Natalie Haas - Trad Cello

Judy Minot: Somebody sent me a some TikTok or something and it had ⁓ it was a cellist actually and as the ⁓ practice fairy comes in and says, ⁓ you know, I'm here to tell you that you're done. ⁓ you're done practice. ⁓ yeah. You know how to play. I know exactly who you're talking about. Nick Cal Nalockis. You know what I went to school with actually. ⁓ really? Yeah. Yeah. And afterward I I start thinking to myself, you know, there's a lovely message in that, which is that you were actually good. You know, you y so that the practice doesn't become a thing that you're doing because you're not up to snuff. It's a thing that you're just doing because you want you want something more, you know. You want something better. Mm-hmm. And it changed it it changed, it'll probably go away. But I had a lovely like kind of reframing of all all all of my what you can call practice. Some people don't like to call it that, that just 'cause they don't like the word, but ⁓ reframing of how I thought about it. Totally. We all need a practice very Really. ⁓ maybe I'll just start going around with with a tutu visiting people's houses. ⁓ Welcome to the podcast Best Practice for Musicians, where we discuss how to practice more efficiently and play with more joy. I'm Judy Minot. I'm the author of the book Best Practice: Inspiration and Ideas for Traditional Musicians. And today I'm talking to cellist Natalie Haas. I think every cellist who plays folk music, especially Celtic music, has been influenced and inspired by Natalie. In fact, I don't even think we would have this term folk cellist if it weren't for Natalie Haas. She grew up in California playing a lot with her sister Britney Haas, and by her early teens she was touring with Scottish master fiddler Alistair Fraser. And since that time she's played with pretty much every well known name in American and European roots or folk music. She also teaches and was a teacher at Berkeley College of Music, and she teaches at a lot of camps, ⁓ including the Valley of the Moon camp in California and the String Fling camp at Ashokin in the east coast of the United States. And Natalie, today it's it's mostly in that teaching capacity, or because you're such a great teacher and a well-known teacher that I wanted to talk to you because, you know, the people who listen to this podcast are people who want to become better. At least I hope so. And ⁓ you know. That's one of the things you're really good at. So, before we get started though, I did have a question because I I know that at Berkeley they call the program the Roots program and I struggle with this a lot. I call my book Trad, Traditional. ⁓ what what do you what do you think about these terms? Where do you come down on it? Do you have any Yeah, I I like the term roots music. ⁓ traditional is maybe not that accurate anymore because a lot of us who play traditional music are, you know, taking modern influences. so yeah, ⁓ I I think I prefer the term roots music ⁓ because yeah it's base ⁓ it's funny actually I I live in Spain now and ⁓ they make a very specific distinction between ⁓ folk musician and traditional musician and traditional musician is somebody who follows the past ⁓ traditions and is very ⁓ kind of purist and folk musician is somebody who is willing to take in ⁓ out side influences. That's here in Spain. But I think folk music is is way too broad a term for for what we do. ⁓ you know it's you know that happens in labeling anything really, but ⁓ it's it's problematic. Yeah, and things shift and change and country by country, like in Ireland here where I am, ⁓ They you know, they call it trad and they also call it trad in Quebec. And in Quebec when they say trad they mean all of the things you just talked about with roots. And yet if I say to a jazz mush musician trad, they they think I'm talking about Dixie Lynn. So that's very difficult. Yeah. Anyway, ⁓ tell me about a project you've been working on lately that challenges you musically. ⁓ Well, playing with my sister for me is that. That's kind of fresh in my head right now 'cause we just finished recording our second album. Which is probably gonna be coming out in the fall, we hope. and ⁓ yeah, she's such a stellar musician that she really challenges me in ways that that no one else does. and ⁓ you know, we we meet on a lot of levels, but we've gone our separate ways, you know, ⁓ down the Celtic versus the American path. But she's played with so many wonderful people and ⁓ just like her musicianship just keeps growing and growing and growing and so I feel like every time we play together I'm learning something and getting better by proximity. ⁓ You know I I had a teacher once who told me, always play with people who are better than you. I mean you know it's it's sometimes a lot easier to sit in a room where you're you're the best player but you know you you can learn from any musical situation, no matter what level you're at. ⁓ and But it it just is a different skill set, you know, w whether you're put in a position of humility or you're put in the position as the better player of generosity, of sharing that with the people around you. That's a lovely way of of thinking about it, yeah. So when you are playing with your sister, do you have to do you sort of have stuff where you it's challenging you at in the moment? Is it sort of an in the moment thing? Or are you Or do you go back home and kind of I think all of all of the above. Yeah. Really? A lot of yeah, her music making is is very spontaneous and improvisatory and that's a part of me that I feel like is lacking be coming from Celtic music. ⁓ it's a different you know, there's micro improvisation going on, but like really like living in the moment, you know, making stuff up on the spot. ⁓ I do some of that, but I I feel like ⁓ I'm somewhat limited in that respect. So there's some of that that you can work on on your own, but I think it really is sort of a practice by doing thing and by doing it with people who have fluency in in that kind of playing, it it forces you to sort of get out of your comfort zone a little bit and ⁓ yeah, so I I think it's some of both. ⁓ yeah, I I do strive to sort of ⁓ be my best self when we're getting ready to to work on a project together by practicing leading up to it, but th there's only so much practicing you can do to prepare yourself for something that is largely improvisatory. And I guess maybe there's some things you can do to practice for improvising. Yeah. As folk or roots musicians, we're used to playing in certain we stick to a certain kind of ⁓ key signature, for example. That so at least we're familiar with those keys. So it ⁓ you know, it means like you can easily I mean, after ⁓ years and years of playing in D G and A. You can play in D G and A all up and down you know, all the fingerboard. ⁓ I suppose if someone went into A flat you'd have to Yeah, and we do play in a lot of very unorthodox fiddle keys on this new new album. So there definitely was some practising involved in that. So talking about Brittany, how How much do you think that that was important to you as a musician to be able to play with someone all the time? Or or how much playing you did you do? I always imagine you two in this wonderful little nest where you, you know, get to play and you're improv you know, you're playing the backup and she's playing melody and ⁓ is that really ⁓ d was that formative for you? Yeah, I think I mean th the that's the goal of practising is to be able to play better with other people, ⁓ because That's way more interesting than than making music on your own, which can be satisfying in its in and of itself, but ⁓ making music with other people is really what it's all about. So yes, there was, you know, growing up there was a fair amount of individual practice going on. ⁓ and the playing together stuff was ⁓ you know, we did it in various contexts. We would play for ⁓ farmers markets and like little, you know, local gigs. We played at our local Festival of the Sea and the Hyde Street Pier in San Francisco and ⁓ like little little gigs. But and we played in like my sister's violin teacher's chamber group, ⁓ together so all sorts of different contexts. I suppose we we must have worked up a a duo repertoire back then, but it would have been sort of based on the traditional fiddle tunes that we were learning at fiddle camps. but now we're really writing our own music and and working out how to write together, which is a whole journey in a and of itself. ⁓ ⁓ so yeah, it's come a long way. But yeah, I would say that collaboration is always the goal and something to like I said, like there's only so much practicing you can do individually to prepare yourself for those kinds of situations. But then once you're actually there, present in the moment with other people, ⁓ the more you do that, the more playing with other people you do, the more you're gonna be ready for those kinds of situations. Do you know Pascal Jem? He's a Canadian fiddler. Yeah, he once said something like you learn a hundred times more in one, you know, playing for one dance than you than you learn in a hundred hours of practicing, right? Yeah. Because you're having to you're having to do it on the fly and ⁓ and think and but at the same time as you say, you have to get to that point. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've heard Alistair say this a million times, so I I don't mind repeating it just like that your bow arm is completely informed by what's going on on on the dance floor. ⁓ and y and you won't know until you see the physical reaction of the dancers if what you're doing works or not. So it it's very educational. Very interesting. When you have students, what questions do you think they ask you most often about practicing? About practicing itself. Well, it's funny 'cause I feel like in traditional music a lot of the focus in lessons is on learning repertoire. First of all, ⁓ learning kind of stylistic skills. ⁓ and that's usually what people are coming for me, ⁓ coming to me for is for me to give them the specific set of of skills that I have. But actually the practicing thing is not talked about that much. and I was really thankful to cellist Mike Block, who organized this ⁓ thing in the pandemic. I I did a ⁓ few sessions for them called the guided practice sessions. And I really had to sit down and think for the first time ever, like, how would I teach practicing? Like this is the stuff that I do for myself, but I don't really do it with my students unless they specifically ask me to sh to show show them what to practice. I mean I'll I'll give people pointers and lessons about, you know, playing with metronome and ⁓ warming up. Well, so what do you do? What do you do that's successful for you? Yeah, well, that's the thing with this guided practice sessions I had to come up with a whole program and it was like a four week series. So I that really gave me the I the opportunity to really think it out. like methodically, you know, what can you do to work on your melody playing? What can you do to work on your rhythm playing? What can you do to work on your accompaniment? ⁓ that's something that's really hard to practice and you know, without having another musician to do it with, ⁓ as as we were saying earlier. yeah, so I I I will tell people ⁓ I mean I guess ⁓ the most often people are coming to me for sort of backup skills, even though I I do a lot of melody playing too and will work with folks on that. so I I can take them through some exercises which I've like enjoyed sort creating, ⁓ you know, nerding out one of my favorite things to do. on sort of activating your left hand for ornaments, for playing fiddle ornaments on the cello. you know, going through the cycle, through the scale, up and down of all of the different fingering combinations, getting them to to be fast acting, maybe doing it with metronome so that they have rhythmic ⁓ effect as well. and then, you know, practicing different Boeing combinations, maybe say like in you find one tune that is really good for that because it's like say like a constant stream of eighth notes. So it's not like the rhythms of the tune are interrupting your bowing patterns. ⁓ you can actually impose a pattern on it that is gonna work throughout the whole tune or or maybe just an A part or a B part. But ⁓ So you're saying like it's all eighth notes, so then you can say, All right, I'm gonna do this bowing pattern. Yeah, and you can you can just ⁓ In an ideal world, you would be creating somebody who has is not in the image of you, but is ⁓ their own person and has your skills but will i impose their own aesthetic onto it. So ⁓ yeah, so I want people to to be able to be playful with bowings and fingerings and chordal choices. and so if I just give them this the skill set and maybe Try and work in variation from a very early stage. So they're not like learning patterns and becoming totally dependent on those patterns. ⁓ so being able to to get to to add variation into your playing from an early stage is really key. So you have to know you have to be able to practice the different variations. So then how do you t get people to work them into their playing? Do you you have a practice where you say practice A, then practice B, then practice nothing? I mean, what I'm talking about is not so much variation of the melody. I'm talking about variation in in your rhythmic pattern ideas. ⁓ okay, right. And ⁓ so I I I will create exercises and encourage people to do the same where you take like a two bar phrase, a four bar phrase, an eight bar phrase, come up with all with all the possible combinations of how to bow this of what kinds of rhythms could work in this ⁓ over this phrase and let's let's practice all of the different combinations just so y that you ⁓ are then able to obviously we always want to relate it back to the tune so that you're not just sort of ⁓ coming up with interesting ideas but then it has nothing to do with the melody itself. My thing with teaching is just giving people the skill set to be able to do this for themselves, i ideally. So one of the things that I do as an accompanist, which is an issue, right, is to not come up with the cool rhythm until like halfway through the A part. There's also this process where you have to make the decision, now I'm going to do this A part with this rhythm. Now I'm gonna do this B part with this rhythm. Is that something you think about or you teach or Absolutely? Yeah. That that would be sort of a a ⁓ later stage in in your development. But once you have sort of this vocabulary Of rhythmic patterns that you can draw from. Basically, you're teaching yourself to think like a drummer. But then ideally, and that I work with people i in lessons a lot on this stuff, is how to actually organize your ideas in a way that makes musical sense. So and be able to craft an arrangement. I mean, I don't play a lot for dancing, I do a lot more playing in concert situations. And in that case, you're really thinking about kind of creating an arc of an arrangement. ⁓ and how can you sort of build this up so that you're thinking about kind of developing a motive. You want the listener to be able to kind of grab on to to what you're doing. So having different ideas for different sections of the tune. And so maybe developing that idea over the course of an a whole A part. New idea when you get when you get to the B part. Like a concept I call in jazz. Yeah. Right. ⁓ and then the next time through the tune you're maybe something might stay the same, like the chords for example, and you're gonna put a completely different rhythmic texture on it. Or you might have a new harmonic setting, or you might have all of those things, you know, ⁓ and progressively getting busier. You know, it depends on the ar the shape you're trying to create. You have to plan that up is what you're saying. Yeah, exactly. So for a performance anyway. Yeah. So I w I want people to develop the skill set, but then actually put it into practice. ⁓ you know, preparing yourself to play with other people and and add these ideas. Just going back to this idea about sort of sitting down and practicing, did you always love it? Do you always love it? Are there times when you don't wanna do it? When you don't want to do it, what do you do about that? Yeah, well I I just I should say that first of all, I'm not a great practicer. I practice when I have something to practice, like when I'm learning repertoire for a concert or a recording session or If I am actually practicing just to sort of get good at my instrument, that feels like a total luxury to me. ⁓ You're not the first professional who says this to me. Like I don't really get to do this for fun anymore, you know? Yeah, which is sad in a way. But ⁓ I mean like the pandemic was such a gift in in some ways because you had the luxury of time. And I I I did do A lot of practicing, a lot of sort of learning tunes. I if I do have the time and I'm gonna grant myself an hour ⁓ of playing. It depends, you know, ⁓ you can have like little sections of your practice session that you devote to specific ⁓ topics. So I'm maybe there's always gonna be a warm up there. ⁓ and for me that's like playing against a drone, which could be for intonation. I I play a lot of double stops, so kinda wanna keep those in shape and and in tune and yeah, just ⁓ kind of there's a there's great resus resources out there on the internet, YouTube or you know, whatever streaming platform you use. ⁓ there's drones that are basically like six six minutes in each key and that's just a great way to it could be you could improvise in in any key. What I do is go through sort of these scale routines ⁓ involving playing, you know, seconds, thirds, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, in whatever diet diatonic key I'm in. ⁓ and then also playing across the neck, ⁓ which for cello is really important because ⁓ you don't want to be going this way as because it's real they're they're really f far distances to cover. Yeah. So the more you can go across the more efficient you're being. you know, we're not especially as folk musicians, we're not as comfortable in the higher positions up the neck, especially on the lower strength. So ⁓ kind of yeah, developing those those skills ⁓ in your warm up is great. and then what are some other practice s sections of of the practice? I mean, yeah, some of it might be devoted to just sort of make making sure that I'm sort of maintaining my technique. So maybe that might be playing some box suites or some power etudes or some ⁓ you know, whatever, cello r repertoire and it doesn't have to be classical. Learning repertoire for concerts is a is like I said, that's mostly what I practice. Right. Right. Do you ever specifically think about breathing while you play? Mm, that's a great question. Yeah. I feel like my classical teachers used to Talk about that a lot. Yes, I d I am aware of it. You hear in a lot of classical chamber music recordings like people sniffing. which is ⁓ usually like a way s and in in trad music could be a way of marking time. It can be showing an entrance or something. I have a terrible sniffing problem. I need like someone to stand over me with a baton and hit me. Yeah and I get my recordings back and I'm like, what is that? And we often edit those out of recordings nowadays. ⁓ I feel so much better now. But I mean it's real. It's real. I don't know if we should be doing that or not. And and often, yes, if you are taking a big breath before touching the instrument, you actually do notice it, especially if you're cu watching somebody from outside. It's it's harder to do for yourself. Maybe listen back to recordings of yourself. practicing and try taking a deep breath before the first note and not and see if you can note the the the ⁓ difference in sound. And I'm I'm sure you will. And I Alistair talks about this often, ⁓ about you know, fiddle players and by extension cello players sort of losing track of breath, ⁓ i in the way that flute players and singers cannot. So we have to kind of remind ourselves of that as string players that ⁓ it is good to to have gaps, spaces, silences. let let a phrase sit before moving on to the next one. because it's a it's a musical way to to treat a phrase. Yeah. Even in rhythmic music where you can't really change the rhythm, there are ways to add breath, you know. Yeah. As you say, flute players have to know this because they have to put in They have to decide where is the space gonna be, because I do need to breathe somewhere. Yeah. And it's almost like we could we could learn from that to say, ⁓ well what what if I had to breathe here? Yeah. Where would I put it? And it's nice to have a break, you know, from continuous sound. You know, we as listeners need that. Yeah, and we tend to focus on how can I add more? How can I add more? And it it's almost like w you could do a whole exercise on how could I What could I take away? Mm-hmm. There was a teacher I worked with once and she used to take ⁓ students through a tune and say, Well, let's find the bones of the tune. So what can we take out? Yeah. What ⁓ what notes can we take out? And most people have never thought of mm of a tune that way. But once you have like, well, how how little can it be before it's still the same tune? Yes. Then you're like, Well, you know, th there's my that's my skeleton, I can hang anything on that. That's a great way to to start thinking about variation ⁓ melodically is yeah, what what are the essentials that you need to keep to to make it still recognizable. And you know, in jazz they have this thing where they all they'll sort of improvise, improvise and then the very last phrase they play, the phrase everybody knows, you know? Yes. And that's it's like well, hey, as long as it's got that, I know what tune you're playing. And that's actually important to chord players too. we we used to have to do this a at when I was in Juilliard, ⁓ they called it Shankarian analysis, just breaking it the melodies down to their most basic forms. And actually that's what you're doing as a chord player is you're deciding which notes are the ones that need to be harmonized because these are the important notes in the melody. And that's a difficult thing ⁓ to do from a mental point of view. Mm-hmm. You know, when you start doing that it it's it's very it's very like nerdy. Okay. You go, okay, well here's the notes of the D chord, there's the D and there's an F sharp and there's an A. So this must be a D D chord here. Do you think that that's that's a I I don't know if this is a question. Is it like mostly a nerdy kind of sit down and look at it thing? Or do you think that at some point you just sort of listen and you're how how do you how are we finding those as as human beings? I have no idea. Yeah, I th I think you definitely have to train yourself to do it by ear. But that that is the goal is to be able to do it by ear in a session. You know, you won't get many times through the tune in a session. So the more you do it, the faster that brain process becomes. But you can start Physically on paper. I mean, it everybody learns differently. So some people are very visual learners. So if you want to do yourself a little ⁓ Roman numeral R you know, going through the the what you think the chords of the tune are based on what the important melody notes are. ⁓ some of that might be, yeah, could be visual at first, but then you want to also develop the ear part of that. So that might be listening to recordings and trying to pick out the bass line, which is what I often gravitate towards as as a cello player. But yeah, so teaching yourself to hear singing even the bass line. Totally. Teaching yourself to hear other parts than just the melody. That's a difficult practice actually, listening to the bass line because we're just as humans, I think we just want to hear the melody. Yeah, we're drawn to that definitely. And I can't tell you the number of times that I've sat down, listened to a tune and said, All right, I'm gonna think about the chord progressions that that accompanist us doing here and the next thing I know I'm singing along. Yeah. You have to be really actively listening to to engage engage that part of your brain. So when you were a you know, when you were younger, let's cast your mind back, did you practice like a ton? People have this theory, this thing that they're not practicing enough, that they have to keep that they'll never be able to practice enough. And I have this sort of the drum I bang a lot is that you really don't have to practice Forever you just have to practice well. Exactly. You know, you have to be attentive when you're doing it. Yeah. Ten to fifteen minutes of focused practice is way better than an hour of unfocused. You know, when I was in conservatory, I would often feel guilty because I I saw other people around me, you know, in practice rooms between five and eight hours a day and I was like on a really good day I would I would do three. But It's interesting you because you said playing too. Playing and practicing to me are not the same thing. But playing is time on your instrument. So does that count as practice? I don't I don't know because your mind is not really focused when you're maybe playing in a session or or something. ⁓ depending on what you're doing, I suppose. If you're trying to learn a tune, maybe you are really focused. But different things. Yeah, totally different things. P performing is is not practice either, but it is time on the instrument. ⁓ so ⁓ yeah, that's how I can justify not practicing ⁓ and at this stage of my life as much as I would like to be, is that I still am playing a lot. Well, there was a great ⁓ somebody sent me ⁓ some TikTok or something and it had ⁓ it was a cellist actually and as the ⁓ practice fairy comes in and says, ⁓ you know, I'm here to tell you that you're done. ⁓ You're done practicing. ⁓ yeah. You know how to play. I know exactly who you're talking about. Nick Calakis. You know what I went to school with actually. ⁓ really? Yeah. Yeah, and afterward I I start thinking to myself, you know There's a lovely message in that, which is that you're actually good. You know, you y so that the practice doesn't become a thing that you're doing because you're not up to snuff. It's a thing that you're just doing because you want you want something more, you know. You want something better. Mm-hmm. And it changed it it changed, it'll probably go away. But I had a lovely like kind of reframing of all all all of my what you can call practice. Some people don't like to call it that, that just 'cause they don't like the word, but reframing of how I thought about it. Totally. We all need a practice very Really. ⁓ maybe I'll just start going around with with a tutu, visiting people's houses. When you are teaching, you I imagine that you're mostly working with people who are pretty already ⁓ pretty established on their instrument. I was very surprised when I first went to the string fling and ⁓ I was listening to Alistair because I was the I was a violinist, but you took all the ⁓ the ⁓ cello players and you just basically wrote up a list of chords and said, These are the chords and they all knew what to do and I thought, wow, it would be amazing to be th there even on the on the violin. You sh you sh you know, theoretically you could do that as well. But ⁓ how do you kind of get people started in in that sort of way of thinking? I don't know that you have that many students that are that in that place. I don't know. ⁓ most people actually, cellist, don't think of their instrument as a choral instrument because that's not the way music is taught. ⁓ classical music anyway. I know, even trad music because a lot of people kind of are averse to thinking of it as having a harmonic basis. Right. Yeah. Because originally it it it didn't. It's hard, you know, we we aren't taught music theory in a practical way. So that it takes a a a long time for people to sort of get out of their comfort zone and be comfortable with treating their instrument as a chordal instrument, especially str bowed string players. because, you know, if you're a fiddle player you play the melody, if you're a cellist you play the bass line. Like that's just what these instruments' roles are and have been historically for hundreds of years. however, going back to Scottish music ⁓ collections in the eighteenth century you can go and see vis visually bass lines. And and that's why, you know, I started playing the cello in this music is because there was a historical precedent for it. But I quickly realized that just playing these bass lines just wasn't gonna cut it for me. It's just not that interesting 'cause you're ⁓ mostly playing one note. you know. Well you're a twenty first century player. You're not in the eighteenth century. Exactly. You know and that just doesn't enough for your ear, right? Well and it and it just maybe satisfying if you're dancing, but as a listener it's not that interesting. so, yeah, it I guess it all changed for me when I I first heard Darryl Enger Rashad Eggleston ⁓ you know, treating these instruments like they were chordal instruments. And so trying to d develop that idea of the cello as being the accompaniment, but ⁓ doing more interesting s things with it than just playing repeated order notes on on a drone. that ⁓ this whole world opened up and ⁓ yeah the minute I accepted double stops into my life I re realized that ⁓ yes, this is a chordal instrument. The minute I started doing sort of chopping and shuffling rhythm patterns that I heard Daryl and Rashad doing, I was like, ⁓ yes, this is a rh rhythm instrument too. It can be percussive. It can be The whole rhythm section for a band. You don't need a drummer, you don't need a guitar player. yeah, if if you embrace this ⁓ concept of bowed strings being chordal and rhythmic, ⁓ then you have this whole new world opened up to you. ⁓ guitar players have a big advantage over us. ⁓ so we ha as string players have to teach ourselves to think that way. Yet, you know, they often don't think of themselves as rhythm players. Even though they're they're in the rhythm section that they think of chords without being rhythmic. Right. Very good. But you are rhythmic. As soon as you take a pick or a bow to string. You are. There's no avoiding it. Yeah, I guess what ⁓ taking people through that process is it's really hard at first. ⁓ and you know, people sometimes leave these workshops in tears. But then they come back to me years later and say, Something clicked and I finally get it now and it's working and I'm Totally understand everything you're saying and it makes sense. So it it's a process, you know, it it takes time. Well it's hard when you've worked so hard to get to a certain point on your instrument. Someone comes along and they go, Yeah, well guess what? There's a whole new big deep swimming pool out there and you're gonna jump right in. Yes. You know, that's like, wait, wait, what about what I know? Yeah. I wanna rest in what I know. Yeah, exactly. Okay, what's your number one thing that you think hangs people up about not getting better? It's interesting. I mean I I guess I I work in a lot of situations where getting better is not the goal, actually. The goal is having fun. And it doesn't really matter if you're getting better or not as long as you're having fun. A lot of ⁓ fiddle camps are populated by older adults, who maybe are retired and all of a sudden have come back to their instrument after years of not playing, for example. and of course you want to get better, but ⁓ What you really want to do is just take time on the instrument. And being in a fiddle camp, being surrounded by people who have similar interests and ⁓ being in sessions, playing with other people, you know, you you want to you want them to get motivated to spend more time on their instrument. Because practicing, yes, will make you better. but you have to have that initial motivation in order to want to practice. So ⁓ yeah I guess I I'm more ⁓ on that side of the spectrum than the ⁓ because I don't have a lot of private students that I see on a week to week basis because of my teeth ⁓ touring schedule. So my role as a teacher has tended to be more showing up, giving people the skills ⁓ whether they can play use them right away or not. Most of the time they won't be able to use them right away. But as long as they're absorbing a little bit every time they see me, whether it might be a year before I see them again, but I just want them to get excited about playing and using the cello in this style of music. so that they eventually will take that into their own musical life and community. ⁓ so the practicing part to me is if you if you feel inspired to do that, great. ⁓ but I'm I'm there to motivate you and inspire. Yeah. Well, I mean, I should say that When I talk about practicing, I'm only talking about pra practicing in order to get people motivated so that they play better, so that they love their playing. That's true. You love you're playing, you love your playing, that's great, you know. Let's say you're playing with anyone. Okay, but let's say let's choose Alistair because you played with him for a really long time. ⁓ and you've done this thing over and over, right? ⁓ it's at least the situation itself is very familiar to you and you're very comfortable in it. How do you how do you set it up so that it will be fresh for you? Well, writing new music, whether that's together or separately, and then arranging it together. I guess, you know, this is all I've ever really done is the fiddle cello thing. ⁓ I'm doing it now with Brittany and I've been doing it with Alistair for over twenty five years. ⁓ but I still don't feel like I'm I have completely explored every angle of what the cello can do and how these instruments work best together. so yeah, to me it's definitely been a progression from like the very first album we made to the new one, which just came out a few weeks ago, of, you know, figuring out what the cello's role is, but then really exploiting it for like every detail and nuance and making sure that ⁓ we're each expressing because there's only two of us, we have to be very choosy about which notes ⁓ we play because we want the whole to sound like ⁓ some greater than its parts. You know, so so how do I do that? ⁓ is yeah, and that can be achieved by various things that I'm you know, maybe I have already done but I I could do better or I could do differently to suit this this one melody. You know, ⁓ and part of it for me is is also a j ⁓ a generational thing. Like back in when I was starting to go to fiddle camps, like late nineties, early two thousands, ⁓ like chopping was all the rage. We were all just learning how to do it. ⁓ and now I'm kind of like, yes it's great and I still use it, but ⁓ I'm actually leaning more away from that and more into the sort of actual composition, like through composed. ⁓ like These are the specific notes that I feel like best suit this particular moment in the music. The chopping thing is, yeah, it's chordal, but ⁓ actually as a cello player, we have limited kind of voicings we can use for chords. And if you're just playing parallel fifths all the time, it's it's not that interesting. ⁓ harmonically speaking, yeah, which is why the practicing of of the different intervals of double stops. Right. And the different rhythms. Yeah, exactly. So just like being choosy about ⁓ which notes I'm playing at every moment. Yeah, just you know, it's it's a constant process of ⁓ of choosing my accompaniments to best suit the music. And then it becomes sort of a hazy line into where is it accompaniment and where is it like equally important as the melody. Like that's that's always been the goal is to is to have it that is a thing. When I listen to your records with Alistair, ⁓ I I I'm always listening to both of you. I'm never it's always something where both parts are equally inst interesting. And sometimes you'll flip back and forth between the accompaniment and and the melody. And I'm not really I didn't really notice it, you know? Because I, you know, was sort of listening to the whole or whatever. Well cool. ⁓ is there anything that you thought you might wanna talk about that I didn't ask you about? No, it's been very interesting and ⁓ yeah, some great questions. Forcing me to think about my own. Probably not your normally interview. No, it's great. I love it. I love Michael. I love l nerding out on this stuff. Exactly. Natalie, thanks so much for joining me. This has been super interesting. ⁓ I really wish you well on all those s great projects you're working on and ⁓ I can't wait till ⁓ I get a chance to see you again live. Likewise, thank you so much. Yeah. Thanks for listening to Best Practice for Musicians, where we hope to provide inspiration for musicians who want to practice more effectively and play with more joy. If you've enjoyed this interview, I hope you've subscribed, either on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. And if you have friends who are musicians, why not let them know about it too? If you want links for anything that was discussed in the podcast, to sign up for the newsletter or to find my blog. Have a look at the podcast notes. I'm Judy Minot, author of the book Best Practice, Inspiration and Ideas for Traditional Musicians. I produce and edit this podcast. The music, Arpeggio Garden, is even a tune I wrote. It's from the album Fable by Anna Bosnick, and it's used here by permission.