My hobbies are listening to music, watching films and travelling. I love many kinds of music; especially, when I fill myself with the sorrow, I love the songs which can share my sadness. I also like watching some US sitcoms such as: How I met your mother, Once upon a time, Sabrina is the thing I enjoy in my leisure time. Besides, I extremely love travelling, exploring new places with plentiful cuisines and nature, especially walking along the beach in the dusk that make me comfortable and peaceful.
Violin is one of the rare instruments that you can learn at a very young age, as they make very small student versions, and so at the age of 10 I began to learn to play violin.
Learning violin was a lot of fun to me due to the great teachers in the class, and now that my parents knew that I needed to stay interested so as to keep progressing. Following the traditional path, I started with group violin lessons rather than individual violin lessons.
I didn’t even start with a real violin; we all had boxes that were wrapped in brown paper! A ruler was taped to the end of the box to simulate a fingerboard, and our “bow” was the cardboard tube from a clothes hanger. Therefore, my very first lessons on how to play violin were actually about how to stand, how to hold the violin, and how to make the proper movements in unison with the teacher and the other kids.
It didn’t take long for me to earn the privilege of unwrapping my box and receiving a real violin. And soon my violin lessons, along with daily practice with my parents, became part of the family routine.
I know now that to learn to play violin, you need to be drawn to the sound of the violin. You’re going to be hearing that sound a lot, so it’s very crucial to have some connection there from the start! You will need someone who can show you proper setup at the beginning, since there are so many dead ends and blind alleys related to postures and positioning that are very hard to overcome without help. And you also need someone around you who can motivate you and keep you accountable on a regular basis. It’s best if this person is a violin teacher, someone who can assess your progress regularly.
Why learn to play violin instead of other instruments? Because the violin is so versatile! You can play alone, choosing among hundreds of years’ worth of solo repertoire from composers as diverse as Bach, Paganini, Bartok or John Adams. You can play with a friend who has a piano, or with three in a string quartet. You can also play in a string orchestra or a full orchestra. And there are many more community orchestras than professional ones so that anybody that wants to play in a group has a chance.
The discipline and love of the violin sound will take you anywhere you want to go. If you’ve been thinking about learning to play violin, don’t wait any longer! Find a violin, get it a check-up, and get someone to show you the basis. Then don’t let anything stand in your way.
