Hi, I am a cello teacher, who loves teaching my adult students, I have found that there is some lack however in a series of books dedicated to adult learners. I find myself writing my own stuff and photocopying, or getting them to buy several books. So my plan is to write a series of cello books aimed at adult learners, with a practise log, and a set of books of ensemble pieces for adult learners to get together and play in groups.....hopefully directed by thier teacher.

I was hoping for some help from both adult learners and other teachers, to let me know what it is you would like to see in this series of books. What types of music you have enjoyed learning, what kind of techniques you would like addressed (even though I would aim to cover everything). Is there something you struggle with? What would you have prefered your teacher to have done differently? Would you like to play in a small cello orchestra if possible? Anything you think of really.....

really looking forward to your responses ......

Excellent idea, I'll collect my thoughts, and share them with You for sure. If You need some help with lilypond for the books, if I have time, I'm happy to contribute.

Gnome:

You owe it to yourself and your students to look at Cello Playing for Music Lovers by me, Vera Jiji. It's available on Amazon, where readers give it 5 stars out of a possible 5 stars over and over.

I like Janice T Rhoda's ABC's of string books. She has the orchestra books too, for violin 1 & 2 viola and cello, with piano accompaniment too. I found these books to be great when learning the violin, and am using her cello books 1 & 2 now.

thanks Vera I will check it out! I am always trying to find new things to use for my students.

thanks also hegyhati, I look forward to hearing what you have to say, are you a teacher or an adult learner? I will let you know how I am going with it.

I'm the second one. My profession is computer engineering, and I started to learn cello (and music, so I had no background before) at my age of 23 (which was 1.5 years ago).

Well sorry, that I forget about my promise, the last period at work was pretty busy, anyway, here is my story so far:

I started to learn cello without any musical background, as I already said. Before meeting my teacher, I was looking for some tutorials to learn the basics of music theory. This is actually, how I've found this site. After reading it for half hour, I become pretty "angry" on my former music teachers at secondary school. I never understood, why we did use "do re mi fa..." and C, D, E, F, ... etc. parallel, and what is the meaning of what. Nobody told me, why we don't have a black within E and F. Similarly, I had no idea, why G major is one #, and what is a difference between a major or minor anyway. The same goes for chords. When I realized, how simple their background is, I did not understand, why they could not tell me all these stuff in their 10 years of teaching.

After meeting my teacher She answered a lot of questions of mine, like what does it mean, that an instrument is an F instrument, is it transposed in the partiture, etc. Since then I also always enjoy, when my teacher answers my questions about how professionals do their job. Even if I'm far from doing those stuffs (let's say how to turn page in an orchestra, I mean, everybody turns at the same time or it is shifted among cellos, etc.), but It is good to know what it means. Ok, to tell the truth, my job is related to understanding systems, and provide mathematical model for them, so maybe this is only interesting for me.

About pieces that I really liked:

A bit more than a half year ago (after learning for one year), when I switched to an acoustic cello from the electric one, I started everything from the very beginning, since it was so different. At that time I marked those simple songs, I liked playing again, so here I have an easy job :-)

I started to learn from violoncello tutor I. by Antal Friss.

The first thing I really liked to play was a children song "Gyertek lanyok ligetre". Later I played a lot a folk song: "Lattal-e mar valaha". This latter one helped me a lot to find the correct position of my fingers.

Then there was a duet with the number 45, which had half and eight notes, and had a quite nice melody. Same goes for the song with number 58. Both needs only the D string and first position. (45 is in G major, 58 in C major).

I also used to play these songs transposed on all of the strings.

I didn't really liked the first song to play on both D and A string.

The first one I liked on two strings was a Russian lied (Number II/10 in the same book). Not much later I learned pizzicato, for which there is a nice exercise (II/9), that also includes playing on two strings at the same time. Back then, it was difficult, but a few weeks later I really enjoyed playing it.

And the first time, when I was really happy of being able to play a "real" piece was around 3-4 months later, a very simplified version of the Hymn of Joy (number III/17 in this book). On the next page, there is a Mazurka, that I didn't like at the beginning because of the breaks I had. since my rhythm was/is tragic. This Mazurka should be played playfully, but I realized, it is much nicer in a melancholic way.

Well, the last piece to mention from this book was a Lullaby from Schubert for me (III/27).

Parallel we started to select some simple songs from 40 easy studies by Lee.

First one was the Study number 2, that I like to play since then as a warm up all the time. Number 11 was my piece for the exam at the end of the first semester (together with the Hymn of joy).

At this point I have to mention something else as well. Next to the pieces I got from my teacher, I was always looking for some others, that I know, and I like to play. The reason why I started learning cello is the Prelude of Bach Suite V. I really enjoyed the prelude Nr 1 performed by Rostropovich. Thus I've downloaded their sheets from here, just to look at them. I was really happy to realize, that I can "play" the first two lines of Prelude Nr 1. I knew it was horrible, but I liked it a lot.

Once my teacher accidentally saw a simple Ave Maria downloaded from here, that required an E on the A string. So, She showed me how to do it, how we will play it a few months later. I didn't really liked Ave Maria, but with this new knowledge I was "able" to practice the Pachabel Canon and part of the Spring theme from Vivaldi. (all of the scores downloaded from this site). I removed the cello from the midi of the canon, and I practiced together with my computer.

When we first learned the fist position with the first finger a half note lower (I don't know it's name in english), I immediately started to practice Faraway from Apocalyptica.

Since then I had many great pieces, which I really like to play since then, but to keep it short(er), I only summarize them here:
40 easy studies by Lee: 7,9, 15, 20
violoncello ABC 2 by Pejtsik: Hungarian dance (45,47),
12 studies for violoncello by Wilkomirski: 1
Old music for violoncello by Brodszky: Ballet (1)
violoncello music for beginners 2 by Pejtsik: Choral from Bach (22),

Some othe pieces, that I just have separately:
- Tarantella
- Rieding op 35: Konzert
- Squire: Danse Rustique

One recent thing is, that tthere is a girl playing a guitar, with whom we meet every second week, and for fun we play several stuffs, like Largo from Winter and Swan lake theme.



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P.S.: If You can't have the mentioned books, and You are interested in any of the scores, let me know, it is not too much work to lilypond them. For some of these You can find the scores already uploaded here.

thanks very much for that, I have written it all down and will look for those pieces of music. It's always good to hear from a student the ways in which they have learnt and the things they have enjoyed.
Thanks

I'm glad if my story can help You. All the best, and as I mentioned, if You are interested in those pieces and You can't find them, don't hesitate to request them from me.