The Cello

Can You Play Cello on Apple Vision Pro? The Cello

By Michael ·

Yes. The Cello is a cello for Apple Vision Pro. Sit down, and the cello stands in front of you in your own room, its neck beside your left shoulder. Draw the bow across the strings and it plays.

A cello is hard to start. A real one costs money, it takes up a corner of the room, and everyone in the house hears every scrape. The Cello plays through the headset, and the scrapes are yours alone.

How do you play cello on Apple Vision Pro?

You play with your bare hands, and each hand has one job.

Your right hand bows.

  • Draw the bow across the strings to play. Bow faster to play louder.
  • Tilt the bow to move from string to string, as on a real cello.

Changing direction doesn’t restart the note, so you can bow back and forth on one long note.

Your left hand stops the strings. Put a finger on a string to stop it, and lift your fingers to play it open. A dot on the string shows where your finger is.

The music stand

Turn the music stand on in the menu, and it stands ahead of you and to your right, where a cellist’s would. It has 49 pieces, including Bach’s cello suites, Saint-Saëns’s The Swan, the cello’s part in Canon in D, and Ode to Joy.

Pick a song and press Play. The stand turns its own pages. You play every note yourself, and nothing is scored.

  • Guidance is on to start. A ring on the fingerboard shows where to stop the note, with its name beside it, and the stretch of string to bow is lit.
  • Listen plays the song for you and marks each note as it goes.

Turn Guidance off and the marks go, leaving you the sheet music.

Pitch assist, or not

Pitch assist is on to start. Every note snaps to the nearest one in the scale, so what you play is in tune. While a song is open, it snaps to the song’s own notes.

Turn pitch assist off and the note slides with your hand, the way it does on a real fingerboard. Finding the note is up to your ear.

The menu

A round key marked Menu sits low on your left, beside your knee. Touch it, or look at it and pinch, to open the menu. Look at anything in the menu and pinch to press it.

What The Cello isn’t

Better you hear it here than after you buy it.

  • The strings don’t push back. A real bow rests on the string. In the headset there’s nothing to press against, so the bow is drawn resting on the string. It won’t teach you a bow hold.
  • It stops at E5. A real cello goes higher. Here each string goes up an octave and a fifth.
  • The music is all in bass clef. On the stand, the cello’s high notes go on ledger lines above the bass clef.
  • It’s right-handed. There’s no left-handed mode.
  • It’s single-player.

On Meta Quest

The same cello is on Meta Quest as Cello. On Quest you can play with friends online, whichever Fncore instrument they have: Violinest, Trombonest, Trumpeteer or Cello.

Questions

Can you play cello on Apple Vision Pro?
Yes. The Cello is a cello for Apple Vision Pro. You sit down, draw the bow across the strings with your right hand and stop the strings with your left, with your bare hands.
Do I need controllers?
No. You play it with your bare hands.
Do I need to know how to play cello?
No. Pitch assist is on to start, so every note snaps to the nearest one in the scale, and on the music stand, Guidance shows where each note of a song is. Turn them off when you want to find the notes yourself.
Does The Cello have songs?
Yes. The music stand has 49 pieces, including Bach’s cello suites, The Swan and Canon in D. Pick one and play along, or just play.
Do I play it sitting down?
Yes. Sit down, and the cello stands in front of you with its neck beside your left shoulder.
Can I play it left-handed?
No. The bow is in your right hand.
Is The Cello multiplayer?
No. On Apple Vision Pro it’s single-player.
Is it on Meta Quest too?
Yes. On Meta Quest it’s called Cello, and it’s its own app on the Meta Horizon Store.