Travelling all the time without too much time to stop and regroup?
We’ve all been there, what with easy travel options and the need to get away from city life… but the violin experience doesn’t have to stop when you leave your town of residence!
Violin progress seems to come to such a standstill for every one of us every time we take a break from lessons. And since lesson time is so precious, we do almost nothing else than to focus almost exclusively on how to make our fingers and arms function better on the fingerboard and bow… that there’s barely any time at all to talk about everything else outside of the violin lesson - and that’s where the real experience starts!
So then, it follows quite logically that when we don’t have time with the violin, we are presented with a special opportunity to work on the other aspects of our musical literacy and culture - things like note-identification and understanding the anatomy of scales (so that we’re not drawing a mental blank when we are on the violin, and can in fact focus on where our fingers, and not why they go where they go)!
And we like these special opportunities on the bus/train/plane! Considering that a concerto usually lasts anywhere between 25 minutes to an hour (I might be wrong, so please correct me), instead of playing Candy Crush for hours on end and then hating yourself (we’ve all been there) for having literally gotten nowhere with our time, how about discovering a little Beethoven, or Bach, or Tchaikovsky? The added advantage to this is that, with our headphones on, we hear so much more than what a crappy laptop/phone speaker could ever offer. Double-win!
So, instead of rambling on about the benefits of learning on the go…. here are some truly awesome resources I personally love that can help grow our musical awareness, in an inspiring and very enjoyable way!
1) Youtube Inspiration from the Masters of the violin
Go to the section ‘Our Idols’ on the homepage of the VSG website. There’s a reason this section is named like this. Pick a musician, or a composer, or an instrument, and start exploring! You never know what you’ll find if you don’t start looking! So go ahead, and enjoy the legacy these great humans have left for us.
2) Work on your Music Theory!
A fantastic online resource can be found here: https://www.musictheory.net/lessons. They even have a mobile app that costs very little, but I’ve been told it’s only available right now on Apple phones. Boo. But the good news is, with a computer and an internet connection, you can learn just about anything from note-identification to Roman numeral musical analysis! I only wish I had this when I was a young’un. Never too late, though!!!
3) Listen to Podcasts to see what other musicians are up to
Nathan Cole and his wife Akiko Tarumoto have a funny, honest, and very self-effacing sense of humour in their podcast Stand Partners for Life. As important members of the LA Philharmonic Orchestra, they know what they’re talking about when it comes to conductors, orchestra etichette, and growing up in very different environments as young musicians. Of the several channels that are available around the internet, this is the one I most highly recommended.
https://www.natesviolin.com/the-stand-partners-for-life-podcast/
. . .
So that’s it for now!
Find the thing or the people that inspire you most, and, who knows, you just might be well on your way to building your very own personal, robust, very lively, musical culture! No more stunned silences when the conversation leaves the world of finance and politics… you’re going to have so much to contribute (and educate the others around you about), now!
ENJOY, BE INSPIRED, AND HAPPY PRACTISING!!!
