I keep ignoring them April 6, 2006
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I think I’ve identified the trickiest thing about trying to learn the violin as a competant pianist. Reading the basic notes is simple – there’s only one line compared to reading multiple lines for the piano. Playing all notes on just four strings takes a bit of practise, but is achievable – whilst both hands are in use, they are working together to produce one note most of the time! Shifting isn’t too tricky, it’s no different from taking your hands completely on the piano keyboard and landing an octave higher, you even get to keep your finger on the string and slide to the new position.

A slightly tricky thing to learn was the extra musical notation I have to keep track of. It took a while to get used to the up and down bow markings, but it eventually sunk in.

The most difficult part is the slurring! On the piano, you read slurs for phrasing purposes. On the violin, they actually have technical meaning – you are supposed to play slurred notes in one bow movement! If I could just embed the significance of this into my mind when reading the music, I’d be OK! For some reason though, I find it difficult to take note of them…