![]() I tried to compensate by instinctively altering my playing posture, shifting my body to be at an angle with the cello. Since the electric cello had no resonant body to hide behind, I felt very awkward and exposed. I was playing on what basically amounted to a stick and more lost than a toddler on the trading floor of the New York Stock Exchange. This particular model of electric cello was devoid of rib projections and knee supports. ![]() My entire tactile sense of where I am on the fingerboard is based on where the thumb and fingers of the left hand hang out in fourth position. Not having the usual shape of the acoustic cello in front of me was disorienting. I pulled the dense and heavy instrument out of the covers, paired one of my bows with it, and got down to business.Īs a cellist, I did not anticipate the electric cello being so difficult to commandeer. It was quite small and looked like an assembled bass clarinet stuffed into a black soft case. The morning of the concert Jody swung by my apartment and dropped off the electric cello. ![]() Their bass player Jody told me he had an electric cello kicking around at home and encouraged me to give it a try. I originally planned on having a microphone primitively amplify my cello for the show, but it was clear that would not be enough for the rehearsal, let alone the concert. Electric guitars, bassi, drums, and screaming singers reverberated throughout the building, creating one of the most scary environments I’d ever experienced. Lights flickered along the dimly lit cement halls of the warehouse. I made my way to the front doors and struggled in, immediately deafened by the cacophony of no less than twenty death metal bands practicing simultaneously. I braced myself against the Chicago wind as I trudged to a giant dilapidated warehouse, its repositories no longer needed to store goods, instead divided into small rooms for rent. I loaded myself onto the L to get to rehearsal, and rode the Green Line to its very last stop. In my days of freelancing in Chicago, one of my more entertaining gigs was playing in a concert with a band called The Live Debate. ![]()
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