Because there aren’t any local violin tutors that I can find in my area, I’m having to rely heavily on YouTube and other means to stumble through learning this instrument. At first, I thought this wouldn’t be too hard. But after almost a full week of daily practice, I’m running upon questions I wish I […]

One of the intimidating challenges I’ve faced as a beginner is dat bow hold. I’d heard about bow grip before I picked up violin, but I didn’t quite believe something as simple as holding something would be complex. Oh, man, let me tell you what. I’ve never needed to hold an object the way that […]

Violins are complex instruments. Not only do you need to be concerned about the instrument itself, but you have the second component to take into consideration: the bow. I learned a number of things about the bow very quickly: Bow quality effects sound quality Tighten the bow to play Loosen the bow when not playing […]

Once I had my fiddle all set up, the next thing I had to do was tune the instrument. Thankfully, my kit came with an electric tuner, which you attach to the scroll of the fiddle — apparently it needs to feel the vibration as well as hear the note? I dunno. But it works […]

The one thing I wouldn’t have know about, if I hadn’t watched the videos on it, was the fact that a brand new violin often requires setup before you can start to play it. And I’m not talking just professional, though it seems a lot of violins do require professional setup for it to sound […]

I’m going to jump around a bit this week because I wanted to give an update rather than just talk about the process of getting started playing violin! I’m taking all of this super slow, watching a lot of videos, and soaking up as much information about the process of playing as I can. The […]

Note: Looking back in retrospect, I must say that buying a cheap Ebay violin was not the best way to start out. Not only did I just end up putting additional money into trying to improve the quality by changing out components, but the lower quality violin hindered my ability to practice and learn. I […]

As a child, I always wanted to learn to play a musical instrument. But due to finances and transportation issues, joining the school band was not in the cards for me. Nor was taking any sort of private lessons. In fact, it wasn’t until I was in college that I got my first real instrument […]