In an effort to learn the technique used by musicians like Sting (he sings and plays the fretless bass), Esperanza Spalding, Andrew Bird, and of course lilsharp, over the past year I arranged a few tunes for cello and voice and learned them.   Even after practicing these, the technique is still very difficult for me.  There’s the issue of coordination between hands, rhythm between bow and voice, but the real trouble for me is intonation.

Then, at a concert at Ravinia this summer featuring none other than Esperanza Spalding, Andrew Bird and #lilsharp (as part of Mucca Pazza) themselves, I had a revelation about a way to practice the technique that might make the intonation issue less of a problem for us mortals.  More on this revelation to come!