Learning Cello | What to do When You Hit a Plateau
It would make sense to expect your progress on the cello to be as steady as your practice habits.
Let’s say you practice 2 hours a day every day. It seems logical to expect this steady input of effort to produce an equally steady rate of progress, 2 hours-worth of daily hiking up your personal mountain.
In reality, learning to play the cello can feel more like a rollercoaster ride than a steady hike for 2 reasons.
The first reason is that when we experience a breakthrough in our playing or technique, we suddenly are able to do something we previously couldn’t, and often our playing in general ratchets up to a new level in quality.
Everything from better bow control to improved shifting or vibrato creates an instantaneous improvement in the end result.
And this type of progress (in my experience) can be very streaky, in that one breakthrough often illuminates the path to another breakthrough, and another, etc.
So much of our playing technique is interconnected, and so an improvement in one area often opens up an opportunity to improve another related area.
As an example, there was a time early on when I struggled with multiple consecutive shifts because whenever I landed at a new hand position I would over squeeze with my left hand and arm. As a result of this excess tension, my shifting motion was late to get started and then too jerky as I rushed to arrive at the next shift in time.
Once I learned to shift with a more relaxed hand and arm, my vibrato (another issue at the time) immediately improved as well because the same excess tension in the left arm and hand was hampering my vibrato.
When we are in the middle of one of these streaks, our progress is akin to a spaceship hitting light speed, and it can seem like every couple of days we’re in a new galaxy of cello ability.
That’s the good reason learning cello can feel like a rollercoaster.
The bad reason it feels like a rollercoaster is the eventual plateau.
In actuality this would be more akin to standing in line to get on the rollercoaster. We’re talking Disneyland, packed, on a scorching summer day. By the midpoint in line to ride the Matterhorn you’re wondering why you even decided to come to Disneyland in the first place.
The reason we call them ‘breakthroughs’ on the cello is that all too often we are trying to break through the low ceiling of our current ability and entering the next level.
Between each breakthrough there is a period where we are digesting and familiarizing ourselves with this new level of ability, but afterwards we often experience a period where we are now comfortable with what we can do, but nowhere near our next breakthrough.
If I’m being honest, I have experienced plateaus ranging from weeks to months. These times can be really demoralizing because I’m still practicing as much as I was before the plateaus, I’m just not seeing the same level of improvement.
Having been through all types of plateaus, I have assembled a toolbox of sorts containing the tools I use to help create some forward motion in my journey when I’m feeling stuck.
It can take a bit of time to diagnose a plateau in your progress because often we don’t survey ourselves from a bird’s eye view in order to see larger trend.
But if you are currently experiencing a plateau, here are some of the tools I use to start moving towards my next breakthrough:
Take a lesson: If you are not taking regular lessons with a teacher, playing for someone and getting his/her feedback is a great way to combat a plateau.
Regardless of what your technical hurdles might be, a good lesson will help you see things in a different way.
Maybe you’ve been pushing against a wall and maybe you’re even starting to bang your head against it in frustration; a good lesson might show you that there’s actually a hidden door in the wall and that if you approach it from a different angle you can open the door and walk right through.
Try a different teacher: For me, this is for slightly more dire situations.
Maybe you have reached a plateau and it’s been a number of months and you can feel your passion or interest beginning to wane. In such a case, trying a lesson with a new teacher can be a great way to get a different perspective on your playing and how to improve it.
If you try a lesson with someone new and it feels like a much better fit, perhaps a permanent change will help prevent some plateaus in the future.
Sometimes it can feel awkward switching teachers because you don’t want to hurt the feelings of whomever you’re currently working with.
However, if you have a hunch that you might need to make a change, I say go for it. Life is short and most teachers will be understanding.
One caveat: Studying consistently with multiple teachers at the same time can be as confusing as it is enlightening. Especially if you are playing the same repertoire for both teachers.
I would probably suggest not doing this for an extended period of time only because you might end up feeling pulled in different directions.
Make a new routine: If you are like me, then you like to establish routines and systems.
They’re great.
You create a game plan, you stick to it, and then you track your progress and make minor adjustments along the way.
As an example, let’s say you create a warmup routine that lasts 25 minutes. You play open bows for 2 minutes. Then you play a C major scale with different bowing patterns and tempos for 13 minutes. Then you do a vibrato exercise for 5 minutes and finish with 5 minutes of practice on a tricky passage that incorporates an advanced bow stroke like spiccato.
This sounds to me like an excellent way to warm up!
And over the days and weeks you will get to watch your facility improve as the scale becomes easier to play and as that final tricky passage feels more and more comfortable.
But what if you ALWAYS warm up in this manner? And then ALWAYS practice your repertoire afterwards in the same order?
This is where game plans can become more of a crutch to lean on than a crow bar to break into the next level of playing.
We get comfortable with a routine, and eventually we grow comfortable with simply doing the routine.
Eventually we are warming up in the sense of playing cello, but we’re not accomplishing any of the problem solving that was the impetus for creating the routine in the first place.
If this sounds at all familiar, I suggest completely scrapping your old routine and building a new one.
Pick new warmup material, switch up the order, and switch up what you focus on when doing each part.
Using the old example and the same 25 minute time period, maybe begin with 5 minutes of sight-reading practice. Then maybe play a scale but focus on beauty of tone instead of speed. Or change out scales for arpeggios, anything to create variety.
I have the habit of finding comfort and accomplishment in establishing routines and sticking to them strictly. It helps me approach problems systematically, but if left unchanged and unchecked, the routines themselves can eventually cause a plateau in my progress and creativity.
Focus on the ‘opposite’ end of the issue: When we play the cello, we are essentially using our entire bodies in one way or another.
This can sometimes be the cause for plateaus in progress because we don’t realize where the source of our limitation is stemming from.
The best example I can think of concerns learning how to create vibrato.
As I see it, creating a beautiful vibrato is much more about finding a perfectly balanced playing position with the arms and torso than it is about focusing on making the fingers move.
With vibrato, often the more you work physically and the harder you try, the worse the result will be; that’s because the reason you feel the need to move so vigorously is due to your body being out of balance and thus feeling like you have to exert yourself to overcome these imbalances.
If your left arm does not feel balanced and light (heavier in the finger, lighter in the elbow) while you are trying to vibrate, then it’s unlikely that the result will be what you’re looking for.
In this circumstance, focusing on the ‘opposite’ end of the issue might fix your vibrato by taking your focus away from your left hand and placing it on the positioning of your left arm and also focusing on your bow arm and making sure that you are not out of balance there as well.
Once you feel balanced and poised in both arms, creating vibrato becomes much easier to do and much less work physically.
If you hit a plateau somewhere in your technique, try thinking about the other parts of your body you normally ignore.
If you want a more open sound with the bow, maybe take a mental full body scan to see if you’re holding extra tension in your neck or trapezius muscles, for example.
Even tension held in your toes or thighs will impact the sound you create (and will make you fatigue more quickly).
Finally, analyze yourself: We’re all adults here.
We know ourselves and have a sense of our typical characteristics. Knowing how we tend to operate often contains clues as to how we can effectively break through our personal plateaus.
When we even talk about “a plateau” we are by definition being subjective. I feel myself hitting a plateau because I’m not meeting my own expectations for progress.
Thus our subjective expectations and opinions of ourselves helps define what a plateau even looks like to each of us.
So begin by asking yourself if you are practicing the amount necessary to progress at the rate you desire.
Keep in mind that truly efficient practice is precisely that, and so you don’t need to be practicing 4 hours a day to see incredible results.
Maybe your personality type is that of the meticulous perfectionist. If so, maybe consider experimenting more, letting go more and trying things without worrying about whether or not they will be a waste of time, or whether you will fail.
Perhaps you’re the type of person whose adhd flares up whenever you are faced with rote repetition. Knowing and acknowledging this will enable you to come up with more creative ways to get those critical repetitions in without feeling bored.
Maybe you are intensely results-oriented (or impatient) and you seem to hit a plateau when you are faced with a situation that requires patience and sustained effort over a longer period of time. You worry that you are not doing something correctly because after trying it slowly for 5 minutes, it falls apart when you then try it at full speed.
We all have different personalities with different strengths and weaknesses.
If you can analyze yourself, perhaps even with a little humor, you might find that your plateau is the result of the way you are approaching the cello.
Knowing this will help you strategize ways to make the learning process work for you specifically.
With hard work and the right knowledge, the sky is the limit for you as a musician.
Plateaus are one of the more frustrating aspects of learning to play the cello, but on the bright side you will feel equally thrilled and proud of yourself each time you have a breakthrough and find yourself on the other side.
