If you ever pick it up, a couple things to know: 1) your fingers will bleed until you’ve built up some kinda thick callouses. The E string is brutal. If you want to avoid that, do scales on the G and D strings until you have callouses.
\2) you don’t need a $1,000+ violin, you certainly don’t need the multiple $1,000+ bows you can find. Get a cheap ($250-$300) student violin to learn with, and if you get good enough to actually perform, then look at the expensive toys. (And good Lord do they get expensive quick.)
\3) some people will tell you not to tape your finger positions, some will tell you to tape your finger positions. I don’t actually know if it matters, it certainly made learning the correct position for my fingers easier, and I haven’t used the tape in decades since I stopped using my 3/4 size violin. What is important is that you do not get into the habit of resting the violin on your fingering hand. If you don’t train your chin and shoulder to hold the violin by themselves, learning vibrato technique is damn near impossible.
No worries, oh one more tip. When re-stringing your violin or viola, hold it so that the chin rest is pointing away from you, and at around a 45° angle. If, for some reason, like the pegs being tight and unwaxed, you over tighten the A or E strings too much they will snap. Generally along the direction of the fingerboard, and generally toward the top of the string so the string-turned-whip travels, generally, along the direction of the fingerboard and away from your face. Violins and violas kinda hate their existence as far as I can tell.
If you ever pick it up, a couple things to know: 1) your fingers will bleed until you’ve built up some kinda thick callouses. The E string is brutal. If you want to avoid that, do scales on the G and D strings until you have callouses.
\2) you don’t need a $1,000+ violin, you certainly don’t need the multiple $1,000+ bows you can find. Get a cheap ($250-$300) student violin to learn with, and if you get good enough to actually perform, then look at the expensive toys. (And good Lord do they get expensive quick.)
\3) some people will tell you not to tape your finger positions, some will tell you to tape your finger positions. I don’t actually know if it matters, it certainly made learning the correct position for my fingers easier, and I haven’t used the tape in decades since I stopped using my 3/4 size violin. What is important is that you do not get into the habit of resting the violin on your fingering hand. If you don’t train your chin and shoulder to hold the violin by themselves, learning vibrato technique is damn near impossible.
Thanks for the information.
No worries, oh one more tip. When re-stringing your violin or viola, hold it so that the chin rest is pointing away from you, and at around a 45° angle. If, for some reason, like the pegs being tight and unwaxed, you over tighten the A or E strings too much they will snap. Generally along the direction of the fingerboard, and generally toward the top of the string so the string-turned-whip travels, generally, along the direction of the fingerboard and away from your face. Violins and violas kinda hate their existence as far as I can tell.