MikhailSimonyanViolin.com

There is an interesting relationship between the learner and the teacher.  Learning to play the violin is really a skill which takes years and thousands of hours of practice to master.  Physically, the complexity of the movements of the arms, hands and fingers in a vast array of permutations and combinations of positions and situations makes the skill required to play in control and with purpose very difficult.  Combine the requirements of an emotional and intellectual requirement in the music played so that the muscian can take a the emotions and ideas of a composer, transposed imperfectly and imprecisely onto a page, filter that through the eyes into a series of physical and techincal movements of the fingers which then combine with an emotional and intellectually understanding and message which is to be communicated to the listener through sound waves projected through the air.  Learning to do this at all is a miracle, but learning it without the constant and regular guidance, adjustment and encouragment of a teacher leaves one open to a spiral of poor choices, bad habits and efforts made into dead ends.

The interesting relationship between learner and teacher which I alluded to is that fundamentally each student must put in the time and effort to learn how to play.  No matter how good a teacher is, without the dedication and persistent practice by the student that student will never become a decent musician.  But, this fact does not diminish the crucial and pivitol role which a teacher plays in a students development.  The teacher is confronted with a kind of puzzle which is how to impart the knowledge and experience they posess to the student in such a way that the student will stay motivated and progress through the somewhat winding path of achievement.  The teacher can do so much, and yet can only do so much.  But with a motivated and eager student I think a good teacher can work wonders and learning and development can be optimal.

So, I am brought back to this idea of optimal and efficient learning.  So much of the actual time required to play is merely a matter of applying and reapplying the principles taught in the lesson.  With just an hour instruction there can be dozens of hours of work required by the student to implement the principles taught into a workable skill.  Learning optimally involves the inspirational and motivating influence of the teacher.  It involves the teacher communicating the discipline required, not only in a general sense, but also critically, in the specific and smallest details.  The teacher must communicate an understanding of a technique, then communicate an understanding of the small steps one will take on a path to achieve it, then communicate the kind of discipline and practice necessary to get there, then recoginze and teach how to recognize when it has been achieved sufficently to move on to the next task.  It is a monumental task for student and teacher. One that when working synergistically though can have a fascinating bootstrapping effect on the student.

Without this experience I feel a bit overwhelmed with my lack of technique and what aspect I should be working on to improve it.  Surely, improving certain techincal difficulties would have a greater overall effect in improving my playing.  Unfortunately, without a teacher, I am left to guess somewhat at what technical challenges I should most be addressing.  I miss having those external set of eyes assessing and adjusting what I am playing.  While I have much to work on and there is much I can do without a teacher and much I can improve upon, I do believe that having lessons would streamline that process, and probably push me a bit to challenge myself in ways that I may not naturally do.

Unfortunately, for financial reasons, regular lessons are a luxury I am not able to indulge in currently, though I hope to again before too long.  Perhaps I can take the odd lesson now and then to get me back on track or check my bad habits.  In the mean time I will press on and do my best to learn as much as I can about the science of learning to play the violin so that I can correct myself as much as possible.  In the end, learning to do this on my own and learning to be self-critical, and learning about the process and ladder of steps to achieving real musicality on the violin is a valuable and rewarding experience both for life generally, and for learning to make my hours in practice both useful and productive.

She has been playing for almost her whole life, starting before 4 years old.  She studied with Jascha Brodsky at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia from age twelve to eighteen.  She made her major orchestral debut with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra in 1991.  In 2001 Time Magazine named her America’s Best young classical musician.

Hilary Hahan’s website includes a journal which she has updated on an off for many years.  She writes the entries herself and they provide a picture of “…what it is like to be a nomadic classical musician, a violinist, a 28-year-old, modern instrumental troubadour, or just a woman looking at the world around her…”  She also maintains a twitter feed on behalf of her violin case.

She plays a violin made in 1864 by the French violin maker Jean-Baptiste Vuillaume.

visit hilaryhahn.com

Often when working on a piece that is a bit above my level I work on it quite determinedly and then run into some technical limitations which prevent me from making it sound how I’d like it to sound.  I cannot yet play the Allemande through comfortably where I think it sounds fairly good, but I have sections that I can play in tune with a pretty good tone and the beginnings of some expression.  I believe I will actually get this one playable before too long.

When I started learning this piece I was pretty intimidated by all the black on the page.  I am not the greatest sight reader, and I find it difficult to get the music in my ear merely from the page.  Fortunately I had a recording and found a couple of  others to get the melody in my ear and this helped me in trying to figure out what it should sound like.  Then I set to it.

I start the piece in 3rd position playing a D on the G string.  I suppose I am at an early intermediate level so I am working on shifting and playing in position and I am able to do it.  I find that my consistency is what suffers the most as I don’t get my shifts 100% of the time and my intonation strays more as I move up in position.  I have heard that the Allemande really works out your intonation and this has certainly been my experience.

When I began learning the piece just getting the first few notes in 3rd position on the G string to sound right was very difficult.  Particularly playing the notes in tune, but also generating a pleasant tone.  I have spent an awful lot of time over the last couple months practicing the first line and even the first bar.

As difficult as it is getting and keeping everything in tune though, I feel like the more difficult challenge is maintaining a pleasant tone across the whole piece.  I recorded myself playing through the first section recently and was surprised how scratchy it sounded when I played it back.  I thought that I had played it better, with a better tone.  I think this is largely due to needing to work on my bowing and developing my right hand/arm to be more nuanced and refined.

Despite some of the difficulties the agonizingly  long time it is taking me to learn to play the piece with everything in place and in tune, it is progressing.  I am becoming much more confident and in sections as my hands move more comfortably I have felt the experience of being free to connect a feeling of expression which is in my mind or emotion with getting it out on the violin.  More often than not these moments are fleeting, but it is a great experience as I begin to not have to concentrate so hard on the many details of hand position and  finger placement etc. and begin to feel playing the piece less as a series of notes and more like a melodic line.  All within the context of an intermediate player of course.

I have the first section memorized and the second section is kind of quazi-memorized, as I can get through it stumblingly without the music. My goal is to be able to play this through memorized from start to finish, be in tune with a good tone.  If I get that far I will consider it a victory.  There seems to be an endless spiral of refinement and it is sometimes hard to see the progress.

Yet, it is such a fascinating process, learning a piece and learning the difficult skills necessary to try to make it music.  There are so many variables and factors which complicate the skill required to play any piece on the violin.  In a world where instant gratification is always on our minds it is such a good lesson to see that deliberate persistence produces results over time.  What is important is that progress is made.  The more you practice success the more success you have and I am constantly having to remind myself not to practice my mistakes over and over, but to slow it down or break it into smaller pieces so that I can sucessfully perform the particular acrobatics required.  It is agonizingly slow for someone who wants to be able to do it all now, but seeing the effectiveness of persistent and consistent working at it really pays off.  Hopefully, that experience is one which I can always use to remind myself that it isn’t today that I need to be able to play this piece, but that if I can at it and make miniscule, even barely perceptable progress eventually I will get there.

I hope to write on here one day that I can now play the allemande from Bach’s Partita #2 for  Solo Violin well enough not to be embarassed to play it for somebody.  In the mean time my poor wife will have to endure the hours of repetition.  In the end she’ll probably know the piece better than me!

Dmitry also makes and plays a violoncello da spalla which is essentially a big violin played on the shoulder but looks as much like a little cello played on the shoulder.  A fascinating and beautiful sounding instrument.  Check out Dmitry’s website with some great video, and the violincello da spall after the jump

This is a wonderful video. Check out his blog for more!

Dmitry’s great blog can be found here with more great video

his maker site

and http://dmitrybadiarov.com/

In recent years Mendelssohn’s music has enjoyed somewhat a revival and his importance as a Romantic era composer has been recognized.  Many of his works are just now being rediscovered, including hundreds of unpublished scores and alternate versions of known works.

The Mendelssohn Project is dedicated to rediscovering and preserving the legacy of the Mendelssohn family including Felix and Fanny Mendelssohn.   The project has compiled a comprehensive list of Mendelssohn compositions, letters and artwork and promotes concerts and the recording of unrecorded or unpublished works.  Check out the website here

I believe that in any process at learning a difficult skill there are cycles of progress followed by plateaus.  Plateaus can be some of the most discouraging and difficult times for the learner.  One of the challenges while navigating the wasteland of a plateau is to keep an eye upon small perhaps barely perceptable improvements as significant, and constantly remind oneself that noticable, even rapid improvments will happen again.   The science of plateaus and understanding their importance in the learning process can be very helpful in keeping consistant and pushing on in the face of the frustration.

After a little over a year  I made the decision to discontinue lessons if only temporarily.  It was mostly a financial consideration which motivated me to have a pause in lessons as violin lessons for me was in many was a luxury.  My eldest son was already taking piano lessons and my younger son was about to start which was going to add another cost to our financial circumstances.

Fortunately, however, discontinuing lessons was not born out of a lack of enthusiasm or commitment for playing.   Now, I must admit that my personality is one which seems to constantly seek new interests and I love learning new things.  I usually switch to a new interest every couple months and some who know me chuckle when I enthusiastically go on about some new thing.  Then after a few months, not that my interest in the old thing is lost, but my interest in something new takes precedence and away I go again.

The violin was different.  When I started playing again I was both challeneged and exhilerated.  It very rapidly felt right.  I admit it didn’t sound right, but one day perhaps that will come.  But It did feel right, as if I should have been doing it all along, and when I really committed to learning to play again I really comitted.

Of course I was initially cautious about my level of dedication, so I deferred purchasing a new violin until I had been playing for one year.  After almost a year I rewarded myself with a new violin upgrading from my old student model to something distinctly better.  Now that was fun, playing on the new instrument and the big sound it created compared to my old violin.  Every now and then I pull out the old one just to hear how it sounds, then I nod and tell myself that indeed the new one does sound much better.

There were of course many challenges and frustrations about trying to learn to play, but up until almost a year after I started, plauteauing was not really an issue.  I spent the first four months progressing very rapidly as I remembered all the basics that I new when I was younger.  The first day I started I didn’t know the names of the strings, but over the next few months my sight reading improved (it was never very good!) and my intonation, while still poor was head and shoulders better than it was at the start.  my fingers were at least beginning to remember their place, and the sevcik excercises proscribed by my teacher really helped.

For the first year I managed to practice almost every day most days for a couple hours.  This may not seem like much compared to how much advanced violinists tend to practice.  However, considering I was doing well years ago if I practiced for 45 minutes three times a week, two hours a day for almost a year with pretty good regularity was a breakthrough.  I was able to sustain this because I really wanted to get better, in other words, I was highly motivated.  Also, I was severely challenged by it, but as importantly I was purposefully and deliberately making myself do at least some of the things I knew to be good practice habits and the results were noticeable.

One of the most difficult things I find in practice is to get into a mindset of developing a skill brick by brick.  I have always wanted to be able to play it all now, and still do.  I have always struggled with the application of something.  I usually get the idea and then I feel as if I’ve got it completely.  I tend to be a big picture thinker who abstracts, distills and processes information, usually discarding much of the detail.  With the violin, there is very much detail that one must apply.  It is not only the concepts that are important but one must train the body and the mind to be able to make the movements that make music.  This is a process that must be developed brick by brick.

I am learning that I need to get myself into a mindset that playing and practicing are two slightly different things and that playing is good and important, but practice is where development, especially technical development occurs.    I have switched back and forth over  a couple month cycles from focusing on a challening piece of music and almost exclusively working on that, to concentrating on some exercises or scales.  My poor teacher probably thought I was a bit crazy as I would suddenly switch what I wanted to do out of the blue, and then before a piece was anywhere near playable I would start to focus on this or that item of technique or exercise.  So, perhaps this has not given me much of a playable repertoire, but I do believe I have maintained a fairly good pace of advancement.

I did however feel the pace of advancement start to slow toward the end of that first year of lessons.  New abilities took longer to get and this was a little bit frustrating.  I was approaching a plateau.  By the time I discontinued lessons and was on my own I feel as if I was becoming a bit entrenched in one.  This proved challenging.  The lack of lessons made focusing more difficult and other aspects of a busy adult life made consistent practice harder.

So, for a few months, my practice time dropped and I started missing a few days here and there.  But, I persevered as much as possible and while navigating this plateau was hard, I was committed to pushing on.  I tried to focus on some very narrow aspects of my playing and I also concentrated a bit more on refining existing abilities.  I have a suspician that plateaus are our brains way of consolidating new information and that while we don’t percieve advancment in a plateau period, there is some critical development taking place, particularly consolidation.

Recently, however, I feel as if I am beginning to come out of this plateau.  I have noticed that some simple things in my playing, such as my bow control and control over tone throughout a passage has markedly improved.  I have often felt that my bow is out of my control and that I am barely hanging on as it careens wildly across the strings.  Now I have moments of dexterity where the notes sound strong, squeaks and squawks momentarily disappear and a string crossing or an arpeggio or even a shift works out pretty well.  This is a small but significant victory.  I have felt before that I struggled to make the simplest passages sound good.  Sure, I could play the notes and mostly play them in tune and with practice I could make a passage come out ok, but when I would sight read something simple but new it sounded terrible.  Now, I am starting to get more confidence and strength on the bow and my intonation, when warm, is much better.

Perhaps I have overcome this plateau and a new pace of accelerated improvement will ensue.  Regardless, I am committed to this instrument and enjoying the ride.  I am determined to gain consistency in shifting and playing in position, and one day I will get my hand to wiggle.  Why is vibrato so difficult!

These violins come to us through the centuries with stories and history as well as their legendary physical and aural esthetic.  The Lady Tennant got its name when amateur violinist owner Marguerite Miles Tennant received the violin as a gift from her husband Sir Charles Tennant, a wealthy Scottish Industrialist.    Before 1900, the violin was known to be owned and played by Charles Phillipe Lafont a french violinist and composer (1781-1839).

Charles Phillipe Lafont was trained in the Viotti school and was a chamber violinist to Czar Alexander I of Russia and a first violinist of the royal chamber musicians  of Louis XVIII of France.  In 1816 he lost in violin contest to Paganini.

After Lafont, the Lady Tennant violin was owned by W.E. Hill & Sons and subsuquently purchased by Charles Tennant.  After Lady Tennant, the violin was owned by collectors and an anonymous owner who sold it at Christie’s Auction House for the record 2.03 million.

The violin is now owned anonymously but has been loaned through the Stradivari Society to  Yang Liu.  It is good to know that this Strad at least will at least for now be spared the fate of sitting soundless in a collection.

Yang Liu a first prize winner at the China 5th National Violin Competition and a prize winner of the twelfth International Tchaikovsky Violin Competition is certainly  lucky, but worthy to play on this beautiful historical work of art.

LIsten to recordings of Lang Liu playing here

news article

read the research paper here

You can read a discussion of this book at violinist.com here.

read the story here

Watch this great video after the break for an overview of the process of making a violin.

visit the films website

or watch the trailer here

After practicing for three or four weeks from the first day I touched my violin in twenty years it became abundantly clear that I needed some professional help.   It took me another couple weeks at least to get the nerve up to ask our orchestra teacher if she would be willing to give me a few lessons.  I was so nervous when asking, “do you think you could give me some lessons.”  Why would anybody want to teach an adult with little hope of achieving anything?  Wouldn’t it just be an exercise in frustration trying to get my stubborn, set in their ways, totally inflexible hands and arms to do what they’re supposed to do.  Don’t teachers just want to teach kids with the prospects that they become virtuoso concert musicians or at least professional.  What hope did I have of even approaching that level.

So, after I finally got the nerve to ask I was a little surprised when the teacher said she was hoping I would ask for some lessons.  Phew!  At least THAT hurdle was out of the way.  Obviously SHE recognized my need for professional help as well.

Fortunately, I had lessons twenty years ago and my progress in the first months was very quick.  Not that it wasn’t a lot of work, and not that I didn’t sweat and groan and get frustrated at my apparent lack of progress, but looking back on it I see how quickly I progressed in the first six to eight months.

My first problem, right off the bat was my bow hold and getting a proper, straight long bow stroke.  My bow hand was too tight and my down bow angled too much.  I put a considerable amount of effort into getting my hand to relax.  This, as it sounds, is somewhat counter-intuitive.  When you’re trying to do something really really hard, you tend to tense when what you need to do is relax.  Over time, though, you find that your muscles start to get used to what they’re supposed to be doing and relaxing becomes easier.

One of my difficulties in trying to achieve an acceptable bow hold and bow stroke was in understanding what my hand was supposed to be doing in my mind.  I knew my hand was supposed to be relaxed and the position of the hand was to be just so over the frog but the thing that gave me a considerable challenge was conceptualizing how that was supposed to happen and be maintained throughout the course of a bow stroke.

One of the advantages of being an adult beginner is that you can and do apply some intellect, critical thinking and understanding to the particular task at hand.  When I was younger, I would often do exercises without really considering what I was trying to achieve, or I would play what the teacher said as much because she said to do this or that than to achieve a particular result.  As an adult I find that I want, no need, to understand what I am trying to achieve in a particular exercise.  If I can have a clear understanding of the result then hopefully I can self correct, because, lets face it, we spend much more time on the violin without a teacher or someone looking over our shoulder, correcting our mistakes, than we do under the teachers watchful eye.  The better we can understand what we’re trying to do, the better we can self-correct, and the less we will practice and reinforce our mistakes.

I remember having an aha moment with the bow hold after trying very hard to understand what I was supposed to be doing conceptually, and it came when I watched my teacher play in a small group performance.  I watched how her hand and arm moved on those long up and down bow strokes, and all of a sudden I had a conceptual framework in how to proceed.  I don’t know if this is the best way to explain it, but this is what I saw.

I was always bowing with my hand coming into the side of the frog (if that makes any sense)  but when I watched my teacher, she was more above the bow, holding it up.  With the hand to the side, the bow tended to lay on top of the strings, but with the idea that you are above it you are holding the bow all the time and controlling its position and weight purposefully.  This is not to say that my hand went on top of the frog, physically, but that when I watched the teacher bow in her performance I saw a holding of the bow that incorporated a vertical control of the bow relative to the strings along with the perpendicular control.   Getting this conceptually gave me a place to go and a goal to achieve and my bowing immediately began to improve.

I probably started out after this with my hand a little too high over top the frog and I have since adjusted its position as I have become more comfortable.   I occasionally experiment with my hand position on the bow, and ultimately I am trying to keep it loose and natural and flexible.  If you watch good players with a lot of experience you will notice that their hands are not only loose, but they move with the varying conditions.  This is only possible when our hands our loose, but we should be comfortable to make adjustments in our hands and fingers, flexing the fingers on a particular stroke, or adjusting slightly the position of the forefinger on top of the bow.

Here I am a rank amateur speaking as if I know what I am talking about, but this is how I see it.  I would love somebody to comment on this in the comments section and correct any of my gross errors!

For me, I have run into this problem again and again as I have tried to develop or refine a new skill.  It is one thing to listen to the teacher’s explanation of what I am supposed to do but so often I found that I didn’t exactly understand and so I would go off and practice what I thought I was supposed to do and find I wasn’t making much progress.  Then something would tweak in my mind or I would watch and it would begin to make sense.  Then I had a path to try to achieve it.  It still takes much effort, practice and refining, but knowing when I’m not doing something correctly, and why, is so important to making progress.

Still, I have so far to go.  I have so much admiration for people who can really play the violin and make it seem so effortless.  Behind all that effortless playing is years of practicing, developing and refining, and some insightful and at times merciless teachers who always push towards perfection.  There is so much complexity in making the violin sing.  It is so much easier to play it out of tune and scratchy and flat, but when I have those brief moments when the tone is clear, the note is in tune and everything clicks for a second it is so rewarding.  When you have that brief moment when you aren’t trying with all your might to keep all the elements you know how working in the manner you know they’re supposed, and they just do it, it is such an exhilarating experience.

Lessons are just so invaluable for so many reasons.  They keep you in line, motivate you to practice just a bit more and help to minimize all that practicing of mistakes.  If you are an adult beginner struggling away on your own, and you can afford to do it I highly recommend finding a teacher.  Don’t worry that they’re not going to want to teach an adult.  At least you WANT to play and learn and while I’m sure my teacher wanted to smack me over the head countless times for playing the way I did (her poor ears!)  I’m sure she appreciated a student who really wanted to be able to do it and was willing to put in the effort to make it happen.  That’s one thing us adults have over many younger students.

Now if I could just figure out how to get those fingers to go where they’re supposed to… every time!

The Chaconne is definitely a journey and you feel it from the outset… And then Bach manages to take you through the entire range of human emotion… -Joshua Bell

Michael Lawrence’s new film which explores Bach from a spiritual, intellectual point of view as well as from the perspective of instruments and performance includes interviews with violinist Joshua Bell, Hilary Hahn and many others.  The project is now in post production and looks like it will be a beautifully shot and very interesting documentary.  Watch a preview and Joshua Bell playing the Chaconne after the break.

visit the films website here

Not only will Yo-Yo Ma be featured in a Hyundai commercial for the XLIII Super Bowl but fans will be able to visit Hyundai’s web site and edit the video for the ad.

read the story here:
http://uk.reuters.com/article/autoNews/idUKTRE5050GA20090106

My first exposure to Rachel Barton Pine was through her podcast.  It is such a fascinating, well produced, highly informed and entertaining piece of journalism.  I must say through the podcast I have become a fan, and through the bits and pieces of her recordings that I have heard that sentiment is only reinforced.  If you have an ipod I highly recommend you subscribe to her podcast and if not that subscribe to her blog or at least visit her website. And definitely check out her recordings!

Rachel Barton Bine at Amazon

and since I am still listening to it as I write this, especially her tribute album to Maud Powell

Check out the authentically Baroque Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin by John Holloway

The film by Pere Portabella is “an approach to music and the trades and subjects that surround it through Bach’s works.” It was presented at the 64th Venice International Film Festival 2007. A series of beautiful vignettes which explores the relationship between image and music where the music is the subject of the narrative itself.

Film Site

Seattle Times Review

New York Times Review

I am thirty-six years old and have been playing the violin again for almost two years. In starting on this venture it has come to my attention that there are scores of adult beginners out there who have launched into the unsure waters of learning to play the violin. It is often an exercise in frustration and difficulty but it has also awakened a new passion for the music of the violin and reawakened a passion for music I have always had.

There seems to be a common notion, or some kind of conventional wisdom which states that in order to learn to play, at least with any degree of proficiency, you must start as a child while the brain is pliable and willing to learn. Apparently adults are just to set in their ways, stubborn and generally incapable, our brains mostly devoted to remembering the vast stores of knowledge we have accumulated rather than developing new skills.

Well, I hope, and believe this conventional wisdom is flawed and with a little persistence perhaps I and a host of other adult beginners can prove it to be false or at the very least cast some doubt upon its veracity. In this series of posts I will try to journal my experience and the challenges I face in trying to learn to play the always challenging violin.

To begin, I will share with you how I got to the point of starting over again. My first foray into the world of violin learning was as a three year old Suzuki student, stubborn and unwilling to practice. After a year or two of this adventure I determined in my five year old wisdom that I did not want to do that any more. My complying parents reluctantly agreed and their future hopes of a virtuoso son were dashed. I returned to playing with my cars in the gravel pile and running from bees.

This first exposure to the violin through the Suzuki method was important to me and I believe instilled in me skills which I have benefited from ever since. With its focus on listening and the ear I had learned to develop my ear somewhat and have always been a good listener with an ear for music. Even in the subsequent years free from violin practice I believe I always looked back on my violin days as a child, and perhaps put in the back of my mind that I could do it again some day.

That day came when I was eleven years old and I decided of my own accord that I wanted to learn to play the violin. Little did I know what I was in for but my obliging parents once again complied and I was taking violin lessons once more. Starting at eleven I always felt I was behind and playing catch up. In some ways I guess I progressed and a decent pace and my memory of those early days of starting over are generally positive. For four years I stayed with it and after the first year my progress slowed. We had moved, I had a new teacher and despite my desire the new teacher was not the best fit and my motivation for practicing was about typical for any twelve year old. But once again we moved and it was on to yet another new teacher. This time it was a great fit and despite a sometimes stern approach (which I needed) I was really enjoying playing and the progress I was making. Still, at thirteen I had a lot of catching up to do.

For the next couple years things were going relatively well and my progress was steady. Then high school hit and I started to notice how the violin was not exactly an instrument of choice and with the decisiveness of a self assured teenager the violin was just not cool enough for me and I would never think of it again. I placated my parents with piano lessons for a couple years, but then life and other interests got in the way and music was once again on the back burner. I never thought that I would ever want to play the violin again. I suppose things change in your thirties!

In my mid thirties, married with two children my love for music compelled me to insist that my children take some lessons. Piano it was and my son began Suzuki piano at the local music conservatory. It has now become clear that hanging around the local conservatory is a dangerous thing for a violin drop out because there are violin teachers around seeking whom they may ensnare. There are also orchestras designed for us adult beginners and soon I was being encouraged to join up. Fortunately my old violin bow had no hair so I just could not do it. Fortunately also, those bows can be fixed and cheap replacements purchased and so I was without excuse. Armed with new fifty dollar bow and my old student violin with ancient strings I made my debut as the third violin of our local foundation orchestra.

What was I getting myself into. I didn’t even know the names of the open strings any more let alone know what those notes were when you started pressing your fingers all over the place. I was never a good sight reader. I managed to scratch out a nightmareish sound that first evening and fortunately there were a few songs played on open strings so away I went.

Quite frankly, I simply had a blast squawking away to the consternation of the rest. The challenge was exhilarating and the possibilities lay infinitely before me. A new and old passion was awakened from which I have been uncharacteristically dedicated for the past two years struggling away in the barren land of early intermediate mediocrity.

Immediately in front of me is the hope to be able to consistently play in tune and various positions and getting my hands to wiggle in that most unnatural way that is called vibrato. Further on the horizon is the hope that I could fool a person or two into believing I actually played something worth listening to. Time will tell if I will be successful in this venture, but I am having the time of my life discovering the answer.

When Philippe Quint left his four million dollar stradivarius on loan from the Stradivari Society in Chicago in a New York city cab he was so relieved to have it returned by his taxi driver Mohammed Khalil that he will give a free outdoor recital in the taxi holding area of the Newark Airport 3pm Sunday.

Read more about this story from pressdemocrat.com

The Australian

New York Times

NPR (includes audio feed)

On a similar note Yo Yo Ma left his multi million dollar cello in a taxi in 1999

New York Times

NPR

The violin is an instrument capable of a seemingly inexhaustible depth of expression in the hands of capable musicians. Jacob Augustus Otto says it holds pre-eminent rank amongst all instruments and “it may indeed be the perfect instrument, as by the peculiarity of its construction, the minutest gradation of tone can be produced upon it.” Its range and tonal quality bear resemblance to the human voice and when well played it most certainly sings.

The composition and construction of the violin bear a mystique rarely matched amongst musical craftsmanship or craftsmanship of any kind for that matter. The secrets of Antonio Stradivari and how he created such beautiful sounding instruments is still a mystery many strive to unlock and understand. Stradivari’s instruments today sell for multiple millions of dollars and are amongst the most prized collectors items of any kind.

Violin Luthiery or the craft of violin making is steeped in rich traditions and history. I hope to investigate this history and process in a series of post which will exam the processes and techniques of violin making.

To begin I think it is prudent to orient ourselves to the various components and component names of the instrument.

Scroll : The decorative carving at the end of the neck.  The scroll is most commonly carved as a rolled up sheet of parchment although many creative variations exist.

Pegbox : The pegbox houses the tuning pegs upon which the strings are wound. it is a hollowed box at the end of the neck.

Neck: Between the body of the violin and the pegboard it is set at a slight angle.

Fingerboard: Literally a board for the fingers to depress the strings.  Made of ebony on the best violins but often rosewood or some other hardwood.

Upper Bout: The top of the violin’s hourglass shape.

Waist: or C-bouts is the concave section between the upper and lower bouts which provides clearance for the bow.

Lower Bout: The bottom of the violins hourglass body.

F-Holes: carved in the shape of a scripted f the f holes allow the sound to come out of the resonating body.  F-Holes can noticeably influence the sound of the violin.

Bridge: A cut maple piece upon which the strings rest.  The bridge transmits the vibration of the strings to the resonating box of the body of the instrument.

Tail Piece: Anchors the strings to the lower bout.

Chinrest: a rest for the chin while playing.  A later development not found on early violins.

Sound Post: a dowel shaped post which sits inside the body of the violin below the treble foot of the bridge. Transmits vibrations between the top and back.

Bass Bar: not a component of early violins the bass bar is a bar of spruce glued to the under side of the top plate.  It strengthens the top plate against the pressure exerted by the strings on the left foot of the bridge.

Purfling: Purfling is the black line around the edge of the violin’s body.  It is a small sliver of wood inlaid into a carved channel and provides protection against edge cracks.

This video is provides a good discussion of the various parts of the violin.

Defiance with Daniel Craig

Defiance a new film directed by Edward Zwick (Blood Diamond, The Last Samurai) and starring Daniel Craig also features renowned violinist Joshua Bell as a soloist for the film’s score composed by the Oscar nominated James Newton Howard (The Dark Knight, Michael Clayton, The Fugitive, The Prince of Tides, etc.)

Hear a preview of the music from the film or purchase the cd.