Music And Dance

Archive for the ‘Learning Violin’ Category

Many beginner guitar players, anxious to get through the hard stuff and start playing ask if they really need chords to learn guitar. There’s also the question of how many chords are really necessary. Some people have actually bought their first guitar, downloaded some tabs and learnt to play them. So for people who have been able to learn guitar without chords, the question is whether they can just keep going in this way.

You will need to learn the chords A B C D E F and G – major and minor. You can start with the open chords which means you will be playing within the first three frets on the guitar, and stay with these as you learn how seventh and ninth chords enhance your playing. After that, you can learn the basic barre chord shapes and the way they can make your playing sound more interesting.

As you learn new chords, you will be putting them to use in songs that you like. Otherwise you are going to get bored learning and practicing chord fingerings alone. The open chords are all pretty easy once you get the knack of pressing down on the strings without muffling the adjacent strings.

Bear in mind that as you get a collection of chords to learn guitar you totally ignore any impulse you might have to play fast. Speed comes by itself the more you practice. You main concerns at the moment are precision and relaxation. It will seem like impossibly slow work, but that’s the way you need to do it.

Here are the five things, in no particular order, you can’t forget when learning violin.

1. You need a violin! I’ve heard many people, interested in learning violin, ask if they need to buy one. It is possible to rent, but the bottom line is that if you put in part time effort, you’ll get part time results. You’ll learn to play violin, but you won’t learn quickly and you won’t become great at it. You develop muscle memory through regular practice, not intermittent sessions, which brings me to the second thing on my list.

2. Practice violin regularly. When learning violin you must have a commitment of a certain amount of hours you’re going to play per week. Decide how much you want to invest in learning, write it down, and schedule time to learn to play violin.

3. If you’re only going to be practicing violin a few times a week, I’d recommend you set aside one area in your home for violin playing. This will put you in the mindset to be learning violin whenever you go there. If you’re practicing daily, I don’t think it matters as much as you’re more apt to stay in the correct mindset all the time.

4. Relax when playing violin; tense fingers don’t move as smoothly. When you’re tense, odds are you’re going to be focused on something besides learning violin in the first place. Loosen up, stretch, whatever relaxes you before you decide to play. You don’t need to be taking out your hostilities on your violin strings.

5. Take care of your violin. It doesn’t matter if you’re a master or a novice, if your instrument isn’t tuned and taken care of, it will sound terrible or eventually fail on you altogether. Violin care includes things like keeping the bow rosined, keeping the dust off the violin (in time it may grow to bond with the varnish), and not touching or over tightening the hair.