Surreal Wrote:If you'd want an easy instrument you can just as well dumb down the instrument you REALLY want to play

My point is that the violin doesn't lend itself to "dumbing down" quite as well as other instruments do: to play even the most simple song, you have to combine a number of different motor and mental skills; to sustain even a single note properly you need considerable training. You can't just play the violin; it's simply not like that.

iSoron Wrote:

Surreal Wrote:If you'd want an easy instrument you can just as well dumb down the instrument you REALLY want to play

My point is that the violin doesn't lend itself to "dumbing down" quite as well as other instruments do: to play even the most simple song, you have to combine a number of different motor and mental skills; to sustain even a single note properly you need considerable training. You can't just play the violin; it's simply not like that.

You can 'just play' anything. ;P

@ Surreal

I saw that post you copied on that forum a while ago. I recently purchase a violin (el cheapo) and practiced for about 2 weeks. Then I stopped. Just learning to tune it got on my nerves. And then there was the whole resin thing. I never even knew about resin. I couldn't get the E string to sound worth a damn. When I finally put enough resin on the bow to make it do something besides squeak I found out it was out of tune. So I'd tune it and it would start squeaking again instead of resonating, and put more resin. And then all of a sudden, it would get extremely loud, like it had finally woken up. However, after playing for a little bit the E string would get squeaky again. So I said screw it and decided to play without the E string, which I later found out was near impossible. So I fiddled with the resin some more. And tuned it again.

In the end, I put the violin back in its case, set it in a corner, sat down at the piano, and took joy in the fact that when I pressed a key the note would sound. No squeaky squeaky, no resin, no "dear god is it in tune yet! Snarl!"

nest0r Wrote:on muscle memory/sensorimotor/motor/psychomotor/procedural/implicit memory, ear/aural training, listening, etc. (those are meant to be keywords)

頭go booomじゃねんだろうか

*approach violin case... cautiously*

The violin is known to strike without warning.

*pokes with stick*

I started violin sometime last year and had about 4 lessons. I'm doing relatively okay. I'm (sort of) an adult at 22.

I'm going to go down the fiddlin' path (instead of classical) though, because in the long run I'd like to play for people in an informal setting. I just joined a scottish fiddling group and I hope to enjoy it greatly =)

EDIT: Ah yes I should mention that I'm intermediate/semi-advancedish in piano, and that helped me a lot as well.

Wow, my first post here (after more than a year of lurking) and it's not even Japanese related. Fail.

Just had to weigh in on this one, because I'm a violinist and former teacher, so maybe I can take the opportunity to give back after leeching off the RevTK crowd's Japanese study ideas and guidance

nest0r Wrote:My posts have probably made it clear I find that general idea of learning expiration dates to be bollocks, but with refined instrumentation I'm a bit less certain... anyone here have any experience with it either for better or worse?

As others have said, there are no learning expiration dates on musical instruments, but natural aptitude does seem to have an impact. I've had six year old students who've struggled and eighteen year olds who've taken to it like a duck to water. One of my students was a little girl who desperately wanted to play, but was too shy to come to lessons on her own, so her mum bought a violin for herself and I taught them together. They improved at approximately the same (very respectable) pace, and are now both very proficient. Not virtuosos, but then that was never their goal.

In the end it comes down to the time you spend on it (it's the good ol' 10,000 hours 'rule').

Personal experience: It took four years of haranguing my mum as a kid, and the lucky coincidence of my best friend's mum being a violin teacher, before I started lessons at the age of eight. That's late by musical standards, and I was pretty self-conscious about it when I saw six year olds playing Mozart sonatas when I was struggling through Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. I thought that maybe I just wasn't cut out to be a musician. But at the age of ten I started playing in youth orchestras, and suddenly I had to practise madly to keep pace with everyone else... and suddenly I started improving. And that motivated me to play more, which led to faster improvement, more playing, more improvement... It's like languages, or any other pursuit - the more you do in the short term, the faster you'll get better.

yudantaiteki Wrote:AVATT

Owwwww. You could do that with piano, but violin doesn't lend itself to excessive playing from the word go. Go easy on that front, at least until you build up calluses on your fingertips. Too much too fast and you'll get blisters, and then you won't be able to play at all for a while, which will set you back. That and the muscles in your left hand will cramp up - my teacher used to make me walk around squeezing a squash ball with my fingertips as a strengthening exercise

Aijin Wrote:I've never heard of a decent self-taught violinist. Is it possible? Anything is I guess, but why bother when it opens up to so much flaws that could be corrected by having a teacher at the start? If someone has incorrect technique, it can take a loooong time to fix once they're ingrained.

Anything is possible, but I've crossed paths with hundreds of violinists, and the good ones have all had some training. You want a good teacher to help you get the fundamentals down - posture and positioning, bowing techniques, fingering techniques, etc. If you have really basic flaws, then (a) you're going to hit a wall - hard - when you progress to more demanding pieces and (b) you're going to have to unlearn and relearn something ingrained, which is a pain in the bum when it's muscle memory related (which playing an instrument is to a large extent). I hit a wall - hard - at sixteen. Ended up switching to a new teacher, who pinpointed and corrected some technique errors my old teacher had missed - it was like a revelation...

So yeah, like Aijin said, get a good teacher (to touch on what Surreal said, this could be anyone who plays proficiently and is good at passing on that knowledge, not necessarily someone with a wall full of credentials), and avoid the Suzuki method (it's the musical equivalent of illiteracy; you could always pick Suzuki kids at orchestra - they were the ones who sounded great, until you put a sheet of unknown music in front of them). Unless you're loaded, though, don't splash too much on your first instrument. My original violin was a $25 Skylark (pretty well the worst brand on the market), and served me well through the Nails On A Chalkboard and Dying Cat phases. If/when you get reasonable, save up and splash out on something good. At that stage it's good to go to a specialised violin shop if you can, and try a heap of them out. Each instrument has it's own distinctive voice, and you need to find one that speaks to you.

Of course, if you want an arguably easier route, with no real formal training required to be okay-ish, you could go the folk fiddle route. No posture (you should see some of them slump!), minimal vibrato, nowhere near as much call for the trickier bowing techniques. It's a lot more like language learning - watch a lot of videos of good fiddle players (like, say, Eileen Ivers or Alisdair Fraser - love them!), learn some fundamentals from a book or YouTube or something, and off you go.

Wow, that got a bit long. Sorry!

kazelee Wrote:

iSoron Wrote:My point is that the violin doesn't lend itself to "dumbing down" quite as well as other instruments do: to play even the most simple song, you have to combine a number of different motor and mental skills; to sustain even a single note properly you need considerable training. You can't just play the violin; it's simply not like that.

You can 'just play' anything. ;P

@ Surreal

I saw that post you copied on that forum a while ago. I recently purchase a violin (el cheapo) and practiced for about 2 weeks. Then I stopped. Just learning to tune it got on my nerves. And then there was the whole resin thing. I never even knew about resin. I couldn't get the E string to sound worth a damn. When I finally put enough resin on the bow to make it do something besides squeak I found out it was out of tune. So I'd tune it and it would start squeaking again instead of resonating, and put more resin. And then all of a sudden, it would get extremely loud, like it had finally woken up. However, after playing for a little bit the E string would get squeaky again. So I said screw it and decided to play without the E string, which I later found out was near impossible. So I fiddled with the resin some more. And tuned it again.

In the end, I put the violin back in its case, set it in a corner, sat down at the piano, and took joy in the fact that when I pressed a key the note would sound. No squeaky squeaky, no resin, no "dear god is it in tune yet! Snarl!"

nest0r Wrote:on muscle memory/sensorimotor/motor/psychomotor/procedural/implicit memory, ear/aural training, listening, etc. (those are meant to be keywords)

頭go booomじゃねんだろうか

*approach violin case... cautiously*

The violin is known to strike without warning.

*pokes with stick*

First iSoron: I concede that you know way more about violins than I do and they are special in more ways than I thought before. I'll just wrap it up with: I wrote out of my own experience with different instruments and I think the general idea (playing around) is still applicable, to varying extents depending on the learner. I'd say it seems like with the violin, it's especially important you learn to appreciate and have fun with more formal learning and things that may feel unintuitive/unnatural at first.

Kazelee: Go to a teacher, then. I only meant to say that it is possible to be self-taught and speak out against the mentality of having to do it the "right" way. Judging from auxetoiles post, the Suzuki method is probably the embodiment of what I wanted to put down :p
Having a good teacher is a wonderful thing. There's nothing speaking for that the violinst kid would have been even better had he been taking classes - the pride he felt for doing so much on his own might be an impediment today.
There was absolutely nothing wrong in trying to learn by yourself first but since it turned out not to work (as in, too demoralizing. that's the same as game over) it would only be stubborn and a missed chance if you didn't take professional help.
The important thing is you're able to figure out who is a good teacher for you. Someone like auxetoiles would be a good start, I think


Oh, yeah. I don't specifically recommend it because I have no idea how much good it would do, but if you wanted to do something like AVATT, it doesn't necessarily have to be production right? Just listening to a lot of music with violins is what I thought of when I read it.

(Nice post, auxetoiles)

@surreal

Thank you for taking the time to respond to my post. I know things would go smoother with a teacher. I think the problem may be the cheap strings and bow more than anything. Unfortunately, I set it down and got absorbed in schoolwork and thus paid it no mind.

Surreal Wrote:if you wanted to do something like AVATT, it doesn't necessarily have to be production right? Just listening to a lot of music with violins is what I thought of when I read it.

Pretty much every teacher's recommendation (that I've studied piano with).