8r4d Another season of #orchestra is in the books as we sold out the venue for our year end #concert this afternoon. I have a few month of rest and can focus on some more casual and fun music… and doing some #violin maintenance.

8r4d If you’re not a #violin player chances are you’ve never really payed any attention to the intricacies of the parts of the instrument itself.

I’ve been in #orchestra for about five years now and playing for over eight, and it was in about my second year that I upgraded from my student violin to a fancier model. The student model came fully equipped with all the little bits to make it easier to play, including a full set of fine tuners. But when I upgraded, the luthier from whom I bought it said something like “this one doesn’t have them and we can always add them if you want to later…” and I bought it and have been mucking around tuning my violin with the pegs for years.

Which is fine.

But I was sitting there struggling the other day for the thousandth time and it occurred to me that I should probably price out what it would cost me to put on some fine tuners… which of course turned out to be about fifteen bucks via a next day shipping order from Amazon. In other words, I’ve been struggling for years thinking this was a complex problem when it was about as complex sitting in the dark for five years before just ordering fresh light bulbs for a burnt out lamp.

In other other words, my violin now has fine tuners and my tuning is immensely finer.

8r4d It was our year end concert for #orchestra this afternoon. Summer break now and time to get back into my solo #violin for a few months.

8r4d So here’s the thing. I’ve been playing #violin now for almost 8 years. Why I picked up this instrument all those years ago is a winding tale that merits further documentation, perhaps to be elaborated as I go along, but not for today. Today, I am looking at some of the frustrations I’ve been having in #orchestra achieving the level of play that I felt I should have been at by now. Yeah, it’s been less than 8 years, but I squandered a couple back during the pandemic and so it goes, on and on with excuses. My bowing is jittery. My fingering is sloppy. My fourth finger never wants to cooperate. So what to do? Well. The #fourseasons is a renowned piece of violin music that is clearly stretching for my current ability. I own a full violin score that feels fairly advanced, slightly out of reach and something I could just barely muddle through now. But not if I worked at it. See, back when I was doing lessons my instructors would basically help me pick something I wanted to learn then walk me thru week by week learning it. A phrase at a time we would pick it apart and get it right. Those pieces were simpler but those lesson books were designed for beginners and children. It got me thinking. I could go back to lessons, or I could just pick something to learn—like learn really well—and just methodically practice it. Record myself. Tweak. Tune. Learn. And as such I think I could really hone the technique I know and work on fine tuning the fabric of my practice methodology around a focus. Yes there is very much a lot of positive about structured instruction, but for a few months, maybe a year, to do something self-focused that isn’t just noodling on easy music I think—I think—could be hugely beneficial and perhaps set me up to take some more structured learning down the road to hone and refine even more. So. I pulled out that Vivaldi score and downloaded a recording and… here goes nothing: day one.

8r4d According to the sacred violinist’s lore one must change one’s strings with care and regularity. Prolific players may need to change their strings every six to nine months. Moderate players like me should change their strings every twelve to eighteen months. Occasional players may wish to only replace strings every couple years or as required, because it’s not cheap nor trivial either. I last replaced my strings about five years ago… or in a timeframe clearly in breach of the sacred advice of internet #violin experts. Probably should have got on that sooner, huh?

8r4d We’ve got some challenging pieces this year, including a couple where only half the #orchestra plays, so rehearsal has been a bit weird. Sometimes the brass plays by themselves while the #violin and string contingent waits, and sometimes it’s vice versa.

8r4d Our #orchestra has been playing some challenging music this half of our season and I realized one of my biggest personal challenges with our music selection has been my lack of familiarity with the music itself. my approach to remedy this was to download the actual performances into my music playlist and to listen to them on repeat in hopes that have a little better sense of the sound so that when I see the notes on the page I can translate between the two. It did mean spending about $20 on, some new albums on iTunes but hopefully it’s worth it in the end. #violin

pixelazy #violin perspectives