Jul
15
Agent 007 asked:
I’ve had eight years of piano experience, five on the clarient, and one year on guitar. I now want to take up the violin. How hard is it for someone who can read music? Are the basic chord positions difficult to achieve, and are they drastically different from the guitar positions?
Tags: Music, Musical Experience, String Instrument
learn to read musichttp://www.SpeedyMusicReading.com
Violin is nothing like the guitar.You don’t play chords 99.9 percent of the time, especially in orchestra. You’ll pick it up a lot faster since you know piano, and apparently plenty of other instruments. Clarinet helps because your sense of intonation will be better than someone who has only played piano or guitar (instruments that don’t really need the musician to always listen for intonation). However, violin is its own instrument. I don’t know if guitar would confuse you, because they’re both string instruments, but try not to use guitar as a reference point. I play piano and violin, and i’m trying a bit of guitar. I can tell you, they don’t relate too well. How hard is a difficult question to answer, after all, no one knows if you’ll just click with violin. However, don’t expect it to be a piece of cake. String instruments are the only ones (cept brass, i think) that require tuning for every note you play. Good luck!
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Violin and guitar are really different – violin strings are in different intervals than the guitar, and you rarely play chords. The violin and other string instruments are difficult because there is little room for error in every aspect – in order to play at an advanced level, you have to start out with positioning your hands correctly in every way. There are a lot of different things to learn – how to hold your bow, which leads to different bowing techniques, fingering and positions, vibratto, etc. It’s just a lot more complicated than most people would think. Reading music already, however, really helps. And after a while, if you have a good teacher or a good book to explain how to hold everything correctly, the positions will become second nature and you’ll be fine. Also keep in mind that holding a violin incorrectly and playing it for a long time can lead to tendonitis, among other very painful things, so make sure you get a competent, experienced player to show you exactly how to hold things if you plan to play for a long time.