Yo-Yo Ma Answers Cello Questions From Twitter

Between you and me,

'cause you know the cello's the best instrument, right?

[cello sings]

[cello strums]

[cello plays deep scales]

It is explosive.

[Bach:Cello Suite No.6]

Hello, I'm Yo-Yo Ma.

I'm here to answer questions on Twitter.

This is Cello Support.

Let's see what you got.

This is from, @stalebread.

Why do cellists play suite no.1 in every movie?

You mean:

[Bach: Cello Suite No. 1 in G Major, Prelude]

I think that movement represents

the infinitude of what we have in the natural world.

So you think of flowers,

sunlight sparkling on leaves of trees on a fall day.

We all can imagine something that is

both constant and always changing.

This music actually helps in films to actually set a tone

for what that movie is trying to say.

That music can help people get to a certain state of mind.

@AshleyEmrick.

Do cellists have to take a course

on expressing emotions through eyebrows

or does that magically happen when you pick up the bow?

A bow.

Do you have to take a course on showing emotion

when you're happy to see your friend?

I rest my case.

@TAFKAR420.

Why are cellos so hard to tune?

Cellos are hard to tune if you use the big pegs

but there are fine tuners that go much more subtle.

I hate to tune on stage.

When someone goes out on stage and goes:

[cello scales]

You can tune off stage, there's not that much to adjust.

I play out of tune any way, so if I tune and if it's in tune

it actually gives me even less of an excuse.

@illuminousq.

How the hell do cello players differentiate the frets?

Guess what?

There are no frets.

I can play a sliding cello,

if I had frets it would sound like:

[plays interrupted scales]

For 60 years

I've been moving between this space and that space

and I'm still trying to get it right

because my fingers have to figure out where I need to be

in order to get the right sounds out.

@inicolew.

What does vibrato mean?

So, here's a note without vibrato.

[slow, smooth note]

This is with vibrato.

[vibrating cello note]

You can hear the vibrations, it's like a sine wave.

It can go as wide as you want,

the idea is you give warmth to the sound by moving,

but hopefully not always using the exact same amplitude

which is sort of like focusing a light beam as a laser

so that when you go higher up, you can use a tighter beam

and you go lower, you can use a wider amplitude.

And all of these variations allow you to choose

what kind of emotion, what kind of expression you want.

Sometimes that's an expressive thing,

sometimes it's just a technical thing.

So it just gives you lots and lots of things to play with.

@Wrappa.

Why do cellists all move their heads about

all over the place?

Is it possible to play it and just sit still

like lots of other musicians do?

The idea of being a musician

is that you're there to transcend technique

in order to express.

The worst thing you can do is to play, don't move your head

and no expression comes out.

[cello strums]

That's the worst of all possible choices,

but if you have to move

in order to actually pull the sound out.

So, to play:

[deep cello scale] [cello strums]

Takes a lot of energy in order to get something out.

Hooray to people who don't need to,

but just remember that's great

only if you are being maximally expressive.

Motion is about communicating energy.

Too much motion, you become less efficient

at actually producing the sound that you're doing,

but there's a physical aspect that needs to be considered

in conjunction with how much expression you want to give.

@287s.

Why are cellos the most beautiful instrument?

That is, of course, your opinion.

I try and tell cellists, and especially young cellists,

between you and me,

you know the cello's the best instrument, right?

I love the cello.

It's an instrument that has a lot of versatility.

I can play baselines.

I can play melodic stuff.

I can play fast, I can play slow, I can play melodically,

I can play baselines, I can play rhythmic grooves,

I can actually imitate vocal sounds.

That's why I love it

because I can do a lot of different types of music on it

and I can explore lots of different musics with it.

@TheFeetofGod.

Why are cellos so expensive?

A good maker can make maybe one or two cellos a year.

So, how do you bend wood and shape it and glue it

under pressure?

It's that kind of pressure

that actually allows air molecules inside the instrument

to get excited so it creates more energy

and that creates the big sound

that an acoustic cello can make

over what an acoustic guitar can make

where the table is flat.

So, the curve, you bend carefully over heat,

you do it so that it doesn't break, and it takes a long time

and it takes strength, it takes time

and, obviously, expertise.

The kind of wood that a lot of modern makers use

are old wood.

This is usually maple and the flame goes this way

and then the spruce goes this way.

Why?

Because the maple is harder wood.

The air molecules go to the back of the wood,

the harder wood, it bounces back out

just the way that if you bounce a basketball

off of a backboard, it bounces back.

The harder the wood the easier it will bounce.

So, expensive?

Yes.

Time, takes a long time, if you get it made by a machine,

it's less expensive.

@Don_Shipp.

What are cello strings made of these days?

The higher strings are thinner, they're made of steel,

the lower strings it's steel weld possibly on nylon.

Strings used to be made with gut.

The gut is actually quite strong, makes a very warm sound.

Gut, as you might imagine, it's made out of animal material,

it's stretches so you have to constantly tune

these gut strings and the steel, actually,

is stronger and more stable so you tend to,

if you break in a new string, it's easier to break it in

than a gut string which may take a week

for it to actually maintain its stable length.

The people who use guts strings

tend to be the historic minded people

who are playing historic instruments.

I think the best strings are made in Scandinavia

or in Northern Europe.

@AileenBehan.

Can cellists get cello elbow?

So I assume is this like tennis elbow?

Yes, people actually get tendonitis,

tendonitis of the elbow, the hands, fingers.

Part of what we do is very athletic.

For all of you tell cellists

that are in danger of getting cello elbow,

I have just one piece of advice; stretch,

and you can stretch by going like this

which stretches your muscles this way.

Go in a wall and you can see, this actually really hurts

and if you stand and you kind of rotate on your foot,

if you go in a circle,

you're stretching everything from here to there.

When you're young, you're first of all immortal,

you think you live forever.

Knowing yourself, knowing your body

is maybe the first role of being a musician.

Being in touch with how you feel, how you think,

how your body moves, head, heart, and hands,

make them work together and you'll be fine.

@LavanteCarson.

If you could do a collaboration with a rap artist,

who would it be?

When I was working in Chicago,

a guy who did so much for the community and for education

was Common and I actually have a friend

who played in the civic orchestra, who is a violist

and she worked with Common and loved it.

So, I would love to, first of all, be able to thank him

for what he's done for the community and secondly,

I would love to be able to do something with him.

@sdmunroe.

Do string players attend a plucking class?

I once asked my parents, both professional musicians,

and got a blank stare.

The reason it's harder to pluck on instruments

that have a curvature versus on a guitar,

where you actually have a flat plane,

it's a little harder to pick and actually pluck

with the same rapidity that you can on a guitar.

There are people that do this unbelievably well.

I would go to one of those people,

Berkeley School of Music is a great place

where you can, kind of, find people that will teach you

fiddling techniques and plucking techniques.

It's kind of a sub-specialty,

that is certainly worth pursuing and if you can do it,

hey, that's a very cool thing.

@sydnichristi.

Is the cello hard to learn?

The cello itself is not hard to learn.

The most important thing

is about pulling and pushing the bow,

making sure that you find the right spot on the strings.

If it gives you pleasure, if learning gives you pleasure

and you can get pleasure from the physical sound

and from the vibrations you're in, you can progress.

If you say, it's really hard to learn and it's difficult

and you're all tight and trying to make it happen,

then it will be hard.

So, it really depends partly on your attitude

and then also on how resilient you are

to figuring out what you need to do to create a sound

that is pleasing.

That's it.

@waynemarkstubbs.

How to cellists play the 6th Bach cello suite

without crying out for joy?

I love that question, because it is explosive,

[Bach: Cello Suite No.6]

and it just goes and goes and goes and never ends,

and it gets more explosive, it gets more celebratory

and the skies open up and you're right,

it is incredibly joyous.

You cannot play that music

without actually being in that same state of mind.

Maybe that's why we love music,

because it actually puts you into different states of mind.

That makes me feel like I'm floating

somewhere up in the sky and the clouds,

you're soaring above the treeline, you see vistas.

It takes you places.

Music is a mode of transportation

that takes us from one reality into an imagined.

The reason that I am not crying out for joy

is because I'm hopefully crying out for joy

through the sounds that are coming from the cello.

I just want to thank you all for your questions.

Very often, there are no right answers,

but I think, for me, the best questions

are the questions that make us ask even more questions

and that brings out, I think, the best of what is in us.

So, thank you very much.