I thought it would be so easy today.  Listen to You Can Close Your Eyes on YouTube. Figure out the melody on the piano.  Transfer the notes to a music notation app called Crescendo.  It shouldn’t take long to figure out their system.  Then sit with my cello with the sheet music (five lines and four spaces full of notes).  Play the song!

So naive … this man.

Crescendo is a great app.  I made progress on the figuring and playing.  But getting to where I am now took three hours.  I did well, with many missteps and much sweat along the way.

After grunting for awhile in guessing the notes with the piano, and the lengths of each one, I consulted my friend Google. An app called MuseScore came into my world. It had the sheet music for my song but the sequence of notes had a complexity that this rebeginning cellist isn’t ready for. So I got to work on simplifying with Crescendo. And gradually I became faster with the keystrokes of that program.

Take a look at the photo. See the four black notes in a row with a simple straight tail? They’re quarter notes. That’s where I’ll start. I can jazz up the rhythm a bit with my bowstrokes if the moment calls for it. I love beginning again!

Slowly my mature brain is remembering the connection between notes on the page and fingers on the fingerboard. A memory of long ago pressings of the D string made me smile. I’m in a time machine.

Intonation means how well the playing matches the pitch of the notes I’m playing. Am I in tune? Mine sucked quite nicely today. Should I have expected otherwise? No. Fifty years is considerable.

But … my God! I’m on the road. And it’s a good one. If I play “poorly” on July 7, so be it. I will play.

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Would you like to hear the song? I think it’s glorious. Perfect for a cello rendition.