The First Post.....

[The Silent Cellist]

Hey there. My name is Shannon, aka The Great Dictator, aka the organization known as The Ummo Affair. I play bass in a band called Sanu, thats now finally realizing it's full potential as a group. I'm an adult learning the cello.

So for the first post I just thought it would be good to introduce myself.

So what do you all think about the dying art of film scoring?

I say dying because more and more soundtracks are being used, and most film scores tend to be rather rushed and uninspired, as well as generic.

[Crystal Rowland]

yeah i understand what you mean, it really sucks that thats happening

[The Silent Cellist]

It really is too bad. There's a lot of great music in film. Nino Rota for example.

[Adam R. Sweet]

Hey there Shannon

Great to have you on the site. How long you been playing cello? Where did you get your training?

Adam

[The Silent Cellist]

Its kind of strange really. Cello playing for me was a complete accident. I never intended to be a cello player. I'm an electric bassist first, so naturally I had always intended on playing upright bass. Well my x-percussionist in my band Sanu!, had a cello. He thought I should learn to play it. So he brought it over. It took me month to figure out how to get it tuned. The cello was incredibly awful. It never stayed in tune. It sounded bad. So I didn't really take it very seriously for the first year. I almost never played it. However I did start to fall in love with it. Slowly but surely. After a year I decided I really liked it and started playing it more. So I learned a few Masada tunes. After 3 months I not only broke a string, but the bridge as well. I took it in to try and get it fixed, and the Luthier said it wasn't worth fixing, and that the bridge breaking was inevitable because it was never set up right, and said "this is why you don't buy instruments off of E-Bay." My percussionist wasn't happy, but he got over it. It was litteraly like a $150 cello. Anyways, it wouldn't be till early 2007 that I would get another cello. This cello was much better and much easier to play on, and I progressed much faster. However, because of a bad roommate situation, I wasn't really aloud to play, so thus another barrier in my cello progress. It wouldn't be till September, when we finally kicked the guy out, that I would finally be able to play the amount I wanted to. So since September of 2007 I have started taking it very seriously and play every day. I have no formal training. I am entirely self taught. I can't really afford lessons, there way too expensive. So my goal is to get good enough to get into the applied music program at my local community college. Thats an hour lesson a week for the cost of one unit of college. Being in California that amounts to $20. Its really the only way I can ever get lessons.