The Tricks of a Street Violinist

Part 2: Tempo Change

A few years after I started playing the violin, my mother and I went to a bluegrass workshop during the summer. School had let out a few weeks prior and the days were long and gorgeous. Warmth penetrated our family's blue Honda Civic as we rolled up the gravel "driveway" up to the cluster of log houses that served as the Fine Arts Center.

While it was only a week, it was extremely worth it. I was just beginning to discover just how many other genres one could fit the violin into-even dubstep, thanks to Lindsey Stirling.

I discovered her near the end of middle school. I watched her Electric Daisy video after one of moms friends shared it to her, and of course she wanted to show me. So I found myself in the kitchen, becoming more and more dumbfounded as I watched Lindsey dance around, playing perfectly at the same time. It was a fun and lighthearted video-one that caught my attention.

Later I found myself on her channel, watching her Crystallize video in awestruck, somewhat reverent silence. She was truly proficient and I realized, I wanted to be like that. There was more to the world than just the few keys I had learned by then.

In a sense, she had started teaching me B flat and third position, both of which occurred in her music very often.

That's right. I was going down the road of imitation. And I wanted to be just like Lindsey.