New instrument

I taught myself to play keyboard. I learned to read music and I learned all the keys, by myself. Now I've took up the Violin.
I'm not sure if I still have the photo of it, so I'll have to take one. It's a beautiful full size violin. It came with everything I need, the Violin and bow, case, tuner, rosin, extra strings, lesson book, and a shoulder rest. I played for my birds, it sounded horrible, my E string is scratchy, I'll have to learn how to replace it. I've had it for a few weeks Now, it's in tune, and I can play twinkle twinkle little star. Elvis got mad at me because I didn't play a song HE likes. So I'll have to learn a song he likes, although, he likes pop songs and I would think that would be hard to play on a violin.


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As a fiddle player for 40 or so years, good luck. Unlike fixed pitch instruments , like piano or even guitar, violin is extremely hard to learn. I tell my students figure 1000 hours of practice time before anyone will actually WANT to hear you play. I recommend getting a teacher for this one. Good luck.

This is my violin.

I am really determined to play this. But since I lost my job last week, I'm not spending what I have left on violin lessons. I'm saving it for vet visits if an emergency comes up while I'm unemployed. It's very hard for a 16 year old to get a job. Until I get a job, I will be teaching myself to play violin.

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wrench13 said:

As a fiddle player for 40 or so years, good luck. Unlike fixed pitch instruments , like piano or even guitar, violin is extremely hard to learn. I tell my students figure 1000 hours of practice time before anyone will actually WANT to hear you play. I recommend getting a teacher for this one. Good luck.

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I LOVE fiddle and really want to play it. Problem is I don't want to LEARN it, I just want to pick it up and be able to play!


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Inger said:

wrench13 said:

As a fiddle player for 40 or so years, good luck. Unlike fixed pitch instruments , like piano or even guitar, violin is extremely hard to learn. I tell my students figure 1000 hours of practice time before anyone will actually WANT to hear you play. I recommend getting a teacher for this one. Good luck.

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I LOVE fiddle and really want to play it. Problem is I don't want to LEARN it, I just want to pick it up and be able to play!


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welcome to my world with all instruments!

Wrench I'll second you on that. Learnt to play a fretless bass guitar and boy was it hard, but you could get some really good sound going with it once you learnt how to do it

Good luck to you! Fortunate you still have a 16 year old brain to make it fairly easy to learn. I've been learning piano and I can quickly figure out individual tunes by ear, but the process of learning to actually read music? It's like my mind is black hole and incapable of learning I find music as difficult as I do math.

I learned to read music when I was about 12 or 13 years old, before I knew of the internet.

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I dont read a note, never have.[ame="https://youtube.com/watch?v=vVKEQifjNtk"]https://youtube.com/watch?v=vVKEQifjNtk[/ame]

Kiwibird said:

Good luck to you! Fortunate you still have a 16 year old brain to make it fairly easy to learn. I've been learning piano and I can quickly figure out individual tunes by ear, but the process of learning to actually read music? It's like my mind is black hole and incapable of learning I find music as difficult as I do math.

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Do you have a piano teacher? The right teacher can do world of good. If you were in my neck of the woods, I'd send you to my sister - she and her husband have special books for adult learners, and often one of them will be teaching the child and the other a parent!

Kiwibird said:

Good luck to you! Fortunate you still have a 16 year old brain to make it fairly easy to learn. I've been learning piano and I can quickly figure out individual tunes by ear, but the process of learning to actually read music? It's like my mind is black hole and incapable of learning I find music as difficult as I do math.

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Yeah no kidding. If you are at this age and picking up music, I highly encourage you to stick with the whole thing. Music seems to make people super creative.

Not nay that, it helps your brain with other things. My sister is a main frame computer software engineer - works for a huge multinational investment firm. She is also an accomplished musician and piano teacher, and se says nearly all the high-level programmers she knows are also skilled musicians - it seems to help those pathways in the brain!

For now, maybe you can seek out an older person in your community who could give you lessons in exchange for yard work, or something like that? This time of year and in our neck of the country, there's always some chore that needs doing!

OP - since lessons for the fiddle are not in the budget, I reccommend scales, lots n lots of scales, to develop your ear and to learn the finger positions for each key. Reading music is over rated when you are learning to actually play violin. Until you can hear when your intonation is spot on, sheet music will only clog up the brain cells. Learn the G, C, D, A and E scales in first position first. A trick to use to see if a given note is in pitch is to sound the adjacent open string with the fingered note and check the harmony between the 2 notes. THere is no quick and easy way to learn violin, between learning to use the bow effectively and developing good intonation it can take months or even years, depending on how much you practice. Try setting aside 1 hour every day, religiously, for 1 month and report back , I will bet you see a real improvement. A teacher is good at this point to make sure you arent practicing bad technique.

PetoftheDay said:

Do you have a piano teacher? The right teacher can do world of good. If you were in my neck of the woods, I'd send you to my sister - she and her husband have special books for adult learners, and often one of them will be teaching the child and the other a parent!

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No, I couldn't afford to pay to learn how to play an instrument. I do have one of those "teach yourself piano" books and put stickers on all the keys to remind me what key=what note. While I do understand the basic concepts, once I see the sheet music it's just too much to process while also trying to play. It's hard to explain, but I can visualize where on the keyboard a sound was produced (like a ruler) and "see" at what point in a tune the sound belongs and how many times it belongs there, so within a few hours of trial and error, I can figure out a full song that sounds reasonably decent when I play it. Place a sheet of music in front of me and ask me to play? LOL, good thing my keyboard has headphones.

It's the translation from sheet music to my fingers I struggle with. It just all gets jumbled up in my head. I vaguely remember having the same kind of difficulties learning to read and write as a little kid (seriously, I couldn't read until I was in first grade:08. I wasn't 'slow', it was just a jumble for some reason until it finally "clicked" one day. Within a year, I was reading at levels years beyond my age/grade. Hopefully music will "click" in the same way at some point too. Not sure if being in my late 20's that can still happen (I know adults have much more difficulty learning new concepts then children), but maybe Think the combination of lots of high fevers and being an accident prone child must've fried some neural pathways early on for me

Broke the E string, I've been spending the past 2 days trying to take the sting off, and put the new one on. I'm afraid I might break another sting.

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