Learning to play violin - violin corner

@anonymgeist Hey, post your progress, questions here…

I think holding a violin is very unnatural, because you have to turn your hand 180 deg around. I thought the cello players have it much better…

check this progress video, I like the tune, and it is not that hard to learn.

I played the cello in HS. The hardest part was carrying it to and from home. On the bus. :)

@anonymgeist Use a sound recording app on your phone. I got this suggestion from my teacher. While playing, I thought it sounded fine, checking the recording, I wanted to cry…

Generally when I hear solo violins I want to claw my ears off.

That’s a very common experience for most musicians, even singers. (Heck, especially for singers)
It turns out that making good music is hard.

I think my “ultimate” goal would be the first movement of Franck’s violin sonata:

https://youtu.be/4fhts3Ioz1M

I know the notes well enough and can play the violin part with ease on the piano, but that’s not exactly the same.

I don’t expect this to be easy, and I’m not overflowing with natural musical talent, but I’ve managed to brute force my way into a fair degree of musical competency (if not technical proficiency) at the piano. So at least I’m not starting from scratch.

My kids do the Suzuki method for piano and recitals often also include violinists. There was one recital with some high school kid doing his Suzuki level 10 performance for solo violin. It was so good I literally wept.

Been spending my evening doing D/A / D/Bb double stops, and with a bit of fiddling (no pun intended) figured out the basic four string G minor chord.

Current technical hangup: bouncing the bow when first drawing it across the strings.

At the moment, I’m just playing by ear, and occasionally checking that against my piano. Feeling out the instrument a bit, and making sounds I enjoy. I feel like scales and melodies will be more challenging initially, and likely a source of early frustration. Simple chords are easy to puzzle out, and satisfying to hang on once I have my fingers in place.

Learning a new instrument can be tough for an adult, even with a musical background. I have a good friend who is an excellent bassist who decided out of the blue to pick up the sax. He ended up giving it up after a few months.

When lockdown started I decided to take my 50 years of guitar playing and learn Hawaiian lap steel guitar. I still suck.

Good luck.

exhibit A: The Portsmouth Sinfonia

This was an ensemble of professional musicians, but everyone of them played an instrument he had not learned how to play. I think Brian Eno was partially connected, and Michael Nyman at some point.

Oh, I love violins in symphonies, and chamber music; I’ve seen for instance Red Priest in concert doing some wicked good Vivaldi and the like. It’s just an instrument that in isolation tends to hit notes that just don’t work for me. I have total respect for anyone who cam play one well. Of course, I have respect for anyone who can play any instrument, given my utter lack of talent in that area.

so you tell me you don’t like this??

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcXSPTQ4U60

That is a fiddle, damn it! :) It is quite good.

It’s also not like I hear that level of violin playing very often in my day to day world. My wife plays piano, so I hear a lot of her practicing, but for some reason piano music doesn’t grate on me much.

I heard this from other people, that they have issues with high frequencies… Also my cat, when I open the violin box, she knows what’s coming and runs away…

This piece is one of the hardest for solo violin, but it sounds so effortless. And with all the double stops, it sounds like more than one person is playing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbXGfzZqRLo

It is really amazing, yes. Kind of like this, though also very different:

note to my self: why don’t we have nice things like guitar frets?

Honestly, I’d put the Chaconne up there as one of the great works of mankind. My understanding is that Bach wrote it in grief after returning home from a trip and discovering his wife had died while he was away.

I’ve been gradually working through Brahms’ piano transcription for the left hand, which is pretty much one-to-one (obviating a large part of the difficulty), but if you want to hear the equivalent degree of technical fireworks, there’s the concert transcription by Ferruccio Busoni:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fu-9frVpssg

I mean, if you really want to go down that road…

I heard they don’t work that great …