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Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Learn How To Play The Violin

By Ned Dagostino

People come up with lots of excuses when they try to talk themselves out of learning an instrument they have always wanted to play. If you love the violin, perhaps you've told yourself that it's too difficult. Or maybe you think you're too old. The truth is that you really can learn how to play the violin no matter what your circumstances.

Find a good teacher you can take private lessons from, or you may know of a relative or friend who plays the violin and who could start you out. The first thing you're going to need to learn is how to hold the violin. If you hold it wrong, you'll be very uncomfortable and may even eventually suffer stress injuries from trying to play the violin the wrong way. To hold the violin properly, you position your left arm underneath the body of the violin and then grasp the neck of the instrument with your left hand, curving your fingers over the neck as you do so. Your hand and fingers will be positioned over the strings and the violin's chin rest should be between your left shoulder and your chin. You hold the bow in your right hand and a bow or pluck the strings with that hand.

One thing you'll notice about the violin is that unlike a guitar, there are no frets on the neck. You'll essentially be learning the notes by ear until you get to the point where you know exactly where every note is on the fingerboard.

For this, you'll need to identify four positions on your violin. The first position is located the furthest away from your face and has low pitched notes. The last in fourth position is the highest notes and is the furthest up the neck. The strings themselves are tuned to specific notes; lowest to highest, they are tuned at G, D, A, and E as "open" strings, whereby there are no fingers pressing on the strings when you play. Other notes can be played by placing your fingers as instructed by your teacher at various places on the strings themselves.

There are two ways to play these notes. Most start out by plucking them. This is called pizzicato. The other way most people are familiar with is by steadily drawing the bow across the strings in a long stroke.

In addition to learning how to play the violin, you'll also need to learn how to read music. If you don't know how to read music before you learn how to play, you can begin by studying music in a more basic fashion either by taking classes, having someone versed in music teach you, or studying on your own to a certain degree by going online and searching out various tutorials.

Understand going in that the violin is not an easy instrument to learn. It will take plenty of practice on your part before you are really good. But that's OK, it's worth it because it's a fun instrument with a beautiful sound. - 18758

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