Picking up the violin

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Our eldest daughter, known here as ‘Big One’, plays the recorder. Her teacher also teaches the violin, and she often asked if Big One would be interested in taking that up. For years she said no, but finally she decided she would, so I unearthed the violin I had (from when I learnt a bit aged 11!) from under the bed and she started learning on that. That was about three years ago. By now she is progressing to more advanced techniques and her teacher has been telling her she needed to get a better instrument. We took the one she had (my old one) to a couple of places to see if it could be improved – it’s a really nice-looking violin and I think it sounds nice! – but they both concluded that it had just about every conceivable thing wrong with it (except that no-one had actually trodden on it or anything like that!) and the refurbishment would cost more than the violin was worth. So it was necessary to get another. We were somewhat divided over this – my partner is not at all keen to spend hundreds of pounds on an instrument that would just be a ‘floor ornament’ as he put it, cluttering the place up and never getting played, while I’m trying to be encouraging. And she can’t keep going for lessons with the same instrument that the teacher has told her is so hard to play, but then of course my partner thinks we shouldn’t be paying for her to have lessons either, if she never upholds her part of the ‘bargain’ and actually practices! Well we have been round and round on this issue for several months already, so finally a couple of weeks ago (my partner was away!) I took Big One to a place that trades and refurbishes string instruments. The man seemed nice and he set out seven instruments to try out and didn’t mind answering our questions. We spent the whole morning there, and at the end when one seemed the favourite he let us take it home, without even asking for a deposit or anything! That was on Thursday, and on Sunday morning Big One was scheduled to go away for 10 days, but she was very enthusiastic and adamant that she would still have three days to try it out. Well you can probably guess what happened – Thursday evening, nothing (to be fair it was a very busy day); Friday she did actually spend a few minutes trying it out at about midnight; Saturday nothing, Sunday she had to get up and get to the train station. So after she left I thought I would try it myself (partner away again). I picked up the beginners’ book and started from the first page and I am actually rather enjoying playing it! I knew I wouldn’t do it if it was too much effort, so I put it on the kitchen table and every now and then, about three or four times a day, I can just pick it up and play a few of the tunes. I can see myself making progress little by little; the book comes with a CD of accompaniments you can play along to which makes it all a bit more enjoyable and of course I can tell if I’m getting better if I sound in tune with the accompaniment and can keep in time! It helps that there’s no-one else in the house and we don’t have near neighbours – apart from the sound of me trying to play, if I play along to the CD I have to have it really loud to be able to hear the accompaniment over the sound of the violin right under my ear! So I am contemplating keeping the violin myself to see if I can progress more than I did all those years ago. Maybe if I surprise Big One by playing some elementary tunes on it when she gets back she may get inspired to play more herself - butt on the other hand when my partner is back I won’t have the place to myself any longer and the whole thing may just fall by the wayside… we’ll see. All rights reserved. © Text and image copyright Fleur 2025.