Cello 101!

I am going to show you how to play the cello!

Disclaimer: You will have to learn notes and music theory on your own! I am just going to show you the setup and how to make sounds!

To play the cello, you will need a.....cello! Bravo! You are getting it!

These can be purchased for anywhere from $50-4 million! I would suggest going nice, but not ridiculous (my cello cost about 2500 dollars, and is a basic/nice student instrument.  I am hoping to get a nicer one soon.  Yes, they are expensive!!)
This is my cello.  :)

These hard cases are expensive (350-1000 dollars), but are well worth it.  The next picture shows my case, and you can see the white scratches and other marks.  The fact that the case and not the cello has all the dents  made it well worth paying 350 dollars!

Now that you have a cello, it is time to start playing!

First of all, take the cello out of its case.  (If you cant figure out this step...well, uh, good luck!)

Find a good chair to sit in (comfortable, but not super high off the ground.  You also want a chair with a relatively flat seat.  not sloped, like the cheap plastic chairs at school!)  Extend the end pin (the sharp thing sticking out the bottom) by loosening the screw.

The goal is to get the cello resting against your body as shown in the pictures.  This is harder to figure out than  it looks!

Sit with good posture (back straight, sitting on the edge of the chair.) you grip the cello between your knees with your feet spread out and your legs making 90 degree angles with the floor.

Great! Now that you know how to hold it, it is time to get out the bow (gasp!).

The bow, like the cello, has a large price range. It can be anywhere from $15-15,000.  Mine is about $150, if you are looking for general student bow price range.  Mine is made of carbon fiber, which is more flexible (and a bit cheaper) than its traditional wood counterpart.  The carbon fiber is black, while wood is......you got it! Brown!!  (super cheap bows made of fiberglass are also brown.  Dont be fooled!)

Now you need to take the bow out of the cello case.  DO NOT touch the pretty white horsehair on the bottom! The hair is very susceptible to finger oils and touching it damages the bow.

To make the bow give you a good sound, you must apply rosin. This is a cake of tree resin, and causes the bow to stick to and vibrate the strings, producing sound.

 I use Kolstein Rosin (as of recently), an American made rosin.  I like it!

Apply the rosin by running the bow hair back and forth across the cake of rosin a few times. If you apply way too much rosin, it gets REALLY hard to play.  Dont zone out while doing this and apply 40 strokes of rosin.  This is not the time for daydreaming! :)

Now, you get to learn how to hold the bow! Place your thumb on the place shown in the picture, and make sure it is slightly bent! your other fingers fan out on the other side. It feels a little awkward, but you should survive! :)

Hint-it is nice to practice your bow hand while applying rosin!  Look up at that picture and you can see that I had a good bow hand :)

Finally, (sitting in your perfect cello position with your perfect bow hand), place the bow on the strings. The bow should be on a 45ish angle with the strings of the cello (the hair should be parallel with the floor).

It should look like this!

Gently apply pressure using your wrist, index finger (sort of like a lever!), and the weight of your arm. Now, move the bow back and forth.  Voila! You are playing the cello!

Granted, these are only the most basic parts of playing the cello.  To learn more, talk to a cellist! (Such as me!  I would be happy to let you try this technique with my cello.  Just talk to me!).

The End!

Advertisement:  I am a cello teacher!!! I have had 3 students and I know how to get beginners going strong on the cello! If you or someone you know is interested in learning cello (my cost is 10 dollars for a 30 minute lesson), feel free to email or call me! (or just talk to me at school.) :) Bye!

How to Change a Tire-Yes, This is Occasionally Relevant!

     This seem to be a weird topic to most people, but it was the only thing I could think of, and it might be helpful (especially to the girls that havent done this already with their dads) :)

     First of all, you need to get the tire off the ground.  Have you ever tried pulling an object out from under a bunch of metal that weighs upwards of 2000 pounds?  Good luck with that!  To help with this small problem, the jack was invented.  These are now so small that they fit easily into small spaces in the car. 

     First of all, get out your owners manual!  These will tell you where to place the jack in order to raise the car.  Look under the "changing a tire" section.  This is usually a special rod/peice attached to the axle, or a reinforced steel plate, depending on whether it is the front or the back of the car.  Be VERY careful when you raise the car, and DO NOT lie under the car while doing so!  Having a several ton car sitting on top of your body generally causes discomfort, and nobody wants that.   
     When you get the tire in the air, it is time to take it off!  Get the tire iron out of your car (generally found in the same place as the jack, look in your owners manual for location).

    First of all, take off the hubcap.  This is a shiny peice of plastic covering the wheel.  It usually just pulls off.  Next, take off the lug nuts with the tire iron (this is hard-use your muscles!!).  DO NOT lose them!  They are  sorta important.  After this, take the tire off.  The tire generally weighs about 25-50 pounds and could be called the dirtiest object on earth.  Hopefully you arent wearing your best dress or tuxedo when you have a blowout. :)
     Get out the spare tire.  This is sometimes under the floor in the back of the car, but is often attached to the underside of the car.  Read your owners manual for how to get your spare tire out/down from the car.
     The hard part is putting the tire back on.  Balance the tire until the holes in the rim fit over the bolts for the lug nuts (it really does make sense if you think about it).  Now it is time to put on the lug nuts.  DO NOT just start putting them on!  To get the right torque on the wheel, they go on in a specific order.  Most cars (all that I know of) have 5 or six lug nuts.  Start with the top one, and then tighten the nut on the opposite side(see image).  Continue to the one opposite the one you just tightened, and then repeat the process.  When you have put on all the lug nuts (VERY tightly- you dont want that wheel coming off anytime soon!), tighten the first one again just to be sure.

 
   Just to recap-all of these instruction's can be found in the operator's manual of your car.  If yours is not in your glove compartment, put it there.  If you dont have one, get one from the car company.  There is all kinds of emergency information in there, not just how to change a tire!   If you absolutely dont get this at all, call the police. They can help!  They are just so pleased to ruin their fancy uniforms to help a citizen in need. :)

     Final safety tip I decided needed to be included:  DO NOT attempt to change the tire while driving.  This can be extrememly dangerous!!

Blog Review

     I love learning about cars.  I researched on Google for blogs about cars, and I found a few.  One of my favorites was theblogaboutcars.com.  It is a blog that covers pretty much everything ever about cars.  An interesting thing about this blog is that it is a British blog.  I thought it was interesting to see a blog type from another country.  They cover everything from car maintenance to the number one most loved cars by guys and girls!  They also talked a lot about safety.  Every car that comes out is given a safety rating, and the website highlights a lot of them.  One of the posts talked about the dangers of driving at high speeds.  They had a video of slinging a  Ford Focus at a concrete wall at 120 miles per hour (http://theblogaboutcars.com/cars/crushing-news-just-how-dangerous-is-high-speed-driving/).  It was crazy!  The car was totally obliterated!  The car went from 120 to 0 mph in only .068s (68 milliseconds)!  That means that the people experience a force of up to 400 times the force of gravity (Sorry, I like physics)! Ouch! Moral of the story: don't drive fast for fun! 

     Another thing I am interested in that involves a TON of blog websites is guns and gun control.  I think our country needs to maintain the right and freedom to bear arms (I would be happy to have a friendly debate with anybody that disagrees with me).  Our nation is free, and I believe that the right to bear arms is an important part of that.  I found two blogs that focus on guns and gun control:  www.thefirearmblog.com and www.waronguns.blogspot.com.  These blogs talk all about our rights as American citizens to keep and bear arms, and about proper safety precautions to prevent dangerous accidents.  Guns are very dangerous.  I have grown up learning about them, and I realize that they can be used for good as well as for evil.  I believe that gun control is wrong, but I also believe that there should be requirements to legally own a gun (such as a mental health test and background check).  These blogs agree with me :). Call it weird, but I am very interested to see what happens in our nation over the next little while concerning guns.

     And now for one of my top two favorite hobbies: fishing (I know I'm weird, but hey!).  I love both bait fishing and fly fishing, and I tie my own flies.  It is pretty easy to find blogs about this, but I wanted something a little more specific to me.  So, I searched for Utah fishing blogs.  The one I found I really like!  Here it is: http://utahwaterlog.blogspot.com/. It is just a guy that loves fishing blogging about all his fun trips (he goes way more than me!!).  He has great pictures of all the fish he has caught, as well as some fun little interactive stuff (scroll to the bottom of the blog page and you will find an amusing "feed the fish" game).  He talks about his connection  with nature, and his love for the animals in our world and the great beauty of our earth.  I think I feel much like he does about fishing.

I-Thou

After reading a story in class with Mr. Dye about a boy who is wrongfully treated by his older brother, we talked about the difference between I-it and I-thou ways of being.  We often treat other people as assets or roadblocks to our goals or desires, and rarely stop to think about the way that other people feel and their personal dreams, ambitions, or desires.  I find that I sometimes treat my siblings just as people that I live with that are part of my life.  This is not right!  They are people, with their own likes, dislikes, and feelings.  I am learning to try more to cater to their needs, and realize that they are not here for me.  We are here to help each other.  The same principle applies to my friends and even people that I have never met.  I can strive for an I-thou state of being by serving others and agreeing to the things that they want.

Learning=Doing, or The Equation of Life

               Last week I went to BYU and shadowed a college senior, Derek, enrolled in the mechanical engineering program.  He was involved in two projects, his BYU ClearSolutions Capstone senior project and another project called GEO, or global economic outreach.  For his Capstone project, he was testing the flow of water in a water reservoir filtration system.  They had a large wooden box with waterproof lining that was supposed to hold 4,000 gallons of water.  Because the dredge was being fabricated, they were doing small scale testing in a lab with a water flow system and special tubes that measure water flow pressure.  It was amazing because I got to help them with it!  They showed me how the equations work and let me do some of the math for them.  It was lots of fun!!

                Derek also showed me his GEO project.  At the end of the semester, the whole class is going to Peru.  They are split into several teams, and they are building things for the people to make their lives easier.  Derek and his team are building a cheap, affordable, easy to make tool that the people can use to effectively cut reeds for their floating reed island homes.  This will assist them in many ways, and keep them from hurting themselves or spending hundreds of hours on this menial chore. 

                We also talked about Derek’s mission to Croatia.  He said he loved it and told me all about it. He also told me about his study abroad trip to England with his wife as well as his desire to attend graduate school in England.  He said that he greatly recommended that study abroad program to me, but also talked to me about how important and different it was for him to keep his standards there.  I learned that I must be careful to be an example to others and never let my standards down even for a second. 

                I am a child of God with a purpose in life and I am headed for whatever I can put my mind to.  I can accomplish anything!  I know that I have a mission in life.  I was born to be a king, a son of my Heavenly Father.  I do not know what I need to pursue as a career, but I know that if I seek a good education and pray earnestly for guidance, I will find my purpose and mission in life.

            I know that I have a mission, but I only have one enemy to fear.  Myself.  I am the only person that can obstruct my path.  I have the obligation to work as hard as I can to seek an education and pursue my dreams.  The sky is the limit to my potential, and I have only to overcome myself.