Yo-Yo Ma Answers Cello Questions From Twitter | Tech Support | WIRED

between you and me you know that jello is the best instrument right [Music] it is explosive [Music] hello i'm yo-yo mom i'm here to answer your questions on twitter this is cello support let's see what you got this is from at stale bread why do cellists play sweet number one in every movie you mean i think that movement represents the infinitude of what we have in the natural world so you think of [Music] flow water [Music] 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 at ashley emmerich do cellists have to take a course on expressing emotions through eyebrows what does that magically happen when you pick up the bow how about do you have to take a course on showing the motion when you're happy to see your friend i rest my case tough car 420 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 it goes [Music] they can tune off stage there's not that much to adjust i play out of tune anyway so if i tune and if it's in tune it actually gives me even less of an excuse at illuminous how the hell do cello players differentiate the frets guess what there are no frets i can play a sliding cello if i had friends it would sound 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 at inikolu what does vibrato mean so here's a note without vibrato [Music] this is with vibrato 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 to lower you can use a wider amplitude and all 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 at wrapper why do cellos 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 [Music] 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 [Music] 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 in actually producing the sound that you're you're you're doing but there's a physical aspect that needs to be considered in conjunction with how much expression you want to give at 287's why arcelo's the most beautiful instrument that is of course your opinion i try and tell cellists and especially young cellists between you and me so you know that jello is the best instrument right i love the cello it's an instrument that has a lot of versatility i can play bass lines i can play melodic stuff i can i [Music] can play fast i can play slow i can play melodically i can play bass lines 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 at the feet of god 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 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 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 may get it by a machine it's less expensive at dawn ship what are cello strings made of these days the higher strings are thinner they're made of steel the lower strings it's steel wound possibly on nylon strings used to be made with gut the gut is actually quite strong makes a very warm sound gut as as you might imagine it's made out of you know animal material it stretches so you have to constantly tune these gut trees 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 gut strings tend to be the um the historic-minded people who are playing like historic instruments and i think the best strings are made in scandinavia or northern europe at eileen bejan can celeste 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 us 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 at levante carson 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 was a violist and she worked with kamen 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 at sd monroe do string players attend a plucking class i once asked my parents both professional musicians that got a flag 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 you know 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 at sydney christie uh is the cello hard to learn the cello itself is not hard to learn the most important thing is about pulling and pushing a 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 at wayne marx stumps how to jealous play the six cello suite without crying out for joy i love that question because it is explosive 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 from the clouds you're soaring above the tree line you see vistas it takes you places music is a mode of transportation that takes us from one reality into an imagined the reason i'm not crying out for joy is because i'm hopefully crying out for joy through the sounds that are coming from the children [Music] 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

Channel: WIRED

Views: 1,996,104

Keywords: cello questions, cello support, cello support wired, tech support cello, tech support wired, wired, wired cello support, wired cellos, wired tech support, yo yo ma, yo-yo ma advice, yo-yo ma advice on playing cello, yo-yo ma cello, yo-yo ma cello advice, yo-yo ma cello lessons, yo-yo ma cello playing, yo-yo ma cello tips, yo-yo ma lessons, yo-yo ma on cello playing, yo-yo ma playing cello, yo-yo ma playing cello advice, yo-yo ma tech support, yo-yo ma tips, yoyo ma

Id: XPv4ohPTC4M

Length: 12min 54sec (774 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 27 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

What a genuinely pleasant character. Wow! I’m impressed.

[u/lostin76]

Dude is a national treasure for sure.

[u/[deleted]]

I love him. He seems so nice.

[u/isthatbendo_]

This guy's pretty good. He should go professional

[u/derwanderer3]

Cool, although he kind of dances around why Bach suite 1 is so overplayed. I got out of it “because it moves and represents different emotions” ... I think?

[u/Auzzeu]

Really nice!

[u/DougTheory]

Thanks Yo Yo

[u/[deleted]]

What a master!

[u/UKTheory_of_Music]

I have just been watching some episodes of the series in The Wilds. One of the characters is a cellist, and guess what piece she plays?