Bass bar: wooden bar affixed to the inside of the top of the instrument. Increases vibration and tone.

C-bout: the waist of the cello, where the body curves in on both sides.

Détaché: Legato bow changes and notes – not separated.

End pin: Cellos rest on a retractable, adjustable pin, which is mounted in the bottom of the cello’s body. Also known as the spike.

Fine tuners: Small adjusters located in the tail piece, allows steel stings to be properly adjusted. Also known as adjusters, string tuners, or string adjusters.

Fingerboard: When you play, you press, stop, the strings against this piece of wood. Fingerboards are typically made of ebony.

Hooked Bowing: Two or more different detached notes played in one bow stroke, hooked together by a single bow motion.

Legato: Indicates that musical notes are played or sung smoothly and connected.

Major scale: Made up of seven distinct notes, plus an eighth, which is one octave separated from the starting note.

Martelé: Accented, heavy notes.

Pizzicato: Plucking strings rather than bowing them. Abbreviated: pizz.

Solfège: The term for the do-re-mi words used to indicate intervals in music. The chromatic scale uses do, re, me, fa, so, la, and ti. The remaining five notes of the chromatic scale are represented by di, ri, fi, si, and li for the sharps, and te, le, se, me, and ra for the flats.

Slur: Two or more notes connected by a single uninterrupted bow motion.