay and look on the app and you'll see it's registering and depending on your wrap a green zone or a white zone or and when you're in that middle zone i mean i'm particular i like to get it right bang on in the middle and you'll see that that says c2 now if it doesn't if it isn't bang smack in the middle of that c2 adjust it adjust your string and use the fine tuners if you can now if you're way out you're going to have to use the the tuning pegs at the top and that's quite a feat you're going to have to be really really gentle and you're going to have to be quite strong unless as i have you use geared strings sorry geared pegs geared pegs are a new invention and they're absolutely fantastic and i'm going to pick them up as much as possible um if you're spending money and money isn't an object i think they're about 130 pounds or something for the four and your the cello shop that you hire from or whatever we'll be able to tell you all about those and they make life so much easier i remember not having geared pegs and having to stand up and face my cello and concern myself with breaking strings every time i moved a peg it's such risky business but hopefully you're coping now the thing is don't ever turn too much on the pegs because the string if it is particular you would have bought a c string or a d string or whatever and it's particular to that um scientific uh vibration and if you stretch it you are really risking breaking it especially with a very expensive string you don't want to stretch it even a half a semitone um you're much better to um be lower than you should and gradually bit by bit sharpen it once you if you sharpen over a tone you'll be lucky if you don't break it okay so gently gently does it and hopefully you've done it sufficiently so that all of your fine tuning pegs which are down on the tailpiece are sticking up when they get close to the tailpiece it's time to start adjusting the pegs the fine tuners are your friends and really it's the fine tuners that um certainly your students should if you're a teacher your students um should be quite adept at those but especially young children you know they're going to find it very very difficult to tune the um the pegs so i'm assuming that your pegs are all set and we're going to use fine tuners today okay so the deep sea we've got and that's called c2 now all the c's have a number and that that number corresponds to the octave okay so if you look at a piano for example um that grouping that octave would be the two okay so now let's go to the next string which is the g string

now that is also g2

because it's in that same octave

okay and if you're either side of the i mean if you're in the center area you can probably get away with it but i don't recommend that you even consider that's suitable the sooner you train your ear the sooner you will become a brilliant musician okay don't trust don't ever shortcut the tuning please it's foolhardy okay so now let's look at the next string now i'm moving further away from my ear now we've moved up an octave

we've moved up to d3 do you see if you look at a piano we're now embarking on an octave above okay so d3

and now if we go to a i'm a tiny little bit sharp there but you see i'm a stickler

absolute stickler i am there we go you see the difference was so small now this is a3 because it's in that octave okay so i think we're covered i'll tell you what i'll play all four strings i'll call the note names out and then you can use this as a reference point if you need to tune and you don't have the app okay um did i mention that any app you download will be you'll have loads of ads it's a bit of a nightmare but once you get rid of the ads they're usually just one then you you can have access to the tuner and the other thing i'll point out actually you need to stop the tuner before you do any recording or anything because your phone will be focusing on the tuner and not on the app that you're using to record so just bear that in mind shut things down you don't want to be using up all your energies either so c g

d

and a okay my friends i think that's enough for how to tune any questions just feel free to um can you hear romeo the studio cat he's having one of those crazy cat run around episodes he loves when i play cello and do you know what else i discovered today he absolutely adores opera i'm doing um a series of opera uh broadcasts i'm not i'm not actually an opera singer but i'm i'm getting a robot who does my opera for me we're going to have some little baby classes for opera and we're having some operatic nursery rhymes and i've noticed that every time i record or play romeo uh sort of goes into some sort of transla like state and becomes really affectionate and gooey so there we go i don't know if that's a cat thing who knows anyway that's us done and um shall we shall we go out with some of my piano we may as well let's play some of my piano to end this class on thank you for um coming if you've got any questions or if you've got any suggestions pop a message on go to the website tail teller club tail dash teller.club and um you can message me there um sign up email all that's all free everything i do is free and at the school of music and um yeah i'll see if i can if i can assist

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