Learning the Violin is like learning CSS. I hope.
Okay, so Briggsy, my feline housemate, is majorly pissed at me. He gives me dirty looks every time I take my new two week old violin out of its case. He ends up swatting the bow if it comes anywhere near his perch, though I must be getting better, since he no longer hides under the bed two rooms away with his paws over his ears, though if looks could kill I’d be laying on the floor bleeding from multiple stab wounds every time I interrupt one of his naps with this noise.
This is really HARD TO LEARN. I swear, I’m not a klutz, I’m a very physically coordinated person with excellent hand-eye skills and a good ear. I can play a couple other instruments, though I never liked guitar enough to become good at it. But I’ve ALWAYS wanted to learn how to play the fiddle. I really WANT this. So why is this such a bear to get a good sound out of?
I was getting a bit discouraged with this. Screetchy/Scratchy/WobblyWail and fingers noplace they belong. I can either get the right hand okay OR the left hand okay, but NEVER both at the same time. Geez, I’ve even wounded myself trying to master that *&^% bow. I’ve watched every damn beginner violin video on the web. I’ve learned how to stand, how to position my violin, where my fingers belong, where my thumb belongs and not in a vice grip, how to keep my bow straight, my shoulders down and relaxed, my elbow the level of the string I want to play . . . ack. I try to treat it like dance, remembering 20 years of lessons from fascist ballet/modern dance teachers who drummed the lessons into my head and muscle memory, using centering and good body positioning and geometry to keep things in balance, breathing correctly, letting the tools do the work instead of forcing them into what I want to do (it’s a chin REST, damnit!)
Well, it’s been two weeks and I can now get through a simple song, without screetching, at least ONCE a practice session (and sometimes twice.) I can play most of the simple scales in the first position. I can add simple harmonies, using doublestops, to my simple tunes, though the screetching more often reappears when I’m biting off this bit more than I can easily chew . . . But I’ve been doing ten minutes here, twenty there, and getting in almost an hour a day on this thing. Little by little.
I can remember the first time I tried to do a layout with css after years of developing sites using tables for layout. It all looked fine in ONE browser. Then I looked at it in IE. Oh joy. It took me six months of cursing a blue streak in three languages before I could build layouts in pure css without throwing something across the room. And another six months to learn how to quickly and reliably fix the bugfest called IE without breaking everything else.
It’s now a couple years later and I can’t imagine going back to table layouts, and curse when I have to work with one in Joomla or one of the other aps. But the reason I’m able to work with css is because I stuck with it, kept working with it, wouldn’t give up, wouldn’t let anyone talk me out of using css . . . and now, through using it every day for a long time, I’m pretty damn competent, to the point where others ask my help problem solving, which I’m happy to do since I had help. Time to give a little back.
Oh how I pray for the day when I can look back on fiddlescreetch practices with a smile on my face as I rip into a good jig, or bluegrass tune. or a bit of Stephane Grappelli gypsy magic effortlessly, my bow dancing over the strings, a smile on my face, and Briggsy singing along . . .
Technorati Tags: beginner violin, css, learning new things
June 4th, 2007 at 1:00 am
Your title said it all.
I am in Joomla hell — it can be styled with CSS, no tables, but there’s something about the structure I’m not getting. It’s right on the tip of my brain but I can’t bend myself around it enough to get a site built.
I keep thinking that if I just keep making mistakes and fixing them it’ll finally fall into place. That’s sort of like learning the violin — training your ear, fingers, brain and arm to do the right thing and have it all fall into place.
June 4th, 2007 at 8:26 am
Hey, How are your band kids? It’s been awhile!
I’ve only worked with the tabled mess version of Joomla, haven’t worked with the newer version. The problems in Joom are often a function of how those “sidebar” boxes are fed in, and the fact that your structure has to accomodate whatever shifting around you do with those boxes in admin. And some template authors also add areas that allow further flexibility and use conditionals heavily. Is it possible that the template you snagged to work off of is one of those? If so, and if you don’t have a good grounding in the javascript that’s usually used to work with those conditionals, then yeah, it can be a royal pain. And if those conditionals are in a separate script, and you haven’t touched that, it could be overriding what you’ve been trying to do. Yes, I should have said css AND dynamic templating for web aps . . .
June 4th, 2007 at 8:45 am
Um, by the way, you chose the ONE CMS ap that is the hardest of all to template to. The others, like ModX, E107, and others, are much more straightforward to template . . . did you know that?
June 11th, 2007 at 1:48 am
Hey — I’m about to bid my band kids goodbye. My son graduates Friday and is off to study jazz studies full time.
I know I bit off a lot when I chose Joomla, but the front end is something that the users understand more than the others…but yeah..I’m making one mistake right after the other. I keep thinking I’ll break through, but maybe I’d have more luck with the violin.
June 11th, 2007 at 9:11 am
Tell your son Congrats for me! How wonderful! Meanwhile I’m right now listening to a streak of Jazz violin from Grappelli, Stuff Smith, Joe Venuti, Regina Carter . . . If he ever has a chance to step over this way, Kenny Barron, who is a helluva nice guy as well as a premier jazz pianist, teaches at Rutgers. I had him for a teacher years and years ago.
LOL! Yes, you would have had more luck with the violin! Meanwhile I’m having a helluva time finding a teacher near me who doesn’t just teach Classical (yes, I wanna learn classical, but not JUST classical!) Apparently they’re in short supply and booked solid. So if you know of anyone near Easton PA who teaches violin and isn’t a “classical snob” . . . I think my neighbors would love it if you clued me in!
June 14th, 2007 at 1:23 am
I enjoyed the article. I found you on a google search. You may want to try my site for learning violin. Be sure to take the tour.
Gliss
chris
June 14th, 2007 at 9:30 am
I just wish your video stuff didn’t use Quicktime. I’ve installed that twice, and my experience has been that I watch two or three videos and my box freezes solid. Then I have to reboot. Quicktime for windows sucks, and I’m not installing it again.
The Music Moose site gives visitors a choice to change the format to flash, btw. You might consider doing similar.