Hot answers tagged violin
11
Your logic fits and, as some of the commentators have stated, I've pondered about this in the past.
Usually your dominant hand naturally can handle doing a lot more work, like you've stated. In playing instruments, the dominant hand also should be used for doing the "big jobs":
in drumming, the dominant hand would be hitting the hi-hats. In a normal 4/4 ...
11
There may be a small amount of "performance practice fad" about that, but for the most part it does serve a purpose.
Breath is used in many styles of music as a cue. If you think about wind instrument players, for example, every phrase is preceded by a breath, and experienced players will take that breath in rhythm. As a rhythmic gesture, it can be used to ...
10
Like with learning a foreign language, the brain gets worse at learning new things once a person has matured. The Suzuki method starts kids on musical instruments at around 4, but many start after that. I'd say that it's definitely possible to start in the late teens or after, but it'll be harder. You'll have better luck if you already know a different ...
10
When I was in choir in high school, a technique that clinicians and teachers from different events I was involved with used was just singing the rhythm.
Pick a note for the student to play that is in a comfortable playing position and have them play the rhythm (without changing notes) throughout the piece. If the piece is accompanied then play the ...
10
The wood type in any stringed instrument matters a great deal, especially on acoustic instruments. Some parts of the violin contribute more to the overall tone quality than others, but all the parts make a difference.
A stringed instrument is a case study in engineering trade-offs. After all, how does a violin produce its sound? To begin with, note that ...
9
I've been trying to do just what you're discussing. I've owned a violin for several years and I'm still at the sucky stage. I'm beyond the skinning-the-cat stage, though.
In transitioning from guitar to violin, there are three major differences:
The tuning: Violins are (generally) tuned in fifths, not the fourths (mostly) that guitars are tuned in. This ...
9
Just to elaborate and clarify, there are a few different types of pizzicato:
There is the standard "pizz." which is done with the flesh of the finger on the bowing hand;
A pizz with fingernail, which gives a more crisp attack;
A "Bartok" or "snap" pizz where the performer pulls the string away from the fingerboard and releases to produce a harsh snapping ...
8
As everything teaching "device" (and there is a lot of academic literature studying this, across disciplines, this is not specific to bowed string instruments), fingerboard tapes or any kind of marks on or on the side of the fingerboard should not :
be used systematically without observation phase
be permanent
be used alone without having an exit strategy ...
8
I have a child who started school this year and also began learning violin this year.
I personally have learnt guitar for over 20 years and can easily sight-read music.
Prior to my son starting lessons I spent a few weeks trying to figure out how to play. I had access to many beginner lessons and color coded or numbered sheet music but this didn't help. I ...
7
When I was starting to learn the piano, my teacher told me to practice every scale I knew so far, every day, with a metronome set at a different tempo each time.
After a month, he gave me some sheets that were just scales, but with different rhythms each, and he told me to do the same thing, practice everyday with a different tempo on the metronome.
It ...
6
I think kids can definitely learn some things faster than adults and music might very well be one of those things, but we should take into account some other reasons why kids learn some things easier (aside from natural predisposition):
Lots of free time: No job, mortgage, kids, spouse, etc. to worry about.
Encouragement: Kids are expected to not be ...
6
I'm not sure whether learning violin is ultimately easier or harder as a young kid, but I guarantee you, teaching older people is much easier.
The high school students I'm teaching now are also much easier to teach than I remember myself being at age six. As a result, their progress for the most part is faster than mine.
Also, I've heard that the problem ...
6
The only true necessities are a violin, a violin teacher, and patience. It will be a very slow process, especially if you are older than 10-15. The physical coordination and relaxation will likely be the most difficult, as few other things require you to be so completely tension-free.
Good things to have in addition to this: time. Ideally lots of it, ...
6
I'm about at the same point (maybe a little bit ahead, but not much), so I'll help with what I can.
Violins are a bear to learn, for three reasons:
intonation - Keyboards only have one note per key. Guitars have whatever note the fret and the tuning give. With violins, intonation is determined by your fingers. Unless you are a very special person, you ...
6
That's definitely not the sound of a real violin (to me it sounds more like an oboe!), which may cause some confusion. It also has some kind of vibrato which will make tuning even more difficult. It should be able to help you get close, though, since the pitch is the correct E.
Now, if your instrument has never been tuned before (or in a long time), it may ...
6
This is an issue on almost every instrument.
There is a guitar teacher named Jamie Andreas, who focuses on minimising tension from the very beginning of learning. Her approach is to practice dead slow. I think this will work equally well on the violin.
Finger a note on the fingerboard. Don't play it yet. Check your entire body for tension. In the ...
5
In a real orchestra? It varies. Maybe 10 first violins, 10 second violins, 10 violas, 8 cellos, 6 double basses. Maybe 14, 14, 12, 12, 10. Mozart and Haydn had smaller orchestras so you may see 3, 3, 3, 2, 1, although they sound OK with a larger or smaller group. Not as many bass instruments are needed to balance the treble instruments. For late ...
5
It's very normal to get calluses when playing violin, especially if you play for such extended periods of time. However, I would expect that the pain should go away after the calluses have built up. If you are still getting pain after this point perhaps you are using too much pressure. A number of violinists have told me that the left hand should be using as ...
5
I think it would be easier if you are clear about what skill level you want to acheive in what kind of time frame.
How I started?
I have been playing for about 6 years. I am with my 4th teacher now. When I started I had no background in music. After about 3 months with first teacher, I thought, "Now I can read all sheet music. It's only slowly, physically ...
5
The man at the store is right: the smaller violin can play all the same notes as the larger violin. The difference is that the smaller violin won't be as loud and it will be better suited for smaller hands and fingers—if you are a normal-sized adult, you'll find a smaller violin to be more challenging to play simply because your hands will be too large for ...
5
If you are a new violinist, your ear is the the weak point. Part of what you'll be doing is training it to recognize pitches, because you aren't there yet. Get it out of the loop. Use an online tuner that uses your computer's mic, like this one (Not really a an endorsement, because HTML5 programmers are starting to write these things as an exercise, so ...
5
The screw plays several roles:
The hair can (and should) be loosened when not playing so that the bow is not constantly subjected to hair tension. It's the same reason some people recommend loosening guitar strings when storing a guitar for a longer period of time, except a guitar neck has the advantage of a stiff metal rod inside it, which the violin bow ...
5
The sound variance of violins is surely greater than the difference in their optical appearance, so I assume different shapes are possible. Note, that the viola da gamba family, which also has a soprano member (not sounding sooo different) sports C-shaped holes, and baryton has nearly unregular ones so the effect of hole shape seems very minor.
I found a ...
5
The shape also has to do with structural integrity. A violin would be of no use if it were built in a shape that would not support the high tension of the strings, thus causing the violin body to collapse after being used for some length of time. Instruments in the violin family, among all musical instruments, are notoriously durable; there are individual ...
4
I don't know much about violin, but I do know a thing or two about pickups :). Piezoelectric pickups are nothing like a standard electric guitar pickup in that no magnetic field is induced while you are playing--which makes them suitable for applications such as violin and classical guitar where no metal is involved. Due to their construction they have much ...
4
Yes - new rosin is shiny and so won't get applied to the bow hair (it simply slides along the bow).
You'll need to scratch the the rosin, either with sandpaper or, (as my teacher used to do) with a penknife, until there's a layer of white dust on the rosin. You should then be able to apply it to the bow.
4
A technique to concentrate entirely on the rhythm is to put away the instrument entirely, and clap the rhythm along with a metronome. You should also clap along to emphasize what would be the correct rhythm. You can vary this technique with the methods you have already tried with counting sub divisions etc.
4
I practice shifting exercises as part of my warm up routine. This helps with pitch accuracy. They go something like this on my double bass:
A - long tone glissando to A one octave up. Gliss back down to A. Then Bb to Bb, B to B, C to C, etc.
variation:
A to A, Bb to A, B to A, C to A, C# to A, D to A, etc.
On violin, a better note to start with might be ...
4
IANAV, but from what I've seen it depends on the kind of sound they want. An open string sounds so different that if you want a consistent sound for example for a melody line, you'd try to avoid it. In a fast scale it doesn't matter that much. Open strings can also be used to get certain effects, like a folk fiddle kind of sound or just a stronger sound. In ...
4
The reason you would want to play more than one note per bow stroke is to give it articulation. An example of two different sounds an articulation could make are: making the notes sound more separated or making them sound smoothly connected.
The technique in general is called bowing. You can find a list of many of these here.
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