Fine string teachers insist that anything after the age of 4 is too late to begin learning a string instrument and hope to master it. For "mastery" I suspect that's true, but I can't go back in time to correct that.
Lately however, I've been interested in learning crazy new things that have no immediate practical. Like learning French, which i've had some success at over the last year or so.
Now I'm looking at the cello. I like the sound, I like the repetoire.
I'm already a Bass trombone player so I already understand the concepts of reading and performing music. I also took two semesters of viola lessons in college to fulfill a "second instrument" requirement so i know a small bit of string practices.
The challenge now will be to control the cello and produce useful sounds.
To give the idea a dry run, I've been playing an old violin that I got out of an aunt's attic years ago and I've been playing it vertically as if it were a tiny cello.
You can't see me here, but you can hear me playing for my cat...
That's shaky, but that's a promising enough result after a few weeks of practice that I decided to go ahead and find myself a cello.
