The Teleco-Teco Cell

The teleco-teco cell is the busiest of the three: a near-constant down-up chug with two chops tucked in near the end of the bar. Six of its eight slots ring and only two mute, which makes it the strike-heaviest cell here — the one that never quite stops moving, and the one a tired hand gives up on first.

The pattern, step by step

Eight eighth notes. The ringing pitches below are computed from the instrument's real open-string tuning with the library's first C major voicing under the hand — nothing in this table is typed by hand; a down or up stroke sounds the whole voicing at once, so every ringing row lists the same pitch set:

This cell carries 3 downs, 3 ups, 2 mutes, and 0 rests; it opens with a down stroke and strikes its final eighth.

Getting it even

Play the down-up chug alone first, with no mute at all, until both strokes are the same length and the same weight — the trap in this cell is a heavier down stroke and a rushed, quiet up stroke, which turns six even eighths into a lopsided three. Only once that chug is boring add the two mutes back in near the end of the bar, and treat them as two more strokes in the pattern rather than an interruption of it.

Then hold it at a tempo slower than feels necessary — this cell earns its name by never stopping, and a cell that never stops is the first one to fall apart under speed. Keep the metronome under it, and move up in single clicks only when a whole minute is even.

Where it sits

Come to this cell after the choro cell, whose stillness teaches the evenness this one spends fastest. The chord library supplies the voicings, and the daily drills are this cell's chug reduced to its gymnastics.