One year of violin lessons ...

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... and as my ear learns good from bad notes and tone qualities, it is quite obvious -- I'm am a very bad player still. My co-workers say I sound fine (I practice on my company's parking lot) but I know I have a lot of room for improvement. One very annoying habit is I tend to slow the bow when I come to difficult passages, or not press hard enough on the strings. Either, or even worse both, disintegrates the quality and I sound almost like fingers scratching a blackboard. Third finger notes, G on D string and D on A string, sound horrendous like a honking horn, but C on G and A on E strings for some reason doesn't have that effect. Still I am considering upgrading my instrument. I suppose there is only so much one can do with a Chinese-made Gibson that cost $100 --