Creative Expansion for Cellists

A systematic, cello-centric approach to creative fingerboard mastery and melodic and rhythmic reflex development

ENROLLMENT IS OPEN FOR THE SPRING SESSION THROUGH APRIL 15TH! COURSE CONTENT STARTS ROLLING OUT SUNDAY APRIL 16TH. EARLY BIRD PRICING IN EFFECT THROUGH APRIL 9TH. ENROLL NOW AND SAVE!

*ENROLL BY MIDNIGHT ON 4/3 AND GET A BONUS PRIVATE LESSON

60+ video lessons (over 10 hours of instructional content)
60+ downloadable pages of supplemental sheet music (chord charts, patterns, exercises)
15 high quality practice tracks
course content broken down into 11 modules released weekly, including weekly practice plans
continual support via private FB group and email

Cello has always been a beloved instrument, praised for its rich, lyrical sound and deep register. It is also an extremely versatile instrument, and in recent years there has been an explosion of creative string playing and cello can be found in almost any genre of music.

The world at large loves our instrument, even if it often gets mistaken for a violin, guitar, or coffin ; )

However, the classical tradition, wonderful as it is, has given cellists a rigorous but very narrow type of musical training, which often leaves cellists and other conservatory-trained string players at a relative disadvantage when they are put into musical and/or professional situations that require a more creative approach to the instrument.

I’ve heard from so many fantastic cellists who have told me things like the following:

“I have advanced classical training, but when I was given a lead sheet when playing a gig with a band, I had no idea how to read it or what to do, so I just played softly and hid in the background…”
“I really want to become a confident improviser, but I don’t have a structured way to practice, I just kind of noodle around and hope I don’t crash and burn…”
“I struggle to play with really tight rhythm when I get a gig playing with rock, funk, jazz, and pop bands, and it makes me feel like a beginner when I’ve been playing cello for most of my life”

If one or more of the previous statements resonate with you, you are certainly not alone. These are very common challenges that even really advanced cellists and classically-trained string players often share.

Now Imagine Yourself in the Following Situations:

You are given a lead sheet or a list of chords and instantly recognize all of the chord symbols, understand how to fit in with a bassline, chordal accompaniment, or improvise/compose melodic lines or solos that fit with the changes.
When improvising a solo or melody, you feel a smooth flow of creative melodic and rhythmic ideas and no longer feel like a deer in headlights
When in the studio, you feel confident when asked to improvise a solo or write a cello part for a singer-songwriter or band without needing sheet music in front of you
You feel comfortable and confident in your ability to play groove-based music in a variety of time feels, and to be able to create compelling rhythmic patterns and flows in your grooves and improvisations.
You’ve developed a varied improvisatory vocabulary and you’ve sharpened your melodic and rhythmic creative reflexes

This has been a big part of my inspiration behind Creative Expansion for Cellists, a systematic, cello-centric approach to helping you increase your fluency, creativity, and confidence when playing and writing in non-classical genres.

As the name suggests, the backbone of this course is a creative approach to practice, which is an absolute must if our goal is to increase our own creativity : ) Below are the 3 primary pillars of the Creative Practice Method:

CREATIVE PRACTICE METHOD:

Drone-based scale/mode practice: practicing with drones is a wonderful way to hear how each note of a given scale or mode relates to it’s tonic, and gives us a blank sonic canvas with which we can immediately start generating creative ideas
Creative rhythmic practice: it doesn’t matter how well we know our way around the fingerboard, if our rhythmic ideas are not both accurate and varied we will not create compelling improvisations or cello parts. We will put each scale/mode through many different rhythmic “modules” in order to strengthen our time as well as quicken our rhythmic reflexes
Patterns/Licks: by providing “real-world” examples of patterns, licks and phrases that can be used with each scale/mode, you can practice copying these ideas and also generating new ideas based off of them as you develop your improvisatory vocabulary.

My approach is also grounded in practical, applied music theory, meaning that we are not talking about concepts in the abstract, but rather immediately applying them to your cello.

Music theory gets a bad rap as being overly academic or complicated, but this is often because it is not being actively used and applied to the instrument.

It’s important to understand the aspects of theory that are going to directly affect your ability to understand how to play various chords on cello, the fascinating ways in which the chords are connected, and how to connect scales and chords in ways which will allow you to navigate chord changes with confidence and creative freedom.

3 BASIC THEORY FRAMEWORKS:

the anatomy of chords: understanding how major, minor, and basic 7th chords are built, and how they are voiced and played on cello
chordal relationships within a key: this will help you understand why certain chords work together, and will strengthen your ability to create nice chord progressions
chord/scale relationships: this is crucial to being able to improvise freely in major and minor keys and will help you understand why certain notes “work”, while others don’t

There has never been a time in which it has been more important for a cellist to develop a versatile skill set in order to stay relevant as both a performer and an educator. Enroll today and take a big step forward in your creative journey!