November 2, 2012 at 3:38 PM
What a week!When monster storm Sandy hit the Northeast United States, I first was concerned for everyone's safety and well-being, wondering how people were faring with no electricity: no lights, limited computers and phones, no television, no refrigeration. What could they do?
Then I realized something: People could still play their violins! This beautiful instrument, 500 years in the making, does not require electricity. Unless, of course, you have an electric fiddle, but even many of those can either take a battery or be played acoustically. What a nice picture: my east coast friends playing the fiddle by candlelight. I actually did this, about a year ago when a major windstorm blew out the power for 3 days in Pasadena. Pretty fun!
But did people really do it? I thought I'd find out with this week's vote, and you don't have to be a storm victim to vote. Here is the question: if the electricity went out in your town or city for several days, do you think you would play your violin more, or less?
if temperature were no issue, MORE, every time.
What my neighbors and I experienced those four days in the aftermath of the Alabama tornadoes -- a 103-hour blackout -- was very mild compared to what people on the East Coast have endured in the wake of Sandy. More than half the year here is warm -- or hot -- and it was already warm season by late April. So playing instruments wasn't a problem at all.
For the evening sessions out in the garage, I had to play in near-total darkness about the last 60 minutes each session. All the formative instruction I'd had some years before in tuning and listening and memorization really paid off -- not to mention the old drills in bow control and bow division.
Also, there's less light, at this time of year, and it makes the day quite a bit shorter. So you have to get dinner really early. And there's all the scrambling to figure out food, with no refrigeration and possibly a very complicated way of cooking it.
So I'm thinking: Short little outage=more practice. Days upon days of outage=survival mode, and probably not a lot of practice!
This entry has been archived and is no longer accepting comments.
Violinist.com is made possible by...
Juilliard Starling-DeLay Symposium on Violin Studies
Dimitri Musafia, Master Maker of Violin and Viola Cases
Violinist.com Business Directory
Violinist.com Guide to Online Learning
Johnson String Instrument and Carriage House Violins
Discover the best of Violinist.com in these collections of editor Laurie Niles' exclusive interviews.
Violinist.com Interviews Volume 1, with introduction by Hilary Hahn
Violinist.com Interviews Volume 2, with introduction by Rachel Barton Pine