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Okay this is going to be a weird question but bear with me, I promise I'm not crazy.

Let's say I really wanted to learn cello. Now due to the fact I am not currently able to rent/buy a cello, this creates a dilemma. Now as a trumpet player who has been playing for about five years, I know that if I want to get a piece under my fingers, there are exercises I can do, even when I don't have my trumpet available (e.g. simply tapping my fingers against my leg).

My question is if what I cared about practicing was fingerings (not bowing because the trouble I have is with fingering; my bowing skills are passable) would there be a way to start practicing that without the instrument?

(if this is a bad question leave a comment and I will edit)

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  • Do you have a guitar? My cello is only a couple of centimeters longer so if you have the guitar between your legs perhaps it is kind of similar, like a small cello. Of course the tuning will be wrong so you can't practice double stops.
    – Emil
    Commented Jun 14, 2022 at 6:10
  • With 3 distinct valves on trumpet, it's quite easy to mock up - a leg, the other arm, or any old thing will do - you know the combinations. However, with cello, positioning is critical - and as a beginner, you won't even know those positions. I think you're on a hiding to nothing. Wait until there's a real cello between your legs. Bad habits will come otherwise.
    – Tim
    Commented Jun 14, 2022 at 8:51
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    We had already had several discussions here, whether learning an instrument without teacher is possible (mostly tending to a negative answer, especially for string instruments). But without teacher and without instrument - I can't see how one can learn something here, which can be applied to a real instrument later. Muscle memory is very slow and difficult to modify.
    – guidot
    Commented Jun 14, 2022 at 10:42
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    @emil no no no -- guitar has frets, and a flat neck. (and too many strings).
    – Carl Witthoft
    Commented Jun 14, 2022 at 16:42
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    The curvature is not noticeable in the neighbourhood of a few millimeters on the cello (especially if you don't even touch the fingerboard), I'd say the bigger difference is the action. You can always remove the frets on the guitar, but if you have that kind of money to throw away you can probably buy a cheap cello instead.
    – Emil
    Commented Jun 14, 2022 at 17:36

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Well, I suppose you could mock up a cello fingerboard on a yardstick or the like. You could mark off the distance between fingers, and practice getting used to the distances. You can buy a decal that's meant to be applied to the fingerboard, and stick it on your proxy.

As long as we're on crazy ideas: You could see if a music store has a neck from an irreparably damaged cello and practice on that.

But I must caution, along with the commenters, against doing this. The common theme among the comments is: the main thing to learn is not just which finger to use, but where to put it, down to the millimeter. On fretted instruments, you can place your finger a mm higher or lower and it makes no difference, the fret stops the string; on fretless instruments it would change the pitch. This is not something you teach your cognitive brain ("B = 1, C# = 3"), but your so-called "muscle memory" (really a different part of your brain), and it's hard to learn and much much harder to un-learn. Silently fingering on a board or yardstick, even one with finger positions marked precisely, would put your thumb too close or far away from your other fingers, giving you the wrong shape for your hand overall. Even silently practicing on a broken cello neck would feel different if there are no strings.

It seems your motivation is to make the best use of your time: for some reason you don't have access to a real cello yet, but want to learn something in such a way that it will save time once you get one. Practicing with your hand in the wrong shape will cost you time rather than save it. If at all possible, get your hands on a real cello. A laminate beginner model can be had for about $800 USD (don't waste time and money on anything you find cheaper), or you could of course rent an instrument for a few months.

And if you want to make the best use of your time, get a teacher. I highly doubt that your bowing is in fact "passable." The bow hand, wrist, forearm, and upper arm move and interact in complex ways; I've seen some teaching systems that spend 6 months just training you to hold and move a dowel rod, while making minute adjustments to the position of each finger, motion of the wrist, etc., before giving you the real bow. I would encourage you to start your learning by plucking the strings ("pizzicato") and learn these bow skills gradually. Again, these are hard enough to learn correctly, very hard to know what you're doing wrong without a teacher's help, and very hard to unlearn.

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  • Fully agree about the "you don't have passable bowing". Passable by Led Zeppelin standards, maybe :-) I would add that cellos, even so-called "full size," can have slightly different nut-to-bridge lengths, which one learns to handle via minute finger position adjustments
    – Carl Witthoft
    Commented Jun 14, 2022 at 16:44
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If I want to demonstrate something to another person, and I don't have a cello handy, I will hold my right arm sort of vertically, with an acute angle at the elbow. This is most comfortable for me if I have my hand (curled like a scroll) to the left of my chin. I can then simulate fingering with my left hand. I can demonstrate how to use arm weight to make a nice shift. I can sing or imagine the piece at the same time.

It does strike me as a bit odd, what you want to do, but I see no reason why you couldn't practice your fingering using your right forearm to simulate a fingerboard, as I described. Why not? I have at times used this simulated fingerboard to check a fingering is going to work as planned. Of course, the acid test is to play it on an actual instrument.

Now about that -- an actual instrument -- consider that smaller instruments are usually cheaper to rent than larger instruments. Did you know that you can hold a violin or viola in cello position, by holding it vertically and resting the bottom part on your lap? I have done this many times when I wanted to explain something technical to one of my violist children, and I didn't have my cello handy. I hope that this trick will make a rental affordable for you.

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  • Big difference - you know where your fingers go, OP doesn't.
    – Tim
    Commented Jun 15, 2022 at 6:27
  • Of course, smaller instruments have smaller scale (and even different fingering: On violin and viola a major tetrachord starting from an open string is "0 1 2 3"; on cello it's "0 1 3 4"). I'd suggest, if price is the object and the OP is open to renting a viola... just learn to play viola!
    – Andy Bonner
    Commented Jun 16, 2022 at 16:22
  • @AndyBonner - Might be a bit pricier than renting a violin -- but I haven't looked into that. Anyway, yes, the fingerings are slightly different, but other than the clef, I found it surprisingly straightforward to adjust. I do think it would be preferable as a temporary practice instrument, over the forearm or a gadget. / You were writing about hand shape -- I use the same hand shape when fudging with the smaller instrument in my lap. You?
    – aparente001
    Commented Jun 17, 2022 at 3:10

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