Comments

Terez: Excellent writing! Your descriptions produced vivid images - I especially liked the 'Swiss chocolate' analogy. Keep writing, Terez! I enjoyed your article. I'm another adult beginner. My E string doesn't sound ethereal though! It sounds shrill...(it's a Dominant E). Is it the string at fault? Thanks for the nice comments! And Emily, thanks for prompting me to start this. Looking forward to writing more in the new year.

Sakura - I'll go post a comment on your blog - I can appreciate everything you wrote there (I'm a former ballet dancer as well!).

Thank you for sharing that essay. I really enjoyed reading it. That's it,isn't it--the magic? I really had no intentions of playing violin at all (I play cello, which does all you describe too), but had the opportunity to borrow one this summer, and those tunes--from childhood, from recordings, from somewhere deep within the earth and the air--come out of that tiny little wooden box. Up until recently, I hardly read music for the thing at all. Every time I would pick it up (at least several times a day), and start "fiddling around" as you said, they would come. It sings.

So now I practice with more of a purpose--scales and arpeggios in various keys, bowing patterns, etc. so that I will have the skills to play the things that appear.