simont | Senseless violins

Senseless violins

At aiwendel's birthday party on Saturday there was a considerable amount of impromptu music-making. In particular, there were spare violins lying around, and I picked one up and had a go on it.

I played the violin seriously when I was a child. I started at age seven or thereabouts, was very lucky in the availability of good teachers, and by the time I was about fifteen I'd got pretty good at it: they told me I was well beyond Grade 8 standard, though for reasons I don't recall the only exam I'd ever actually taken was Grade 7 some years earlier. Then I gave up, mostly on the grounds that I was getting tired of the constant pressure from teachers to put more of my time and effort into it so I could reach a really high standard: I had lots of other things I wanted to do with my time and effort too, and had more or less decided by that point that my future lay in computers rather than violin-playing.

I maintained an interest in general musicianship, dabbling with keyboards and guitar and sporadically trying my hand at composition, but I never really regretted giving up the violin. A few years later, when I had a brush with RSI, it struck me as significant that my left wrist had a lot more trouble than my right: that's the one that curls round at a really silly angle when playing the violin, and it seemed likely to me that this wasn't coincidence. I've often suspected that if I'd kept the violin up, my left wrist would really be in trouble now, whereas in fact I recovered from the RSI (eventually) and now only have to take normal sorts of precautions.

Since then I've occasionally been tempted into having a go on someone else's violin when one was lying around. The last time I tried was around 2004 or so, if I remember rightly, and I remember finding it strangely incongruous that my right hand could still pretty much remember how to do the bowing, but my left hand no longer naturally formed the alternating short-long finger spacing needed to play a violin in tune, because dabbling with a guitar in the meantime had retrained it to space the fingers evenly instead. Also, after ten or twenty minutes of trying, I found my left wrist ached for the next day or so, reinforcing my belief that it wouldn't have stood up to the strain if I'd kept playing seriously.

So when I had another opportunity on Saturday I was rather more reluctant to even try. However, against my better judgment and after some egging-on from bystanders (and also, probably not insignificantly, after some alcohol), I had a go anyway.

My initial attempts were just embarrassing. My left hand had all the problems I remembered from my last attempt, but now my right hand had forgotten how to bow competently too. Nobody else seemed to complain, for some bizarre reason, but I knew it was out of tune, scratchy and clumsy. The trouble with doing things at which you're hopelessly out of practice but used to be really good is that your standards tend not to have dropped in line with your skill, so I could still remember what good violin-playing a foot from my left ear was supposed to sound like and I knew for a fact that this was so far from it as to be unrecognisable. I could hardly get through a bar or two of anything without coming close to putting the instrument down in disgust.

Later in the evening, though, I found a lot of it coming back to me – not only the bow movements but even some mostly-in-tune fingering. What seemed to help was not trying to play things I remembered being able to play in the past, because all the pieces I remembered best were the excessively fast, twiddly and difficult ones I used to enjoy most; instead I concentrated on playing the simpler music that other people were noodling about with. In particular, I found, one thing I hadn't forgotten was the knack of translating from a tune imagined in my head directly into finger and bow movements in real time; I was able to play along with a lot of stuff people were singing without even having to look at a sheet of music, just by remembering what the tune was supposed to sound like and letting my fingers do what seemed natural. Sight-reading the actual music, for tunes I didn't already know, was harder, but I found I could make a decent stab at a previously unknown piece given five minutes to run through it a few times. By the end of the evening I'd entirely got over the initial embarrassment and was starting to take a bit of pride in a well-executed bar or two – and, more importantly, I had remembered that doing this stuff could be fun.

The next morning, however, all the embarrassment came back. I don't often get that ‘oh god, what did I do last night?’ feeling after parties, but yesterday morning I suddenly felt as if I'd made a huge, attention-seeking prat of myself for the entire evening by pretending to violin-playing skill in public.

On the other hand, curiously, my left wrist felt fine this time (though my right shoulder was killing me for most of yesterday, but that seems less likely to be caused by violin-playing – I probably just slept funny). So now yesterday's retrospective embarrassment has worn off a bit, I feel almost tempted to scrounge a cheap violin from somewhere and have another try at it in the privacy of my own home (and then perhaps risk exposing other people to it again after I've practised a bit).

I suspect it's probably still a bad idea, on balance: just because I didn't manage to hurt my wrist noticeably in one evening doesn't mean I wouldn't still do it cumulative damage if I kept it up for longer, and really, I do depend on my wrists…

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Randomly... I've never been able to do the "this is what it sounds like" to "play it" with any instrument other than my own voice (and that badly) but I've always been very good at sight reading written music (too good - as with other things I have a tendency to rely on that initial competence rather than practising carefully to get better).

I was never any good at all at the violin, but I never found it hurt my wrists - of course YMMV with that, as with many other things. And buying a violin that you later find you can't use would probably be silly, and possibly also irritating in a "I have a violin and I want to play but I shouldn't" way.

And buying a violin that you later find you can't use would probably be silly

That's why I said "cheap" – indeed, I certainly wouldn't want to put any remotely serious amount of money into the idea until (unless) I was sure it was going to be worthwhile!

Playing tunes from my memory is something I've done a lot of – most of my guitar-dabbling consisted of playing my own guitar arrangements of songs I knew from my (or other people's) CD collection, concocted out of my own imagination rather than by the more traditional method of getting hold of official or unofficial tab transcriptions from elsewhere. (As a result they tended to be essentially instrumental translations of songs, in that what I tended to be able to remember and hence what I reproduced on the guitar was the vocal melody plus as much of the accompaniment as I could fit alongside it, rather than the more usual approach of having the guitar play just the accompaniment and leaving the voice part to the voice.) It's just that on the guitar I had to do it by working the fingering out in advance; on the violin, it turns out, I can improvise it in real time to a large extent.

Edited 2009-07-13 11:57 (UTC)

Hire purchase from somewhere like Millers/Ken Stevens might make sense. Think of yourself as renting it for a while until you decide if you want it, and hey if it turns out you like it after a year you can keep it!

I am teaching myself (v slowly) to play my mum's acoustic guitar. In order to sing along to one of the first two songs in it I first learned the two chords needed, and then *using the guitar* picked out the tune of the song to work out what I was singing. I'm *hopeless* at sight-singing, even when I can sight-read to play something. It's weird. I'm already getting better at picking out individual notes on the guitar (which is much like doing the same on the bass, which I am also not very good at) but I think it's going to be a *long* time before I get the hang of chords. Not least because I keep reading the fingering diagrams back-to-front.

I don't play my bass much, I've not played mum's guitar much (though I have at least got it new strings and restrung it), and I barely touch the cornet, but I still feel overall glad to have them more often than guilty for not playing them more.

You don't mention whether you had any wrist-ache/RSI when you were a (presumably regularly-or-at-least-frequently-playing) super-good violinist?

I find that my wrist always aches after playing violin if it's the first time I've played for ages, but that's just the ache of out-of-training muscles -- I'd expect nothing less (see also legs aching after the first long bike-ride for a while, etc). When I was actually practising regularly it was fine, except when I really overdid it (three days of long rehearsals & concerts in a row, that kind of thing). I have played piano and violin for most of my life (though these days I play much less frequently than I did when I was still having lessons) and am quite convinced that this is one of the reasons why I don't get RSI -- because [handwavey explanation ahoy!] I've been doing different things with the wrists, not letting them lock into one particular pattern of movement. I'd say if you want to play again, give it a try, take it gently at first (little and often rather than long splurges of playing), & who knows, you might find it helps!

However I would say don't waste time with a cheap(-as-in-nasty) violin, you won't enjoy it as much & you'll be frustrated at not being able to get a good sound! -- why not rent a decent one? Millers say you can rent a violin for £8 per month (http://www.millersmusiccentre.co.uk/index.php?main_page=page_4&zenid=23e11e4e76957781d4c0dfb19ac8e954) and if you buy within 6 months they'll refund the rental costs; in fact, 6 months of consistent practice is probably long enough to be able to tell if it's improving/worsening/not affecting the RSI, too.

Ah, I see that in the time while I had the window open with the comment half-written,

lnr has made the rental suggestion too... :-)

You don't mention whether you had any wrist-ache/RSI when you were a (presumably regularly-or-at-least-frequently-playing) super-good violinist?

It's so long ago that I can't remember clearly whether I had any pain when I was actually playing, but I do know that after I gave up I used to get occasional days when my left wrist would ache all day even without me having done anything unusual with it recently. So I wasn't very surprised when that was the one to keel over first in the later RSI incident.

Not sure how you classify cheap, but the violin you were playing I was just about to put up on ebay with a reserve of £300 (to cover the money I've put into it), having FINALLY had the crack in the peg box of the ~~violin~~ fiddle I learnt to play on fixed. (I want my violin as a fiddle not a classical violin). It was valued by the people who redid bridge and soundpost at Christmas as worth £600, the gallery music shop however said they'd sell it for 400-500quid, and buy it for 100, hence my plans to ebay as I can't afford to lose money on it.

You definitely improved as the evening went on, you could tell that you used to be able to play to a much higher standard and were catching frustrated glimpses of it. It's a shame that you gave up on it really. It is nice to have a good crowd of 'lets make a noise and have fun' rather than either being judgemental or selfconscious! Much more fun, inclusive and liberating! :)

Anyway, on the offchance if you happened to like it, it's there, for now, and I was just about to take the photos and try my luck with ebay...

Hang on, which violin was that? I think I was playing on two different ones during the course of the evening (just for added confusion). The first one I tried was the one that started off sitting on top of your piano, and then later on I think someone else was using that so I picked up one out of a case in the conservatory. I seemed to be getting a better sound out of the latter, but I'm not at all sure whether that was the quality of the violin or just that I was getting the hang of playing it better by then :-)

First one was Cat's, second one was mine, and the one I'm selling. I suspect the difference in sound was more you than the violins though, as I'm fairly sure Cat's is a 'better' violin, whatever that means. But I agree you were making a better sound on mine...

I can't make it sound like that! But then I'm sticking to my old fiddle which anyone knows anything about violins hates! Sentimental or what I'm used to I'm not sure! I can't play much anyway, unlike you I didn't have years of lessons!

Mmm. I think that if I were sure I wanted to take up the violin again, I might perfectly well be interested in yours, but £300 is a bit much when I haven't the faintest idea whether I'll play it for an hour or a year :-/ At the moment I'm more inclined to take up

lizzip's offer of a loan, which suits my state of total indecision better...

makes sense :)

I can lend you my violin, if you like - it's not currently getting any use... speaks nice and easily and is generally a pretty friendly instrument. It's got a soundpost(ish) crack that appears to be stable but would need an eye keeping on it to see if it's opening up at all, however.

I might take you up on that, thanks! Temporarily borrowing one does sound to me like the way forward if I've got no idea how much use I'd get out of it.

Won't be able to get it to you until September at the earliest, of course, and I'd probably rather October, what with the amount of faffing about out-of-Cambridge I intend to be doing during Sept...

Sure. I've gone years at a time without touching a violin; a few months one way or the other will be barely noticeable :-)

I have a similar situation with the clarinet. At school, I played seriously and got my Grade 8. I continued to play until I left school, and then in the CU Concert Band when I first came to Cambridge. But gradually that commitment slid away and years passed without me playing seriously.

Every so often, I pick up the clarinet to play but I find I'm out of breath after only a couple of minutes. Speaking to other former-clarinettists, I'm told this is not uncommon, and some proper practice would get it all back again. I do feel some shame that I used to be so much better, but if it really is 'in there' somewhere, it's going to take some digging.

(Now, the piano, on the other hand, is an instrument where I have no formal training or ability, yet I'm happy to hammer away upon it all day!)

I picked up my flute* a few months ago and after a few tunes I had to sit down before I fell down; I remember being dizzy as a kid when I first started but it doesn't half seem worse when you've got further to fall! Though I'm hopeful that when I have money and start playing again (aiming for folk, instead of classical which frankly makes me faintly nauseous) my lungs will come into better condition than they were when I was living with two smokers.

*grade 4 then I gave up to get some A levels; I was clearly a substandard teenager compared to the rest of this lot if I couldn't get 5 A levels and be a virtuoso on a big pile of instruments at the same time

I got to the point on the flute where my teacher said if I did an exam it would be grade 4, but I was scared of doing an exam so I gave up the flute. Then I did A levels. I've just started picking up the flute again... it's rather fun.

I'm torn between "music, yesssss!" and concern about the possibility of damage. Having had my arms unexpectedly fail has made me very aware of what a dreadful thing it would be.

Violin is one of the most awkward instruments to play, involving a strange bending of things, but violinists seem to be able to carry on playing for decades so it can't be as bad as it looks. My pro violinist friends recommend Alexander technique. Maybe if you check that out when you return to playing, it would avert disaster?

Perhaps you could try viola da gamba instead?

I hope you find a way to play without damaging your wrist. Fiddle (or viol) and voice duets! :)

I have the same "damn, I used to be good, now I'm not" with the 'cello (formerly grade 7). And indeed with the piano (formerly grade 8+), as observed at

aiwendel's when after barely passable renditions of a couple of numbers I decided that it was the better part of valour to hand over to

deborah_c for the big fast chords in "The Phantom of the Opera". :-) You can get away with more flaws on the piano, especially if people are singing at the same time, but there are limits.

The ear is exquisitely sensitive to even very slight weaknesses in technique, especially if given years of training. I don't think musical instruments are quite so much unlike riding bicycles as they seem; it's just that a slight wobble when you get on a bike for the first time in ten years doesn't make you want to clap your hands over your ears.

FWIW, when you picked up the violin and started playing, of course it wasn't a particularly brilliant sound right at the start, but it's fairly easy to tell the difference between a rank novice and somebody who used to play competently. In the latter case, rather than complaining, it's usually best to assume that they can hear the flaws too and let them get on with correcting them! You were getting noticeably better throughout the evening.

I think it's a great idea to start playing regularly again, now that you've had a reminder that it can be fun - and especially if you can learn not to be too hard on yourself for not being able to play to the same standard that you used to (until you've practiced regularly for a while, anyway). Think of all the good things playing music does to your brain - you'd be in the company of Holmes and Maturin and all those other fictional characters who played the violin to help them think and relax.

Of course, this may have to do with our ~~evil~~ rather benign master plan to have lots of nice, interesting people come round to our house and play music with each other, so there is some self-interest here!

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