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Karmakazi posted:Does anyone play the violin? I'd love to see a write up or megathread. I want to learn. Just browsing and came across this thread, never posted. I play violin. That is, I just picked it up again after taking a ~14 year break from it. Lessons and everything. Not sure my goals but I'm having fun so far.  CowOnCrack: One of my lessons a few months ago my teacher borrowed my violin instead of getting hers out of her case to show me something. To see her perfectly demonstrate a technique I couldn't grasp at all on my own instrument was eye opening. No more "my bow is too heavy and sucks" or "my violin is kinda crap and honky sounding," the slate of excuses wiped clean and only I was left standing.
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Feb 20, 2014 10:27
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| # ¿ May 19, 2024 17:45 |
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nielsm posted:So, I would like to get some recommendations for things to practice, perhaps books to look for, pieces suitable for a beginner. Unfortunately taking lessons is not an option. A lot of people have issues with the Suzuki Method as a whole and it's probably not how I'd deal with a beginner taking private lessons, but for self-teaching you could do worse than to pick up a copy of Suzuki Volume 1 for Viola. Carefully examine the pictures at the front of the book and read how to set yourself up to hold the instrument/bow correctly. Practice in front of a mirror (just open strings even) to check your form. Especially watch out for and correct a crooked left wrist. If you're weak at reading music Suzuki Method is extremely generous with giving you fingerings. Every volume has a corresponding audio recording to play along with if you want to track it down. Your instrument is almost certainly a full-size but I'm sure some simple googling can sort that out. Edit: My lack of viola-specific knowledge is apparent. Reading the wiki, I'm reminded that viola sizing is less precise than violins. I'd imagine that most cases would be roomy enough to accommodate whatever you have though. ub fucked around with this message at 06:12 on Feb 25, 2014 |
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Feb 25, 2014 06:06
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Vibrato should be a relaxed movement, no extra pressure. Not a spazzy tensing up, just a little wiggle of the wrist keeping the finger in place on the string. Never vibrate when practising for intonation, such as doing scales. Dunno bout that arm vibrato, sounds like a cello-ish thing. I'm just picking up violin again after quitting about 14 years ago. Von Braun, I'm guessing you meant Bach's Partita #2 (the Sonata is in a minor). I've played the Giga from it; generally though most of the sonatas and partitas are beyond me (for now!). ub fucked around with this message at 18:05 on Apr 7, 2014 |
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Apr 7, 2014 01:37
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Heh, good luck if you ever get to the Chaconne. I was incidentally just watching a video of Heifetz rockin' it yesterday... yeah, I'll never play that. Right now I'm just slowly working through my 3 octave scales, etc trying to get them back into shape. Noodling on a Mozart sonata - so technically challenging for such "'simple" sounding music.
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Apr 7, 2014 18:12
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Yeah, quite a bizarre attitude unless you consider yourself entirely bereft of performance anxiety. I know my own playing is affected by a degree of stage fright so any opportunity to practice performing can only be good. Being asked (required?) to perform material that you feel is beyond your current level or within too small a time-frame to be able to properly prepare is lovely though. Sounds like this is a talk you need to be having with your teacher. I dunno what your situation though - at a certain level putting in crazy hours and stressing the gently caress out kinda comes with the territory.
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Apr 16, 2014 20:38
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Hawkgirl posted:It's funny, because I absolutely agree with you, but a person who has a bad enough ear to actually sound awful because of intonation issues is probably not even going to realize they sound awful. If you asked my beginning violin students how they think they sound, they would all say some variation on "awesome" even though three of them can't play in tune to save their life. It's all blissful ignorance until you play long enough to develop an ear. This is true to an extent - I'm currently working on intonation issues in the third octaves of my scales that I barely notice to play them straight through, but my teacher notices instantly and my tuner backs her up. My ear is so poorly trained up at that range that it sounds out of tune (flat) when I play it correctly! That said, I agree with most of what L. Ron Mexico said. Violin is not an instrument to casually take up late in life unless you have a lot of patience and can keep your expectations low. And yes, get a teacher before you even start to put bow to string.
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May 4, 2014 00:24
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I went to see Billy Budd at Glyndebourne last year and was pretty amazed in all respects; the production, the cast, the music. I'm not huge into opera (at all) but it was definitely a good time.
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May 10, 2014 02:23
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If you read back a few posts, someone asked pretty much this exact question so read the replies to that. Bottom line is that any fretless, bowed instrument has a very steep learning curve. Yes, you can pick it up late in life, but it requires a lot of patience, realistic expectations, serious practicing, and a good teacher.
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May 16, 2014 23:09
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Wow, I'd never heard the term "quaver" before and thought you were being obtuse, but a quick wiki shows that it's another word for eighth note. Neat. So, here we have two eighth notes connected by a beam. It may be worth noting that it's common practice to join all the notes within one beat with beams - helps with readability. So, in the seventh bar here those three notes that are all connected are all crammed into one beat and are called a triplet (hence the "3" above the beam).
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Jul 26, 2014 17:11
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Bifauxnen posted:And it gets really fun when you start getting into really fast notes, cause then you end up with words like hemidemisemiquaver. Haha - again, I had to look that up to see if you were loving with me. Obvious bias, but what a terrible way of describing notes. I'm still kinda blown away that of all the musical terms I'm used to seeing in Italian/French/German, there's a whole way of describing notes that I've never been exposed to before in english. Oh, Canadian btw. 
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Jul 27, 2014 04:16
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Strings need replacing every now and then; I always have a spare set kicking around just in case. A new bridge isn't a big deal at all. Usually a (violin's) E string is the problem and they often come with a little plastic tube that sits on the bridge to prevent it cutting in. Never had a sound post fall though, any idea how it happened? String tension pushing the bridge down is supposed to keep it in place which is why you never want all your strings loosened at once. I'd be taking it in to get fixed asap.
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Aug 21, 2014 20:17
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Honestly it's been so long since I learned to read music (almost 30 years) that I've no idea how I went about it. The fact that I was learning on an instrument makes it a different beast altogether too where it would have been more about where to put fingers down to make a note rather than simply knowing the sound of the note that needed to be produced. I'm not sure that learning to read music for voice can be too much separated from having to learn some basic music theory. I would want to know what different intervals are, what they sound like, and what they look like on a page. I would say some basic form of a Solfège practice would be the way to go.
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Aug 29, 2014 22:59
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This thread hasn't had any interest in over two months. Very cool though, thanks for sharing. From memory! Don't think I've never seen a string quartet do that. Ravel seemed to be a very good fit, not tacky at all; a very plucky movement. Start transcribing Mozart or Pachelbel's Canon or something and that'd be a different story. ub fucked around with this message at 06:43 on Nov 14, 2014 |
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Nov 14, 2014 06:41
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cebrail posted:I have a question that would probably annoy me if it was asked to me, but still, I'd really like to know it: So to summarize, you have a pretty decent musical background, can read at least both bass and treble clef and should have a decent understanding of music theory. You're looking to join a community orchestra or something of that sort. Well, yes a string instrument is really loving difficult to pick up compared to most other instruments. How long it takes to get "decent" at it (let's say intermediate level) really depends on the individual, including how much time and effort you are able and willing to put into it. And money, because a private teacher is not optional if you are at all serious. Anecdotally, my sister had a similar background when she picked up cello at the beginning of high school and five years later was good enough to be accepted into the music program at a decent university with it. I would say that put her at an early-advanced level. Me, I started when I was five.
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Dec 24, 2014 02:34
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cebrail posted:Thanks for your suggestion, but it's not really the mechanics of playing the trombone that bother me, it's more that trombone parts for symphonic music are often boring (because they consist mostly of rests) and I'm not a huge fan of brass-based chamber music or brass orchestras. I just joined a community orchestra this year and with our season's program I'm not sure we'll be needing trombones for any of it. Trumpets for the larger works and horns for sure, but they don't count. Not sure if that's typical of a community orchestra but I'd imagine a lot find it easiest to stick to chamber orchestra type stuff. And yeah strings get to play a lot. Violas get to get away with sounding the honkiest, but I wouldn't recommend it as a starting instrument (I'm biased). cebrail posted:Oh absolutely, I have no pipe dreams about autodidactism. Mostly I'm just worried about adults being stupidly slow with learning a new instrument, but that's probably an exaggerated trope. Don't know till you try I guess! My mom decided to take up banjo this year and she's 63!
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Dec 28, 2014 05:34
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Remulak posted:If this is the wrong thread, I apologize, I just need some Viola buying advice. I've been gifted with a daughter that's a very good Viola player - she's first chair in the second orchestra in her high school as a freshman, and is going into the higher one next year. After getting really hosed price-wise on the first rent-to-buy viola I'm trying to figure out the right way to pick up a decent intermedia instrument on the cheap. I know it's important to support local businesses, but given I paid $1k for a $150 viola I have a bad taste in my mouth so I wanted to try to do this online. The violin my parents got me as soon as I was big enough for a full-size was a pretty decent instrument (I had already been playing for 5 or so years). I think they cashed in some education savings bonds or something and put down about $2000-2500. That was about 25 years ago, but I still have that instrument and still play on it (I recently had it appraised for $6500, fwiw). I never pursued music professionally but if I had, it would have been good enough to get me through university and to a point where I'd decide about and afford my own better instrument. So that said, I have zero experience buying an instrument, hehe. My private teacher at the time sourced and vetted it for me; we tried out a few before we found one that he was happy with for me. Really, if you're looking to put down serious money for your kid's instrument I'd be looking at paying for private lessons too. If you've read any other string-playing advice in this thread it always come back to private instruction for any half-way serious learning.
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Feb 8, 2015 04:40
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Deathy McDeath posted:Is it okay to replace an entire set of violin strings by myself? I understand about keeping constant tension on the bridge, the soundpost and all that, but are there any problems with replacing all four strings that might not be immediately apparent? Should be fine, just do it one at a time. Wind the pegs carefully so it doesn't get all lovely, moving towards the outside like this. Keep an eye on your bridge during and after and if it's leaning a bit either way carefully adjust it back to perpendicular. You can do it with full tension on it, just do it carefully.
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Feb 11, 2015 17:27
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Deathy McDeath posted:Well, I followed this advice and managed to mess it up anyway. If you can visualize this: instead of inserting a small bit of the string into the peg and winding from there, I inserted the string until it was almost taught then started winding. After that, I cut off the excess silk at the peg end. I couldn't figure out why the strings kept slipping out of the pegs I would not have foreseen anyone doing that... but yeah they're not guitar strings: start at the very end and wind from the inside out. You should never need to trim them. I usually fiddle with how much I put through the peg to start so the peg ends up in a nice not-awkward position for tuning, but that's it. The picture I posted shows it crossing over for the first turn (presumably) to lock it in, but I've never bothered with that.
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Feb 24, 2015 20:17
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mariooncrack posted:I didn't know a classical musician thread existed. I remember looking years and years ago but I never found one. Welcome! I'm guessing if an orchestra is hurting for violins it's worth it to sacrifice a stronger viola section. So congrats, you get to play the melody most of the time (if you're a first). I joined a community orchestra too last fall and it's been a lot of fun. I'm the youngest person in it by at least 10 years, but I don't mind. Many of the members are retired professional musicians, so there's a lot of experience to learn from, and our director is fantastic. Our next big concert is going to be Brahms 3 and Dvorak Cello Concerto with the principal cellist of my city's professional orchestra. I'm pretty stoked.
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Feb 24, 2015 20:27
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Erwin posted:Cobaltshift's other point is a great one - something you write may sound good in Finale, but may be difficult for the instrument it's written for. You have to consider intervals and range for brass, the break on clarinet, and you want to avoid an angry mob of violinists murdering you when you write something in Db. Definitely run parts by someone who plays that instrument. I'm happy to look at trumpet parts and tell you if the intervals are too mean. For a concert I played earlier this spring we had a Schubert vocal piece that had been transposed to D flat, except the guy who did it couldn't figure out how to get whatever program he was using to do D flat and printed out the parts in C#. Really. We actually tried it once and it was hilarious. Played Brahms 3rd Symphony in my last concert and he makes the first violins do some pretty lovely things. I remember a particular >4 octave jump with less than a beat rest to do it. Big name composer that he was, I can't imagine he was ignorant of what a violin can do so I have to guess he was simply... unsympathetic.
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Jul 4, 2015 18:57
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Having to read clefs other than treble and to transpose into different keys on the fly? What a strange and terrible world you brass players live in... 
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Aug 5, 2015 23:57
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| # ¿ May 19, 2024 17:45 |
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I read the question as asking what instrument is easier to find paying gigs for - some thing common like string instruments or something more esoteric (but hard to find and so possibly more in-demand). I can't speak from experience as but I would have to wager that string instruments would be it, hands down. Throw a string quartet together and do weddings and receptions until the mere thought of playing Pachelbel's Canon makes you want to kill yourself.
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Sep 12, 2015 17:42
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