it's never too late to learn an instrument! One of my old work colleagues had never played anything before and decided aged 45 to pick up guitar. He's really good now! I was dead impressed.

Violin is harder than guitar, because as Icream says:
1) unlike guitar, there are no frets - you have to hear whether the notes you are playing are right
2) is sounds pretty bad until you get good. hope you have patient neighbours!

But really nothing stopping you! がんばって!!

aphasiac wrote:

it's never too late to learn an instrument! One of my old work colleagues had never played anything before and decided aged 45 to pick up guitar. He's really good now! I was dead impressed.

Violin is harder than guitar, because as Icream says:
1) unlike guitar, there are no frets - you have to hear whether the notes you are playing are right
2) is sounds pretty bad until you get good. hope you have patient neighbours!

But really nothing stopping you! がんばって!!

Well I haven't played Violin, but I play Oud as well - that is also fretless it isn't that hard picking out the right sound. After at least a few hours of working on a scale you can easily hit every note with accuracy. It's no different from memorising a scale on a classical guitar tbh

Get a good teacher and listen to the pieces you are trying to learn over and over. Record yourself. Love the instrument. Know why you want to play it. If you wanna reach virtuoso level you'll need at least 3 hours a day dedicated to the instrument for the next 5-10 years (and a lot of money). If you're just playing for the love it, 15mins to an hour per day is just what you need.

One warning: Time boxing your learning on an instrument can be exhausting. You get far more done than if you were to just hack away for an hour or two.

yudantaiteki wrote:

AVATT

You stole my joke, I was about to ask if he tried to put some violin in Anki

So I don't really post here now but I'll make an exception because I feel like I owe you a lot nestor (and I think this goes for many more lurkers).

I've been playing the guitar since I was about 14 years old but not really made a big deal out of it, have hardly been in any bands at all. I didn't really trust in how I was learning either because it didn't fit with the mainstream view on musical learning; reading notation, having super special talents from birth, taking classes, doing exact mimics of solos whatever.

But I got lucky about one and a half month ago when I was checking out the music books at my uni and found Lucy Green's "How Popular Musicians Learn: A Way Ahead for Music Education". Don't be fooled by the sub-title; its uses go far beyond educational systems. It's amazing. It explains so much about how we ACTUALLY learn instead of the many, many illusions held by western society. It's the best music book I've ever read, and I know a few good music books (in fact, I just paused here to send off an e-mail to the author and thank her). It talks about guitar-based pop music but that's not really important; when you read it you'll understand that most of it is the same for almost any instrument and the rest can be modified a bit to fit your violin playing.

I'm serious, best. ever. Don't wait with reading it; most of it can be understood even if you have no musical background because it's just so simple and logical. At the same time, it's of great help whatever level you're on. I haven't bought it, but it seems to be a steal considering its intellectual value (Amazon has it for like 14 pounds. S.T.E.A.L.). It's inspiring, helps you form a good 'philosophical base'/way to think about music, helps you understand your learning process and how to shape it... I think you'll like it.

(her other books are supposedly good too but I don't know anything about them)

Above all, what you need is to have FUN with it. It's okay to just wham away on the violin (just don't break it!) if you want to; as long as you can concentrate wholly on the sounds you make and, sometimes, to music you hear it isn't that important what exactly you're doing. Theory is nice sure but it's not absolutely necessary.

The main thing is you make that body of wood resonate in a way you like. That's all you really need.

Last edited by Surreal (2010 January 07, 12:03 pm)

I wouldn't recommend training your playing skills with an SRS. You should be having fun, like Surreal said, when you practice. (Not trying to imply that SRSing can't be fun, of course.) You really should want to practice a lot, though. Just find music you really want to play and have that motivate you to get better. ^^

Things like theory and ear training seem like they'd work well for training using an SRS, though.

Last edited by shirokuro (2010 January 07, 12:53 pm)

hehe, Don't worry Surreal, I'm big on experimental and improvisational work (Japanese semi-related tangent: Takehisa Kosugi's work; or one of my favourite releases of the past few years is Kashiwa Daisuke's Program Music I--seems many modern Japanese electronic composers work with this classical/folktronic hybrid style these days, to great effect--perhaps inspired by World's End Girlfriend?), though I'll admit my first mainstream inspiration for violin as a child was Sherlock Holmes and Beethoven... and thanks, I'm happy to more strongly assume that lurkers appreciate my ramblings on the forum.

@Aijin Thanks for the tips, intimidating but practical and it doesn't sound impossible.

Last edited by nest0r (2010 January 07, 1:06 pm)

Surreal wrote:

But I got lucky about one and a half month ago when I was checking out the music books at my uni and found Lucy Green's "How Popular Musicians Learn: A Way Ahead for Music Education". Don't be fooled by the sub-title; its uses go far beyond educational systems. It's amazing. It explains so much about how we ACTUALLY learn instead of the many, many illusions held by western society. It's the best music book I've ever read, and I know a few good music books (in fact, I just paused here to send off an e-mail to the author and thank her). It talks about guitar-based pop music but that's not really important; when you read it you'll understand that most of it is the same for almost any instrument and the rest can be modified a bit to fit your violin playing.

Wow, this book sounds great! However, Can't find any reviews anywhere. Does it give a practical advice, or is it more theory, to make you think about your playing?

I'm in the exact same shoes as you btw; started playing guitar 13 years ago, but stopped improving after about 2 years, as I hit the usual guitarists peak (i.e. massively more practise required to get any technically better). Never studied formal theory or anything like that, now stopped playing pretty much altogether. With this book help me?

I think if you're determined and have clear goals, you'll be all right, but if you were half-assing it like me and guitar ("huhhh... so maybe if I learn a few random easy songs from the internet, I'll get somewhere?") you may discover that you have a very nice guitar decoration for your living room.

aphasiac wrote:

Wow, this book sounds great! However, Can't find any reviews anywhere. Does it give a practical advice, or is it more theory, to make you think about your playing?

I'm in the exact same shoes as you btw; started playing guitar 13 years ago, but stopped improving after about 2 years, as I hit the usual guitarists peak (i.e. massively more practise required to get any technically better). Never studied formal theory or anything like that, now stopped playing pretty much altogether. With this book help me?

まいったなー
Okay, THIS time for sure, I guess I should've been more detailed.

The book's original intent was to understand how "popular musicians" REALLY learn, what gives them motivation and how they themselves relate to their learning so that educators could change their mindset and teaching so it's more in harmony with students' interests.

However, on the back cover of the book, citing directly here:
"Dr lucy Green's work deserves a wider readership than academics and music educators. How Popular Musicians Learn is inviting, accessible, and of direct practical interest to the working player in popular music, particularly those who also instruct students." - Robert Fripp

And, taken from Lucy's reply to the message I sent:
"The funny thing is, when I wrote it, I thought the last group of people who would be interested in it would be pop musicians themselves; I thought they would all say it's a stupid waste of time to write down what they already knew so well. The readership I had in mind was teachers. In fact, it has turned out that pop musicians have welcomed it, possibly more warmly than any other group (teachers have also been positive, thank goodness!)."

The self-summary goes something like this: "Popular musicians learn a lot of stuff outside of school, without any teacher help, etc. in other words informally... ... Drawing on a series of interviews with musicians aged between 15 and 50, Lucy Green explores this informal learning and relates it to the formal education. The book offers insights on how we might reinvigorate the musicality of the population (and ourselves) and on how a teaching culture (both large and small, personal/peer-to-peer) that rewards aural imitation, improvisation and experimentation, as well as commitment and passion, looks/can be formed."

Yeah, a bit edited by me. It's based on interviews, VERY GOOD interviews, her technique is simple but incredibly efficient.

She stumbled upon a goldmine and I think she still hasn't (the book was written '01) realized just how good the book is. THIS is the book, if any, that I'd make compulsory reading for all popular music educators.

[End Book Summary, rest is more directly for aphasiac]
The main thing it's done for me, and I believe most popular musicians who read it, is it's given me confidence in the learning methods I've been using for a long time and given me more of a perspective on my own musicianship and musical learning. For example: I don't feel bad about sitting down and jamming to whatever music I like at the moment, even if it doesn't sound that good right away and even if it's not what's typically known as "real" practice. She has given us very steady ground to stand on in relation to informal learning and for me, it's helped me in making everything go together; I even enjoy theory learning more now because I don't feel as "forced" as I did before. I just do it when I feel like it.

I can't exactly say that I hit that guitarist's peak, probably mostly because I never was THAT good at pure technique. In regards to that, one of the interviewees (? whatever.) gave an insight to me when he said that he became good technically just because he always tried doing what he heard on the records. After all, if you learn Clapton's solos at the same speed as him it's pretty obvious you've gotten better technically... While listening to one of your idols, doing it in a more 'complete' audio environment than just the 'CLICK-click-click-click" of your metronome - also there's a good chance you're having more fun and developing more than just technical ability. Not to say technical/rhytm-focused metronome sessions don't have their place.

In your case though I think the main thing would be to understand that even if you don't improve that much technically it's alright; your aural abilities, your influences, your creativity and so on improve.

At least one guitarist in the book mentioned how he had been "shit hot" in periods and he conceded that he should've been practicing more diligently. But in the end, he was still a good musician. I mean if you wanna go all-out professional, make a living out of it, it might be an issue for you.

But if you're casual, please realize that your absolute necessary goal list is this:
1. Have fun

You get away from so much anxiety, can focus much better and yeah everything if you just remember this one thing. If you enjoy music with others, others enjoy your music, whether you can nail one of those Malmsteen solos and go "haha you just a fat old man now roll on over yngwie". That's just bonus. If the fun won't carry you all the way there then it's not worth it anyway; if you can't have fun HERE, right NOW, at the level you're at then don't expect the fun to come your way once you reach that next plateau.

(of course most musicians will experience periods of frustration, especially at the first steps. but the periods of joy need to be longer, or better, run alongside the frustration)

Yeah so anyway to answer your question: I don't know. I reckon a lot of readers might cower and think things like "oh I should've started when I was in my tweens like these good fellows" or "well those aren't THE musicians, they're just regular run-of-the-mill session guys, I'm sure Gackt isn't like this "(which is probably way too true but that's just missing the point). What you get from the book is up to you. What I can say is, it's made a difference for me, many other musicians, and it's worth reading. I'd go so far as to say that with a bit of clever reading you can relate it to overall learning processes and improve things like japanese learning; I know I did.

- Since we're on the topic of guitars, I'd like to add that the Fretboard Logic series, especially the first book, is totally great no matter what level you're at. Especially since you, I assume, don't like the traditional approach to music theory. That one has loads of reviews and a good summary online so I'll leave that be, though. Check it out after Lucy's book -



iSoron: I disagree on picking up an "easy" instrument (and I think the "will take years of daily study simply to sound decent" statement is unfounded, or should I say overly subjective). I never got the impression that the guitar was "hard". I definitely didn't perceive it as scary. It's just, um, I just played.  If you'd want an easy instrument you can just as well dumb down the instrument you REALLY want to play, for a violin I suppose you could do the absolute easiest arpeggio formations or whatever you play, use sticker marks to create your own make-shift frets if it's hard to know where to put your fingers, only mess around with the bow, try plucking the strings (you might even develop your own special techniques!). Whatever. I think going the long way round, piano, triangle or what have you, would more often than not be demoralizing.
Edit: I think I should fix this but I don't really want to make another post. Correction: I disagree on waiting with your primary instrument; however, like liosama said two posts down using a secondary instrument to understand certain aspects better is nice - though I think that would be further down the road in nestor's case, hehe.

I think an important factor as to why so many quit music learning is because they're afraid to throw themselves into "advanced" music. I remember one night when I was singing LOUD to "Going Down" and my sister with accompanying boyfriend coming home. I knew my singing was bad. She laughed. Boy was I red. But you know, looking back times like those and when I was just messing around on the guitar while listening to stuff that I didn't even know what key it was in, that was some of the best practice I did. Unless you're in a band, there's nothing wrong with failing tens of thousands of times musically. You get experience, and that's the point of learning isn't it? The only thing stopping you and making you think it's "scary" is because you're thinking 下手すぎぃ/恥ずかしい


Aijin: I got this from the violinist.com forums - google hooo -
"I recently saw a teenage boy playing violin with his band and was impressed at his technique & sound, along with his ability to improvise. After the show I complimented his playing, wondered how long he'd been taking lesson and commented that he must have had classical lessons since his form, posture & set-up were good.

He grinned real big, thanked me, then proceeded to say that he's never taken formal lessons. Instead he analyzed his favorite violinists, watched them live whenever possible, watched videos & DVDs and went to a few camps in the summers. Very amazing and encouraging what is possible with desire and willingness to learn.

On the other hand I watched a singer at a local gig take her fiddle out of the case, tell to the audience that she was teaching herself the fiddle, and proceeded to screech out an Appalachian song. She had no clue how to hold the bow, or position her left hand, and from some other comments had no desire to seek out advise on playing."

So okay, posture seems to be big for violin players, I get that. You need good posture. But there's nothing saying you absolutely need a teacher to show you that. Just mimicking is enough. After all, not all folk musicians in the old times went to schools. It is likely that they had get-togethers and some parent/peer-tutoring but in general I bet it came down to doing it like the other guys are. With digital media abound there's another way. But hey! Going to performances is nice. With violins there's usually, here anyway, quite a lot church/school-related free performances you can attend too.

Actually Aijin I whole-heartedly recommend you to read Lucy's book; I've gathered from your other posts that you are/will be teaching Japanese and I think you'd understand alot about "informal learning" in language acquisition. I think you could find much of what I think you came looking for when you joined this forum.

はあぁ、長くなった。。。それで、最後に”俺はこんな考えがあったか？”と考えてくるな

。。。驚かされた、自分に　ｗ　（疲れたぁぁぁ）

Last edited by Surreal (2010 January 07, 5:54 pm)

Surreal wrote:

iSoron: I disagree on picking up an "easy" instrument (and I think the "will take years of daily study simply to sound decent" statement is unfounded, or should I say overly subjective). I never got the impression that the guitar was "hard". I definitely didn't perceive it as scary. It's just, um, I just played.  If you'd want an easy instrument you can just as well dumb down the instrument you REALLY want to play, for a violin I suppose you could do the absolute easiest arpeggio formations or whatever you play, use sticker marks to create your own make-shift frets if it's hard to know where to put your fingers, only mess around with the bow, try plucking the strings (you might even develop your own special techniques!). Whatever. I think going the long way round, piano, triangle or what have you, would more often than not be demoralizing.

It's not that piano is easier, rather it helps you learn the foundations of music theory better. I agree with iSoron because I found myself working through some piano. It helped me a lot with the understanding of my guitar, basic chord construction et cetera.

But I am still horrible at guitar - I still can't sight read, and it takes me a while to learn the rhythm, I've been going through this book called How to sight read any rhythm instantly hoping that helps me out.


Anyway thanks Surreal for the long posts + book recommendations - I'll check them out

nest0r wrote:

Yes I've been rambling about this more 'physical' SRSing stuff for a cpl years now, I have many plans in that regard, but I'll have to see how it pans out personally before further theorizing. ^_^

I'm a little confused... are you saying that you would/are planning to use an SRS to train playing? As in, for example, having line(s) of music on the front of your cards, the audio on the back, and reviewing with violin in hand?

I'm actually really curious as to how the principle of spaced repetition would apply to learning an instrument. I definitely think memory is involved in learning to play any instrument--you just can't avoid developing the muscle memory that lets you remember how to play a song without sheet music if you practice a lot. I'd hate to only be able to play the stuff I wanted to play when a particular piece of music "came due," though. I think that would totally sap all of my motivation for learning to play an instrument.

liosama wrote:

It's not that piano is easier, rather it helps you learn the foundations of music theory better.

Mmhmm. I think it helps to at least understand how the keys are arranged on a piano in terms of half steps and whole steps, different intervals, chords, and so on, since you'll see a lot of theory concepts illustrated using piano diagrams. You definitely don't have to know how to play the piano to play other instruments, though.

Surreal wrote:

Edit: Shirokuro, thanks for Solfege, awesome program.

No problem. And thanks for the book recommendation and review, I will have to read that!