Violin Day 2024 is on Friday, December 13, 2024: Violins?

Friday, December 13, 2024 is Violin Day 2024. December 13 Holidays - Violin Day at Holiday Insights Violin Day is today.

The violin is definitely an incredibly versatile guitar, permitting for music of great passion and incredible delicacy. Violin Day salutes violinists, and encourages you to hear music featuring violins. If you are feeling particularly brave, try to learn how to play?

Hi My Friend,

In my dictionary, there is no specific terminogy of "STUDENT VIOLINS".

From my opnion, any PLAYABLE violin can be a student violin.

Of course, the tone quality/timber is an important criteria. But if it is a small size violin, you cannot expect it to be competitive to a full size violin; especially the tone quality of the "G" and "D".

So that, I may use "EYES & HANDS INSPECTION" on shopping a beginner violin instead of using my EARS.

If you want to buy a good look and good sound violin, the price should be in "THOUSAND" range, very rare to find an excellent violin from the "HUNDRED" price range. Except you can buy one from your friends, or your teacher, they may sell you with the FRIENDSHIP price / as an AWARD of your achievement!

To shop a beginner violin, very important is to make sure the violin has been built correctly. First, I would like to point at the small piece of wood, the NUT (Usualy made by Ebony, a small piece of wood to support and separate the strings from the fingerboard. It is laid between the pegbox and the fingerboard.)

Ideally, a good cutting nut will separate the four strings evenly. Not too close or too far. It won't create any problem for switching between the strings or double stopping playing. It cannot be too high from the fingerboard, otherwise the strings will be too away from the fingerboard, player needs to apply much more force to press the strings.

To fix the nut problem is not a simple task, a qualifiied luthier is too expensive to hire for a beginner violin.

The straightness of the finger board is another issue. Also the neck cutting is important to an intermediate student too. When the student progress from the basic to the intermediate, they will not stay in the first position only. The violin neck provides the position feeling.

Finally, the bridge cutting is very important to the beginner too. If it is not cut to a proper curve shape, it can be either too hard for crossing the strings or always keep touching more than one string.

Actually, from my opinion, if shopping something from ebay and its cost (bidding price + shipping) is less than US$350, and it comes with a 14 days return and full refund policy. Plus the seller has a higher than 98% satification feedback. I don't have any reason to say NO on BUYING A VIOLIN from the ebay!

Remember to search the selling list of a good reputation seller. Spend time to compare the image of the violins; you may compare the pictures with a genuine Amati/Guarneri/Stradivari. Start to bid with a PayPal account. After you won the bid of the violin, it took almost three weeks for the delivery. Then you have fourteen days to test the instrument even with your friends or other violinist. Most of them carry the satisfaction guarantee.

My experience, I found the good violin from "The Old Violin House" (Shanghai, China) and "Joyee Music" (GuangZhou, China); including shipping the cost is about US$250. It includes a rectangle violin case, a bow, and a ready to play violin. You simply need to install the bridge properly and tune it right. You are ready to play with it.

Good Luck!

Violin, The elegant..But help!?

1) Violin's aren't too big, depends on what size you'll need. Quarter, half, 3 quarters, or full.

2)PRACTICE! If you practice 30 minutes a day you'll improve greatly. If you have harder parts in your music, drill that section over and over till you've almost memorized it, don't play the whole song if you only have trouble in one area, be productive!

3)Disapointments, personnaly, I feel playing lost it's luster after a year or so.

4)If you are starting through a school program talk to you're director, see if you can rent from your school, it's alot cheaper. If you aren't playing in/with a school or they don't rent instruments grab a phone book and call around, don't be afraid to ask questions, you want to know what you're getting into. If you can, take someone who plays in a string orchestra with you, it doesn't have to be a violinist, violists work too. Be sure you are getting the right size violin, ask to be measured.

5)That depends on the size violin you get, talk to you're friendly store associate or orchestra director about what you'll need.

6)All bows are made with horse hair (no animals harmed), the best are made with bamboo, but when you begin, plastic should suffice. Remember: Never touch the hairs the oils on your fingers will ruin them!

7) Rosin should be applied at least once a week depending on how much you play, it helps the bow stick to the strings and make you're sound ressonate. I perfer dark rosin myself, but whatever floats you're boat. Just check with you're orch. director to make sure. Remember: Never use Celio/Base rosin, it's alot stickier and can make it hard to play. Viola rosin is the exact same thing though, so that's fine.

8)At least 30 minutes, practicing more is never a bad thing, though!

9)Don't get caught up in exspensive brand names when you first start, I would advise a Kun shoulder rest though, they are very sturdy.

10) Make sure you're case has you're first and last name and aphone number on it! I would make sure you're case has room for a shoulder rest in it, so you don't risk losing it. Make sure your violin fits in it snugly and doesn't wiggle too much. ALWAYS, make sure you're case is closed before you pick it up, I can't tell how many time I knocked my viola out of the case 'cause it wasn't closed right, Haha.

MAKE SURE YOU INSURE YOU'RE INSTRUMENT!

And be sure this is what you want to do, violins mostly play the harder more melodic parts of songs and you'll need to practice more. Don't let that scare you away though, if you get worried about playing harder parts try the viola. It's a bigger deeper version of a violin, plus if you can play a viola you can play both the cellio and violin too.

Good luck, feel free to E-mail me if I wasn't clear enough or if you still have questions! Lizzehs_radd_pants@yahoo.com

My violin wont tune at all!?

Hi my Friend,

Your violin wont tune at all!!!!???? I can't say it is because of its price cheap.

There are two possible reasons make the violin too difficult to tune. The smoothness between the pegs and the pegbox is the major reason, the second reason is the way that the string winding on the peg.

Let me tell you how to tune violin first. To prevent the violin sound too deep, or sound too sharp or broken any string, you must have a correct pitch reference. If you have a piano/keyboard, this problem is resolved. Simply play on the G (below the middle C), D (next to the middle C), A (5th above D) and E (5th above A). They are the tones for the four strings (Front View) from left to right (or from the thickest to the thinest strings).

If you don't have a keyboard/piano, you can run to a music store and ask for a pitch pipe of violin. It is cheap. It has four pipes for the tones of G D A and E, Or you can download a free wave generator software from internet to generate the tones G = 196, D = 277, A = 440 and E = 659 Hz.

If you know how to play the first and 2nd harmonics; then you only need to have a single pitch pipe of concert A or a tuning fork for it. You can play the 2nd harmonic on A string to generate the E', then compare and adjust the 1st harmonic of E string, they are the same pitch of E'. by the same token, play the 1st harmonic on A and 2nd harmonic on D, they are the same pitch of A'; adjust the D string to make them sound the same. Finally, using the same method to tune the G string with respect to the D string's 1st harmonic.

Professional violinist uses harmonic to tune the violin, and they also tune their violin by playing the perfect 5th harmony of each pair of neighbour strings. Let's start from the A string with a reference tone (@440Hz), then play the A and D string together. It will produce a perfect 5th harmony effect, if not, the player will adjust the D string until it generates a perfect 5th harmony. Then repeat the above steps onto the D & G strings pair and A & E strings pair.

Back to the root of your problem, even you are holding a 100 thousands famous antique violin, this may happen. Due to the temperature changes the peg does not fit onto the hole of the pegbox. The corresponding string may becomes loosen! The friction between the peg and the hole of the pegbox cannot hold the string sufficiently; or the peg cannot be turned smoothly and stop without slipping!

All of the above issues are related to the friction. The solution is a tube of PEG PASTE, it is a dark brown lipstick look stick. Unwind the string and take the peg out from the pegbox, apply the peg paste onto the two shiny bands on the peg; then re-install the peg back to the pegbox. The peg paste can improve the smoothness of turning the peg, and provide the sufficient holding force which keeps the peg in position.

When you rewind the strings, punch the string onto the drill hole on the peg; then turn CW direction for the right side pegs (A and E) and CCW direction for the left side peg (G and D) to tighten the string.

For the right side pegs A and E, start to wind their strings; push/align the string close to the right inner side of the pegbox, The friction of the string with the peg and the extra winding string will push the peg move toward the pegbox hole. It increase the friction and can keep the A & E peg in their positions. By the same manner, the G and D strings start to wind the string pushes and aligns from their LEFT inner side of the pegbox.

If the peg paste cannot fix the peg smoothness problem completely, The peg cannot stop at the correct in tune position, you may need to buy a tail piece with four built in fine tuner. This can help you to fine tune your violin. You can use the pegs to do the coarse tune with respect to the reference signal then fine tune them with the fine tune adjuster at the tail piece.

Verify and test my message.

Hope you can heal your violin's intonation, and it can sing you a beautiful song tomorrow!