Starting Violin, or how my cat learned to stop worrying and just hide

December 12, 2007 at 4:05 AM

Well this is my first entry here. Do people really read these? We'll see if doing this helps to keep me motivated.

My music background is playing piano and guitar, casually and self taught for years past. Piano I do well enough to make myself happy, and guitar well enough to actually play with others and sometimes make them happy too.:)

So in September this past year I decided to take up violin. I'm not sure why really. Partly because I like listening to it, partly because it's so portable, so intense. And I have a certain amount of ego too...which the violin immediately began to punish.

I went out and rented an instrument from Sam Ash, an East German factory model that sounds good enough for me to use while I find out if I stick with this. At this point it's definitely NOT the instrument that limits my performance. Like Lance said about bikes.

So along with the fiddle I got some beginner method books, looked at the pictures of how to hold the thing, tuned up, took a deep breath, and tried to find the notes for a G major scale. Ever notice that the violin has no frets?? It makes that harder. Much harder. As I sawed away, birds fell stone dead out of the peaceful Autumn sky. My children laughed, convulsively. My wife looked abused somehow. The cat hid. Conflicts broke out in small countries on the far side of the world. Somewhere, a tear rolled down the Dalai Lama's cheek.

But I am persistent. After a week I started to sound better. The bow didn't bounce quite so high anymore. I discovered rosin. The birds stayed away but stopped keeling over. My cat came from out beneath the couch and began to sing along and gaze smolderingly at me. My wife stopped leaving lawyer brochures around.

Still not too good however. Usually when I try to learn something new, I get up the learning curve pretty quickly. The curve on this instrument is awfully steep. My progress was mostly limited to causing less agony to others. After a few weeks I could walk trippingly through simple pieces like Silent Night but still had tone like a degenerate swingset. Bach's fugue in G minor was out aside from the first 3 or 4 bars.

So I went and found a teacher. Liz is great, she put me into Suzuki book 1 but let me skip Twinkle, Twinkle for, she said, her own sanity. We've been together since...what? Mid October. I'm working my way through the first book still and she's helped tremendously with my tone, timing, expression. None of these are any good yet but they're better, and she bought into my goal of playing in one of the community orchestras in the area.

I wanted to tell my tale but mostly I intend this to be a practice journal, so here's what I did today.

~40 minutes divided between:

2 octave Gmaj scales, 1 octave D and A major scales with mm=60. Full and half bowing.

Perpetual motion with mm=60. Refining this piece, emphasis on clean note changes.

Allegretto with mm=50, emphasis on dynamics and expressiveness.

Etude (suz 12) without metronome to learn the piece, then at mm=40. Trouble with the note changes in measures 7 - 9.

goal for today was to use metronome for everything, that's been a challenge for me.

From Albert Justice
Posted on December 12, 2007 at 4:30 AM

Tim--you may consider yourself a writer as well--and a very good one. As I had a major break through tonight, I'm emotionally exhausted and as over the past few months addled by progress made.

The point in sharing, is that your experience had me laughing--loudly. Thanks. Do stick with it. And know this. No frets you say!

When things start dropping in place if you work very hard, talk about wow awesome! It's 'a whole buncha lot' of hard work, but don't ever be discouraged though you may every once in awhile. Grab your self by the britches and get back with the program. Those who know me know I'm at least qualified to say, that...

And make it a habit to journal too--you are definitely in the right place, and in the right frame of mind. Welcome. Holler at me any time. I'll teach you how to be a good student at least!

From Stephen Brivati
Posted on December 12, 2007 at 4:45 AM

Greetings,
as I get older I am becoming increasingly sceptical about using the metronome. Indeed, I have come to belive it is actually detrimental used more than exceedingly sparingly.
The first thing to recognize I think is that many people mistakenly belive that if they place the frist note of each group on a click they are playiny rythmiocally. Actually more often than not they are distoryting the rythm compeltely between the mechanical pulses. Second, the body has its own natural rythm (or else how would you walk and breathe) which can be harnessed to co0nsious rythmic work so that your internal metronome is developed. One simpel way to do this is to count aloud and play. This also forces peopel to slow down . In general, If you nee dot slow down and count then it shows that you have insufficeint cocneptual control of whatever you are playing. One can link the countiong to soemthign very visual like bow division to strengthen the effect.IE Count 1234 and have one sound for each quarter of the bow. Also walk around ina tempo and play and so forth. The possibilities are endless. The mm has a nasty habit of creating laziness within ones own rythm system. Its kind of liek steroids I suppose,
Cheers,
Buri

From Pauline Lerner
Posted on December 12, 2007 at 6:44 AM

Welcome to v.com. I'm glad you got a teacher. BTW, I agree completely with Buri about metronomes. So you see that you are getting positive and negative feedback already. They're both good for you. Hang in there.

From Terez Mertes
Posted on December 12, 2007 at 6:54 PM

What? Your violin doesn't have frets?! How strange. Mine does.

...um, NOT.

Welcome, and I found this to be hilarious:

>As I sawed away, birds fell stone dead out of the peaceful Autumn sky. My children laughed, convulsively. My wife looked abused somehow. The cat hid. Conflicts broke out in small countries on the far side of the world. Somewhere, a tear rolled down the Dalai Lama's cheek.

From Tara Shaw
Posted on December 12, 2007 at 8:54 PM

Welcome, congratulations, and best of luck in the future. :-)

From Tara Shaw
Posted on December 12, 2007 at 9:36 PM

Oh, and by the way, when I picked my violin up again (my old one I had in high school) last year and started playing again, my husband encouraged me strongly to #1) buy a new violin, and #2) get lessons.

I'm wondering about his motives... Encouragement? or self preservation? ;-)

You're in for a lot of fun. Again, good luck. :-)

From Penny B
Posted on December 13, 2007 at 5:23 PM

Welcome and lol @ the fun bits of the blog entry.

My cat meows in perfect 440 A =(... she gets in front of the chromatic tuner so I can't tune, and starts meowing >:(

From Bilbo Prattle
Posted on December 15, 2007 at 9:32 PM

I played in the orchestra all through elementary through high school, and I still make people run and hide when I play:-)

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