How to choose a violin for a beginner?
I am a beginner. How can I learn to play it online? What should I look for in a violin?
Posted by Pro Date: Monday, March 8, 2010
Categories: Violin Community
Tags: Beginner, choose, Violin
I am a beginner. How can I learn to play it online? What should I look for in a violin?
Posted by Pro Date: Monday, March 8, 2010
Categories: Violin Community
Tags: Beginner, choose, Violin
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I really would not recommend trying to learn the violin online. Find a good private teacher.
As far as instruments are concerned, see:
http://beststudentviolins.com/violins.html#outfits
Go to a reputable violin shop and let them help you pick out a violin and a bow in your price range. Look for one that sounds good to you. If you don’t play, bring a violin or fiddle playing friend with you to help you evaluate the instruments. At the very least, the sales people at the violin shop should be able to play the instruments for you so you can hear what they sound like before you buy.
I have no idea if or how you can learn to play online but I would strongly recommend at least a few lessons with a teacher to get you started on proper technique — how to hold the violin and bow correctly, how to pull the bow across the strings to get good tone, how to play some basic scales and arpeggios, that kind of thing.
If you want to play violin (ie: classical music), you WILL need to learn to read music proficiently. If you want to play fiddle (ie: folk/dance music like bluegrass, traditional Irish, old-time, Cajun, etc), reading music is not essential, but you will need to spend a LOT of time listening to the music that you want to learn in order to get the characteristic idioms of the style in your head, and you’ll want/need to develop your ability to learn by ear.
As I said, I have no idea if any of this is actually doable online. I taught myself to play old-time fiddle by ear starting 17 years ago — long before I owned a home computer — by hanging around with old-time musicians, watching the fiddlers carefully, asking lots of questions, listening to lots and lots of fiddle music, and spending lots of time figuring out how to play the music I heard in my head by trial and error.
Violin shop personnel should be able to help you choose. Or better yet, if you have a teacher, perhaps he or she can help you. I love to help my students when it’s time for them to trade up to a new violin. Often, beginners are able to rent a cheap instrument to start, and then when they decide whether they will continue, they buy a better instrument. There are a lot of “VSO”s out there (Violin Shaped Objects). Please read the following:
https://www.sharmusic.com/vsolanding.asp
Please, please get a teacher in order to learn at least the basics of playing. He or she can give you valuable feedback and help you hold your instrument properly. If you get used to playing in an incorrect position, it is very, very difficult to learn the proper position, and you won’t be able to advance very far. Unless you have proper left hand position, for example, you won’t be able to do vibrato properly, or to shift into higher positions. Violin is a very difficult instrument to play. I cringe when I see certain country music fiddlers holding their instrument improperly. They could play so much better if they’d had a proper teacher, at least at first! If money is an issue, there might be a teacher in your area that gives group lessons, which will probably be less expensive than private lessons.