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RE: Violin experience - 10/15/2008 8:29:59 PM   
MadAxeman


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I am my own lawyer and I'm not listening
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RE: Violin experience - 10/16/2008 8:01:00 PM   
Termyn8or


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I appreciate all the helpful responses, and the others too, but Madax, if you chewed your own ears off I hope you captured it on video so you can upload it to youtube or something. You owe us that (after mentioning it).

T

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RE: Violin experience - 10/16/2008 8:07:31 PM   
GreedyTop


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I'd like to learn bagpipes.. but GAWD, I couldnt believe how expensive the chanters are!

Termy.. good luck with your violin!

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RE: Violin experience - 10/16/2008 8:54:55 PM   
osocurious


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Termyn8or ...
Thanks for an Excellent Read!!!
Very Entertaining and the responses were truly educational!!!

I know NOTHING about violins ... but ...
I have my Great GREAT grandfather's violin ...and it's tucked safely away in a closet,
exactly where I put it almost 10 years ago ... well I think it's there ...
I don't actually know, I've never taken it back out again.

After reading this thread ... I'm going to get it out and dust it off.
Maybe look in the phone book and see if I can find a music store tomorrow that will tell me more about it ... and maybe even take a lesson or two with it.

Thanks again for sharing Your violin story and please let us know from time to time how it's all going

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RE: Violin experience - 10/19/2008 8:49:20 AM   
Termyn8or


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Well I busted it out again last night. As to be expected it was flat. No, I don't mean it got ran over by a truck, the strings stretched. While it seemed to play good fifths string to string, when I fired up the piano it sounded worse than a cat in heat. On one string it had gone out of range so I had to loosen the tuner and tighten the peg.

Seems not to matter if I play it the wrong way or right, it still seems akward to me. I thought about the stand up bass, the viola and other such instruments and decided to sit it on my knee and play it that way. I didn't sound much better, but I could see it better which might be a good thing. Maybe I'll be like the guy in the Jeff Healy band who plays the guitar on his lap.

The other problem is that my fingers are wider than a ½ step. Should make for an interesting style if I ever get any good. I'm 48 so I figure I got maybe twenty years tops. Dunno if it'll be enough at this point. While playing an ambulance rolled up to a nearby house, which I can't understand because all my windows are closed.

Right now I am trying to get a handle on where to grab the handle to make something that resembles a scale. And I don't mean in the key of Z minor diminished capacity sharp. I have never played anything fretless before, so keep those fingers in your ears until further notice.

It still irks me that my buddy sounds better that me. He literally doesn't know an A chord from a hole in the ground, but like a monkey typing out a perfect copy of War And Peace, he somehow manages. At least he doesn't do that to me on the guitar or piano. Then my fingers go in my ears.

Alot of people don't like letting others try out their musical instruments, but I almost wish Baldylocks would stop over. He is the worst guitar player who knows what he's doing I have ever heard. The problem is he is so into lead, that without backup all he can do is practice scales. I must admit he has a good hammeron and pulloff technique, but his chordography is limited. I'd be very interested to see how he does with this thing. Also he is expendable so if he sounds better than me I can kill him. Whether I do or not, he better not be too drunk next time he stops over.

This is something to get used to. I find it limiting because only so many chords are possible, I have yet to even explore trying to make a major or minor. I have had plenty of time on the guitar to explore chords, in fact have invented a few I think. The violin is not going to be so easy. Once I get the fretless problem licked, that will be next.

So I did what I said the other night, I let the piano play my stored little ditty of 3:55 and tried the violin. It sounded good for about 0:55 overall. Luckily the police non-emergency response time is alot longer than that around here.

"No officer, you don't understand the magnitude of this emergency. This guy has been in jail for a loud stereo, then he gets a guitar. Then he gets a piano and now this !".

I think I'll refrain from trying to amplify the violin until I get a bit more practice, err, well some practice. Fact is I am just getting familiar and comfortable with it right now. I've learned that longer strokes make a better sound (Ladies please refrain from the jokes, or better yet, don't).

I have actually considered a lesson or three, but I figure I would get to the point where I can make it sound like a violin instead of a chimpanzee stuck in quicksand.

Another thing I noticed is that when I listen to hillbilly music with a violin or fiddle in it I wonder 'How do they do that ?'.

T

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RE: Violin experience - 10/19/2008 11:23:12 AM   
hizgeorgiapeach


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quote:

ORIGINAL: Termyn8or
I've learned that longer strokes make a better sound (Ladies please refrain from the jokes, or better yet, don't).
   M'dear,  if it's taken you 48 years to figure out that longer strokes make things better.... you gots a problem.....

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RE: Violin experience - 10/27/2008 1:00:27 PM   
Termyn8or


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Of course peachy for longer strokes one needs a longer stroker :-)

I was fascinated half the morning exploring the history of the violin and piano, and I can almost actually play the piano. What I do with the violin is my own business, and as my freinds'll tellya, it is not for the faint hearted.  The tone deaf might appreciate it. In fact I got a neighbor who claims to be tone deaf, I think that'll be an interesting test. Really if he can sit through like a half hour of my "playing" he should be able to get disability.

My first opus will probably be entitled "Cat that got itself caught in a meat grinder, ass first". I still can't make a decent E chord, even though my life is in E, due to playing the guitar. With the piano I can play in E, and it works out since it can record the work, I can play the guitar with it. I guess that means I can play with myself.

This is not quite as easy on a violin, of course nothing is it seems. What brainiac decided how to tune these things ? Oh wait, I read that somewhere. G,D,A,E instead of E,A,D,G, EGAD !

At 48 it's nice to have a far away goal. I mean I have to learn all new chords for this thing. I haven't felt this way since I seen inside a TV a tube called "reactance amplifier" and thought there was nuclear radiation somehow used in a 1966 model color TV. There better not be any in this violin.

Not that I care about radiation, but folks I am just not immortal anymore. I was, and I mean it. I was like a cat with nine lives, problem is I think I used up about twenty of them. Now see they got piano bars, and some classy restaurants have pianos. It's a good thing right now that there are no violin bars. In a piano bar I could get out of there with my skin. My buddy goes and plays and gets around two hundred bucks in the jar, I would be happy with fifty. But a violin bar I would have to run, either that or some people would pay me to stop. Depends on the venue I guess.

Now I might do well at a guitar bar, even without thinking you give me a fuzzed up guitar with the amp high enough I can get some feedback and I might do quite well, but the pricks don't put out a jar of money so screw it. Not that I am in this for money, but it is nice to have something to take home after embarrassing one's self.

I enjoyed reading about the development of musical instruments. With the piano they are talking like the 1700s, I wonder, what did they carve all those parts for it ? That is part of what reinforces my assertion that people were smarter in the old days. Even learning about the chromatic scale, and the fact that many types of music used a different scale which corresponds to the black keys on a piano. Like the dots on the certain frets of a guitar.

But this thing has no frets ! How could they do this to me ? How did they know hundreds of years ago that I woul.........never mind.

T

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RE: Violin experience - 10/27/2008 1:21:13 PM   
RainydayNE


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ooooooh you're making me miss my violin. =p i need to take a roadtrip and pick it up. whatever you do, don't listen to joshua bell before you practice. =p
if your'e going to play a woodwind, i seriously suggest clarinet. =p it's a fun little instrument with a weird personality and it WILL squeak in the middle of the most important solo of your life -- BUT the other clarinet players will totally understand because that's just what clarinets do.
plus the fingerings tranfers almost 100% to saxophone so you almost learn two instruments at the same time. and a musician with more than one instrument option gets to have more fun in an ensemble. :)


< Message edited by RainydayNE -- 10/27/2008 1:23:56 PM >

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RE: Violin experience - 10/27/2008 1:26:19 PM   
RainydayNE


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oh and if you're just learning, do you not have the "tape frets" on your fingerboard?
are you doing it sans instructor? you could find a violinist to do it for you, that way you'd atleast have SOME idea of where to put your fingers to make a scale :) then once it's hardwired into your brain, you just peel it off :)
some people learn just fine without the tape, it was just helpful to me to have a visual LINE there

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RE: Violin experience - 10/27/2008 1:42:26 PM   
mrbob726


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I studied the violin for years, even got to do some serious playing with a few symphonies, etc. (long ago, havent touched it in years). The violin was never intended to be an instrument for playing chords, like the guitar. Chords on the violin are difficult, to say the least - in orchestral work chords are accomplished by the violin section, not by individuals. Only in serious concertos etc are chords played by the single instrument, and then very few, and only occasionally, usually in the form of arpeggios. Maybe that's why you are having difficulty with chords on the instrument - just sayin -

edited to add usually in the form of arpeggios

< Message edited by mrbob726 -- 10/27/2008 1:46:48 PM >


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