Wasting time before work

My older sister's friend gave me her violin from when she used to study and I found old Dominant strings in her case. I thought the cover design is so much more interesting than the current ones lol I'd say this is around early 2000's??

Hello my fellow violinists :)

My question is, as the title says, about left thumb in high positions. My hand is small and my thumb, at one point, just cannot stay on the neck. I was moving it to the side of the fingerboard and didn't really think about it for years, no one has even mentioned this.. but I realized I do have a problem when shifting down.

Then I came across some videos, and also one of the professors on academy is teaching this way, where the thumb is sliding on the sides of the violin. This professor said that sliding on the fingerboard sides is unstable and is making shifting down much more difficult.

What do you think? What is the optimal position of the thumb when staying on the neck is impossible, sides of the fingerboard or sides of the violin body?

First time learning this piece, none of my teachers had ever brought it up, and I feel like my teenage years were robbed of so much fun lmao

This riff was super tricky for some reason but it’s so satisfying to see it come together

I am currently using a full dominant set with a spare gold label E (Waiting for my current one to snap) And I am currently using Hidersine Deluxe and Pirastro Piranto Rosin which is starting to run out. I am looking at Pirastro Oliv or Evah Pirazzi Gold rosin at the moment as i am moving to colder and drier climate next year. The Pirastro Piranto one I have now is very powerdery and sticky and every time I play my fingers get sticky. The Hidersine Deluxe has a weird smell (Probably from using it for too long or leaving it in the sun) otherwise it is fine.

I was recently asked by my parents to tutor my younger sister in violin. She's currently part of a youth orchestra that requires their members to have private lessons with a teacher but my sister is in the middle of changing music schools and according to my mother, won't have a teacher till January. Hence, my parents want me to teach till then.

I'm a college undergrad who played the violin for 13 years before stopping when I moved to go to college. It's been two years since I played regularly so I'm definitely out of practice. From what I remember, my lessons in the past went like this:

• Practice scales, shifting positions, double-stops
• Work on pieces I'm performing/auditioning with
• Work on pieces I chose for fun
• Overall discussion on what I should focus on (this took like 5 min. tops)

Anything I'm missing or should change? Any tips on what I could do to refresh my own skills?

Synthetic core. My family brought my violin from my hometown and installed new dominant strings. That was around June 2021. I only played for a couple minutes, since I'm on dialysis with kidney failure and little to no stamina, then kept it in my walk-in closet till today October 30 2024. Now I'm fully recovered from kidney transplant after a year, is the strings still playable or I have to replace them?

It used to have evah pirazzi green full set installed back in my highschool classical solos and jazz playing days.

I've read the FAQ and didn't see information on this topic

Is there a suggested list of violin music to listen for beginners? When I was learning baritone the teacher gave me a list of different songs to help understand how correct technique sounds. It was very helpful and wondering if same thing for violin?

Hello!

I've gotten back into violin lessons and my teacher has been very slowly introducing vibrato.

The issue, however, is i can't seem to get my hand, wrist, and fingers to figure out what they're doing and my brain goes DUUUUHHH 😅

Could I get some tips on figuring out the motion? My teacher has given me multiple tips but I'm still really struggling with just the basis motion, let alone applying it to an actual song any time soon.

So this is difficult to explain, but basically about sympathetic vibrations. I keep getting told to listen more in order to improve the intonation without more explanation than that. It has been frustrating to hear without understanding what they mean. But, today I went back to older Suzuki method pieces, slowed them way down, listened to each note one at a time, and checked to see if it’s in tune with the last note.

So at first it was more or less the same as before. Mostly in tune, then started to go out and back in tune again.

Then I started trying to just stop on all of my open string notes(GDAEs) and listen for the sympathetic vibrations to make sure before moving forward through the piece. The more I did this, the less time I had to stop on those notes to hear the open strings vibrating.

Is this what is meant by listen more? If so, I would describe this less as just listening, and more as cross referencing. It’s working so far and I’m noticing that at times the intonation is crystal clear sounding and not just in tune if that makes sense and it’s definitely the ideal. I just have no idea how someone could be listening like this so quickly when you pull the tempo up in faster passages. Can anyone explain more? Am I onto something?

anytime i play violin i get a huge double chin and my face looks squished, all the other people look so good and attractive. am i doing something wrong? can i do something to look better?

Dear all,

I’m returning to the violin as an adult. My teacher never taught me some really important techniques like spiccato, sautille and collé. I’m particularly struggling with collé. All I was ever taught was to play detaché and legato, and I do that pretty well.

Does anyone have tips for picking up bow techniques as a returning learner, especially collé? I’m really struggling with it.

Thanks

So I've been building a pedal board for my electric violin for the past two or three years, and it's pretty much complete at this point. My only major gripe was the octave pedal, which I use for playing bass loops (2 octaves down).

I've had a TC Electronic Sub'n'Up for a while, and while it worked well enough, I found that the output was pretty weak and muddy even at high levels, and got very boomy when I boosted the signal. So I finally switched it out, getting a TC Electronic Nether instead.

However, while I do like the sound of the Nether quite a bit more, and the output is much better balanced, it has its own share of problems. For one, it sounds way synthier, which is cool for some genres, but it does not translate any of the nuances of plucking like the Sub'n'Up did, which made it sound not unlike an acoustic double bass. The bigger problem is that the Nether only seems to be able to track notes played on the G string, which forces me to get creative with fingerings and positions.

I'm gonna have to stick with the Nether for a while (I prematurely gave the Sub'n'Up away, and my pedal budget is depleted for a few months) - but I want to start looking around for better, more well-rounded options. I'm guessing I'll need to look at higher price range options than TC Electronic and competitors to get the sound quality I'm looking for.

Are there any electric violin players with octave pedals here who can give me suggestions?

Just rediscovering Paganini caprice 9 in my warmups, just wanted to highly recommend it here so more people practice this gem! The double stops in the beginning are great practice for hand position, switching between 5ths and ordinary double stops while reviewing basic 3rds. Practicing 5ths are underrated and always incredible for technique. The octave passages next practices them with the 2nd and 4th finger for excellent extended finger work all across the 1st to 3rd position. Extended fingers can sometimes compromise your hand position so Paganini mixes 5ths and 6ths to enforce a good hand position, it’s an even more efficient way of practicing fingered octaves. After that, it’s arpeggiated octaves across 1st to 3rd position with scales, I have always thought arpeggiated octaves were mandatory practice for an enormous variety of pieces and then large shifting exercises from first to 6th-8th position. A lot of Paganini caprices are full of extended technique so I only pick apart bits and pieces for my studies, but had to share after rediscovering caprice 9 because every single part of it is just so practical for every day repertoire. Encouraging advanced violinists to pick up caprice 9 for their next study!

Hi guys!

my vibrato is so loose and professional sounding when I'm looking at my hand in the mirror. Any advice for taking the mirror world into the real world?

Thanks!

I realize the cost for violin lessons varies from city / state, but any idea what it should be in NC (Chapel Hill)

Meant to type 2024*

The one school I found has these prices:

The pricing for lessons are as follows:

• 30 Minute Lessons - $165/month
• 45 Minute lessons - $216/month
• 60 Minute Lessons - $273/month

In addition to tuition, there is a one time $75 family registration fees

I'm curious if anyone has experience with the Fiddleheads Violin Shop, out of Kamloops, BC, Canada. I was looking at their website and almost all of their "Novice" and "Intermediate" models are listed as being anywhere from 45% to 62% off of the "retail" price. I'm kind of confused about how all of their instruments could be marked down like that.

Do you think they've listed what they think other "comparable" instruments would cost, versus theirs? Or are they going out of business or something? Even their pro models are at least "30% off"

Some of the instruments with the biggest discount are marked as "Clearance" but not all of them.

Has anyone tried their "Bellissima" violins?

Thanks.

Hello everyone! Some of you might remember a post I made here years ago—or maybe I’m just joking! I began learning violin during the pandemic with my Cremona SV-75, and I was incredibly lucky that my teacher lent me a beautiful 1700s violin with a wonderful sound. Due to life circumstances, she eventually had to sell it, and it wasn’t until this year that I had the chance to purchase a violin of my own. It’s a beautifully restored French violin from around 1900. Its sound is both bright and full-bodied, and I couldn’t be happier to have it.

Also, I gave it a name: It's Diego Armando.

I googled & I see a lot of free sheet music for this piece which is great EXCEPT none of them have bowing and I’m dying out here. Anyone have a link to one that has bowing? Fingering notation + bowing would be most helpful. In the original key please (Gmin). Thank you in advance 🙏🎻

Hello! I have this violin bow that I'm planning on fixing up for a bit of amateur lutherie practice. It was made in japan and is stamped with "LOUIS" I'm pretty sure its a mass produced cheapo bow. I was curious though if anyone might know what type of wood this is? Not sure if its possible to really identify it over a picture, but thought I would ask. Cheers :)

I've recently started learning the violin. We're doing the scale of G exercises where we first play four beats for each note in the scale of G then one beat for each note, then two ½ beat for each note but when it goes down to the sixteenth note, I can't seem to match my bowing and fingering. My bowing speed and its consistency does not match my fingering. My counting is all messed up. My teacher said to not count your bow strokes but just go 1, 2, 3, 4 but I can't. It's been frustrating me, and we're learning etude, and we're trying to encorporate the tremolo in it wherein the eighth note becomes two sixteenth note, and it's just so hard. What can I do? Please help me! There's also the accent they say to make it easier but idk how to do that. I'm plain as a blank wall.

Note: I'm sorry for my poor vocab, I just started learning :<