White Violin

6. Early Lesson

With all kinds of things looming inside my head, I didn't have a good sleep. I woke up and dragged myself to the castle's hall.

The maid greeted me as I walked to the dining table. Marie and our teacher Lucy seemed to have already finished their breakfast.

"Please serve yourself. Practice will be held shortly in the music room."

The maid gave a formal bow and then left the hall. I finished my breakfast hastily.

Wiping off a tomato drip smear from my lips with the napkin, I proceeded to the music room.

When I entered the music room, Marie and Lucy were already inside.

"You're late, miss." Lucy said lightly, making a soft remark. Marie turned to my direction, gave me a wink and then looked back at her violin.

"As you can see, we are now tuning our violin."

She raised the bow and stroked two strings on the violin. A fair harmony came about, indicating that the strings were tuned well.

I wasn't blessed with a perfect pitch, apparently, but I could at least recall what the A sound was like. I played it in my mind and compared it with the sound played on my violin.

"No, that's not the A." Lucy came over and said.

"La...Can you hear the minuscule difference between the sound you're making and the real A sound?"

She was harsh. It took me a considerable amount of time to reach the A note she was looking for. With the A note settled, the other three strings were easy to tune through playing them together.

We spent another several hours practicing basic notes and chords. We didn't even have time for scales or a single melody.

"Would we be playing any songs, Lucy?"

"Your current skills would only contaminate any melody you play. Focus on the basics."

To be fair, most violin lessons begin with long, tedious focus on achieving every note right. I once looked a carpenter in his work. Whenever he was off from work, he would go into late hours fining the tools he used. He would rub the sharpest blade with sand paper. Several rubs didn't seem to make a difference. No, not even after he finished rubbing could I tell the difference. But perhaps it did to him-or he thought it did. Only through these meticulous processes could he claim he had refined his craft.