Violin Lesson #4

My practice during the week went well. I play all four pieces of music I have learned so far. The sound I am getting from the violin is pretty good. I am least happy with the sound from the G string. This is the string that needs a little pressure to play correctly. It does not help that I cannot play in front of a mirror because I can not see my hands and the bow and the violin very well. Still, I know when I hear a good sound and a not-so-good sound.

I also asked about buying a violin. The teacher was very helpful with my query and even went as far as to offer her time to help me play some before choosing one. This is when I learned a typical professional kit is worth around $20,000! She also mentioned a time she played various violins ranging from $15,000 to $100,000 dollars to find that the three she liked most were all less than $20,000. I don't have that much to spend but I will be most appreciative of her advice when I get one eventually, even if it is much cheaper. She told of one very good violinist who was sick of people asking about his violin and saying how good it must be, so he went and bought a much cheaper violin. People were then surprised his playing was so good on such a cheap instrument. The lesson here is most of the sound is due to the person playing it. A good violinist can make even a cheap violin sound great.

Early in the afternoon of my lesson there was a problem with League Leaders. It was deemed urgent so I started work on it immediately. There were three issues. Two of them were assigned to me. One of them turned out to be an environment issue and hence not my problem. However, I did spend time looking at it that would have been better used with the the second problem. I asked The Powers That Be how urgent this was and they said "very". At this point I sent an SMS to my teacher to advise that I may not be able to make the lesson. This is when I learned that if I cancel with less than 24 hours notice I must still pay a fee because the teacher is charged for booking the room for the lesson. As it turns out, I fixed the problem just in time for me to make the lesson.

Why do I mention this? Because it brought home to me how much I look forward to my lessons. It was such a relief to be able to get there in the end. And I was even happier I did when I realised that the teacher had to get to the studio just for me and left after we finished. I would have felt bad if the teacher had gone to the trouble to be there and I could not make it.

The lesson itself was enjoyable once again. I played through "The Golden Harp" and earned another sticker. I played "The Salsa Song" and "The Polar Bear" in pizzicato. Then I played them with the bow. I was given more instruction and encouragement with the bowing technique. There is a lot to keep in mind and I am sure it will get easier as time goes on. As the teacher said, it's like learning to drive a car - you want to make sure you get the basics right to have a platform on which to build the later skills, and after a while the basics will become second nature.

The lesson then moved on to the discussion of triplets (the notes, not identical siblings). The word associated with the triplet is "bumblebee",  to go along with "cow" and "monkey". My teacher was pleased that I could clap along to my rhythm while she clapped to a different one. Later on my sister-in-law said it was a good skill to have. She had to sing with another girl as part of a university subject, and it was difficult at times to focus on what she was singing when the other girl was singing something else. The triplets feature in the next song I am learning. It was composed by the teacher and is called "Bumble Bee Blues".

At the end of the lesson I asked about grading and exams. The teacher said that is up to me. I can also choose to enter competitions and eisteddfods . I don't feel a need to grade at the moment but the idea of performing sounds good to me. I am sure that would be quite a rush.

After paying for the lesson I gave the teacher a box of chocolates as a Christmas present. I appreciate having someone like her teaching me. She was surprised at the gesture and very happy. This will be my last lesson for two weeks. I will miss my regular lesson next week but look forward to returning in 2013.

Note: League Leaders is NOT going out this week. It will go out next year because there are still things wrong with it. I am even happier now that I did not skip the lesson.

Violin Lesson #3

Leading up to the third week I kept up with the flash cards and practiced my bow hold on a chop-stick I had at work. I also discovered Noteflight. This is a web site that lets you enter and play musical scores. So after asking the teacher's permission, I entered the accompaniment to "The River Melody". Oddly enough I found it very hard to play my part with that accompaniment. Perhaps I will go back and a one-bar rest at the start so I can prepare myself after clicking the play button.

The other thing I did during the week was download some violin tuner apps for my Samsung Galaxy III. There were all virtually identical. The app would play the note of an open string while I adjusted the string on the violin.

I arrived a little early for the third lesson. This week there was someone else in with my teacher so I waited for my turn. As I waited I listened to what the young boy and the teacher were playing. It was a lively and pretty piece so I hope I get to play it one day. I could also hear someone having a piano lesson. I enjoyed being able to sit and listen to the music for a while.

The first part of my lesson I played "The Golden Harp" again. It was better, and I learned more about the pizzicato technique. I still have more work to do there. Next was "The River Melody". I played that well enough to earn my first sticker! This was a reward for me and a reminder to the teacher that I have learned what was expected of me.

Next came the bow hold. It had improved markedly from last week. That was partly due to the practice and partly to the way I picked up the bow. I hold it palm up and place the thumb first, then wrap the other fingers around the bow. It is easier for me to see where my fingers are contacting the bow. The rest of the lesson was spent learning to draw the bow across the strings and to pivot in order to play each string.

At the end of the lesson I was given another piece composed by my teacher. It is called "The Polar Bear" and consists of only G and D notes. My homework is to learn to play this with the bow. It will teach me bowing and pivoting.

After the lesson I was given an insight into my teacher's method. She said with the open strings I learn four notes (G D A E). With these four notes I can learn to read music and I can learn rhythms "monkey cow monkey cow". Not only that but I can learn to play pizzicato and bowing as well. This all helps me to learn skills at a steady pace. Later on when I come to fingering with the left hand (placing my fingers over the string to play different notes) I can focus on learning just that. Having thought about this for a little while there is a lot of sense in this method and I understand why she is using it.

Towards the very end she was explaining that the bow hold was important in order to apply pressure to the bow. Most of the time the bow can sit lightly on the strings. She told me the bow hold will come in very handy for Gypsy dances, and she played a few bars. It sounded so cool and I won't forget to ask about it when the time comes.

There is a lot to take in each lesson and plenty to practice during the week.

Violin Lesson #2

During the week, the teacher sent me an image of the open string notes on the treble staff and another image I could use to make flash cards of the individual notes. I have never used flash cards for my own study. After having tried them for the musical notes I must say they were quite effective. I also spent time memorising "The Golden Harp" (as it is 12 bars long and involved repetition it was not hard to do). I practised my bow hold on pencils and chopsticks. I did find some tutorials on youtube that my teacher said were suitable to use for learning how to hold the bow.

The second lesson started with me playing "The Golden Harp". There were good points and bad points :) I knew the piece very well but played it too quickly, and at times my pizzicato technique was not so good. After some more practice, I moved on to two new pieces. The first is called "The River Melody", composed by the teacher, and includes an accompaniment. The student part is entirely pizzicato, and sounds fine on its own, but when she played the accompaniment it sounded so much richer. This was the first time I had heard the teacher play and I loved the tone of her violin. For now I can only imagine how it would sound to hear her play something like Vivaldi's "Summer" (3rd movement AKA Storm). The second piece is called "The Salsa Song" and is entirely single-note pizzicato. The focus here is on the introduction of quavers, or as I was shown today "monkeys". Crotchet is "cow". It serves the same purpose as ta and ti-ti but more humorous. The last thing I was taught today was how to use the bow. This was quite exciting. I learned the one way to bow correctly, and the four or five ways to do it incorrectly.

This week I have plenty of homework and I love it.

Violin Lesson #1

Today I started learning to play the violin. This has been an ambition of mine for a very long time. I am learning at Browning Street Studios in West End, not far from work. In fact, that was the major motivation for selecting this studio.

I hired a violin earlier in the week from Morris Brother Music Store for the princely sum of $55 for a school term. Yes, they usually hire to school students and now they have hired to me. I also bought a shoulder rest, which was not mandatory but is almost always used.

For the first lesson I was shown how to hold the bow and the violin. Holding a bow was not as simple as I thought it would be, especially when I could not relax my fingers enough for the teacher to place them as she wanted. Holding the violin was easier. The lesson continued with some theory. I know how to read music so I knew most of what I was being covered. What I did NOT know, and enjoyed learning about, was how the two musical staffs came into being. After this I was taught about the four open strings of the violin and how to play pizzicato. This included playing each string (G, D, A, E) individually, and adjoining pairs of strings (GD, DA, AE) as well as all of them together. We finished off with a piece of music composed by the teacher called "The Golden Harp".

I really enjoyed my first lesson. I learned a lot and revised things I already knew. One thing I really liked was that I was able to go home and play my first piece of music on the violin that same day. Not only did this reinforce everything I had been taught, but it also gave me a sense of accomplishment.