I recently had the pleasure of helping a student find a nice cello for themselves and it got me thinking more about our individual sound preferences. I thought I would take some time to write about the experience of finding a new instrument and what I find interesting and surprising about the process.

When a student decides that they are going to get serious and their parents are able to invest in something special, it opens doors to entirely new sound worlds. A fine instrument can do things that a student instrument simply can’t. Student instruments these days are an amazing value and they can’t be discounted, in fact some student cellos sound better than cellos that cost five or even six figures. Still, a fine instrument usually offers much more in the way of playability, color, power, projection, and nuance.

Having now played on several different cellos for multiple years, I have come to realize that each cello teaches its user how to play. In order for the cello to teach its player, the player has to be sensitive to what the cello is saying. A student cello may not react much to variations in player input. For example the sound which emanates from it may not change quality much if the note being played is in tune or out of tune. The sound may not change if the bow angle is slightly off. The sound might not become buoyant no matter what kind of finesse one has with their bow. A fine instrument on the other hand may react to each input with great sensitivity and so the difference made by the placement of a note may be more noticeable. The angle of the bow may matter more. A player with excellent bow technique may be able to do amazing things with the sound of a fine cello. In this way a cello can teach a player a lot.

Think of a student who plays a note on their new cello and the note comes out sounding choked. Getting this feedback, they will notice they need to develop new techniques for communicating with the instrument. A good cello is giving feedback constantly and it will help a sensitive student find a quick resolution to any issues they encounter. So there’s a way in which we can view the relationship between player and instrument as a constant communication and feedback loop. This relationship is most successful when both parties are sensitive to the needs of the other. Of course, you may be asking yourself, how can an object such as a cello be sensitive. Well, the answer to that is that a good cello IS sensitive to whatever input it receives. Its boundaries are more expansive, its tonal possibilities are broader. It can do more of what you as a player might be able to imagine. So getting a better instrument expands your range of communication simply because it teaches you things you didn’t think were necessarily possible. The cello does not literally talk to you, but it does speak to you in the sense that it is reacting to every part of you. The sound that comes out can be affected by something as remote as the movement of your big toe. So a great cello is organizing in the sense that it is so sensitive to you as a player that it allows you to understand how the various parts of you are influencing the sounds you are creating.

The major element that is required for this feedback loop to work is the presence of some sort of sound preference or standard. There has to be an ideal sound in the student’s mind and a new instrument can change their sense of possibility around sound. As I stated in the opening paragraph, I’ve been thinking about sound preferences so I’m going to change direction slightly here……

Last year a friend of mine was looking for a new violin and had some new instruments by well-reputed modern makers. I was invited to hear them played along with two other violinists. All players were professionals and I was somewhat surprised to find that my concept of what was a good violin sound was opposite to the feelings of the other three players. What was I listening for that they weren’t? What were they hearing that I wasn’t? Were we listening for different things or were we physically hearing things differently? I ended up going for a violin that was incidentally made by a luthier who makes a lot of cellos. Perhaps his instrument was influenced by a desire for more bass in the sound. Maybe that’s what I was responding to. The violinists all seemed to enjoy the more brilliant violins on trial, which I guess is what makes them violinists. If they were striving for a violin that sounded more like a cello, they might have switched to cello at a young age or possibly just given up. There are those who stick with instruments they don’t like as much, but that seems to be rare.

Sound preferences seem to be innate for most of us. When I was in third grade, our music teacher played recordings of all of the orchestral instruments for us and then we had a chance to decide which one we wanted to play that year. I already played piano, but I was tIckled by the idea of getting my hands on another instrument and so when it came time to choose I ended up selecting cello and french horn. If you had to describe these two instruments, I think you might use similar adjectives. Mellow, sonorous, soulful. The range is similar, the sense of connection between the notes is smooth. There is nothing shrill, staccato or brilliant about the cello or horn relative to most other orchestral instruments. They are in the same sound world and I look back on that story and feel happy that I knew what I wanted, even if it was a little general at the time. My parents did make me pick between the two instruments and I chose the cello.

Other musicians have described feeling an affinity for the kind of sound their instrument makes from a very young age. Who knows why this happens. I do have a crackpot theory about the human voice being a subconscious guide in this regard. I have long felt that A-flat major is my favorite key to play in. I never knew why until I spoke into a tuning app which tracks intonation in a graph over time. According to the tuner, I speak at the pitch A-flat most of the time. Of course you could say this is just proof that I like the sound of my own voice. I think there’s more to it than that. I think we all respond to resonance in different ways. Maybe our skeletons are just tuned to a certain frequency and when that frequency is excited, we literally feel it in our bones. A singer I know once told me that they had good bone structure for singing and that’s what made them so good at projecting. I’m unfamiliar with the theory behind that idea, but the body does receive vibration and create vibration constantly and it only makes sense that your bones would play a part in the distribution of sound. Maybe it’s just about exposure to the sounds at an early age. My dad’s voice is very similar to mine. Maybe I grew up hearing him speak in A-flat too and I developed a taste for that sound. My mom’s voice was sort of mellow and smooth like the cello.

If there is any way that these preferences find their way into our bones at an early age it could just be from listening to the voices around us. Or I guess if your family has music playing, that’s a more obvious way to receive that kind of influence. I guess this question is in the same vein as the nature vs. nurture question. It doesn’t really matter which is right because the present truth remains the same. I suppose the only way it would matter is if you thought you could nurture your child to stay away from the flute by constantly playing cello music in the house. That’s just an example. I’m certianly not saying one is better than the other.