The Tricks of a Street Violinist

Part 1: The Early Years

Since I was a little girl, I knew I was deeply affected by sound and silence alike. From my dad taking me to a dark, quiet room when I was a baby to sooth me after a particularly large fit at a family event to the first time I really noticed Petra playing in the car and entering my very bloodstream with such a fire that only rock music could give you.
Music is, essentially, a strength and a weakness within me.
A yin and a yang.

So I started playing violin when I was around say, 10 or 11.
Why violin? Well when I was younger, we (me and mom) were up at my grandparents place. It was a beautiful late spring morning, dew was on the grass and the sun was shining beautifully over my grandmothers small pond.

I remember we were out in the driveway, going to do what I don't know. And my mom turned to me and gave me a choice: I could learn to play either the piano or the violin.

My young mind ran over what little I knew of both and, since the violin had four strings, I excitedly told them that's what I would play. I figured, since there were only four strings it would be easier to learn (ha)!

Well not very long after that, I received one of my moms violins-a beautiful, 3/4 acoustic called Melody (or Harmony, I never remember which is which) quite affectionately among the members of my family. So excited was I to play that the first thing I did was grab my first Tune A Day book and my violin and went out to the back yard to start learning right away!

I opened the book to the first page, propping it up on the branch of our backyard apple tree before picking up my violin and bow. And that is when I realized that I actually didn't have a flying clue how to actually play. However, I thought I could figure it out on my own. Confident with this notion, I proceeded to hold the violin with the wrong arm and bow in the same manner. To put it simply, I was not even near being able to figure it out on my own. Nonetheless I did have fun, miraculously without breaking anything.

Soon I was enrolled in private lessons with my teacher, Mrs. Lyle. She was a good teacher-she cared about her students and and she had a real passion with violin. She was firm but gentle, and very wise.

I remember standing in the small room she used for lessons for the first time. I still remember the darkish, cherry-red walls and the wooden shelves. The air smelled of rosin. Her little black Shiatsu dog (named Sasha) loved running in and out when the door was open. She was an energetic little doggo who loved playing with anyone who would give her petting and food.

I was a little overwhelmed, even scared at first. It was all new to me and I didn't know how to react. I felt somehow, that my life was going to change. This was outside of anything I knew about the world, about learning even. It was just all so...different.

That day my first lesson was on the correct way to hold my instrument. That on its own proved difficult. After only five minutes, lactic acid had built up in my arm, making the violin feel heavy. My wrist kept bending and my fingers wouldn't stop gripping the fingerboard and neck. The sponge we had to use in place of a shoulder rest felt foreign against my shoulder. It was then that it clicked: I was in for a long, potentially painful journey.

The first few lessons were that way, then once I started getting the hang of that (plus bowing) then I was introduced to slow exercises filled with nothing but whole notes. Only the four open strings-G, D, A and E. They ranged from quarter notes to whole notes, sometimes mixed together and other times just played in order up and down. These exercises slowly evolved from that, to little melodies, to simple songs.

All this time, I became bored and started to wonder; was the violin worth it? Would I ever come to like it? All it was was scales and four-note melodies. I started to try and avoid practice, hoping I could get out of it. I came to dread Mondays, which was when my lessons were. And worse, whenever I did play, I sounded terrible! It just turned me off more.

Years passed in this manner. In fact if it weren't for the encouragement of my family, friends and teacher, I would have quit altogether.

So what got me interested in this rather difficult endeavor again?