On 15/04/2012 08:06 PM, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:
> Oh, by the way... Yesterday I bought a violin.

For some background: When I was about ten years old, I was in the school 
orchestra. I played violin. (So it's not /quite/ as crazy as it sounds. 
I do have /some clue/ what I'm doing.) I played in one school 
performance. After that, our music teacher left the school, and 
everything went vertically downhill. But never mind that.

The one performance I was actually in consisted of about a dozen players 
performing Beethoven's "Ode to Joy". Ah, the memories.

I was originally assigned the first violin part, until our music 
teacher, an extremely strict lady, noticed that I wasn't reading the 
music, I was merely remembering the tune. Obviously, this is 
unacceptable. So I was reassigned to the third violin part. Obviously, 
the third part is incomprehensible by itself. It sounds absurd. Only 
when played with the rest of the orchestra does it make any semblance of 
sense.

The piece begins pizzicato. The only thing I've ever tried to play 
pizzicato. It's quite fiddly to pluck a violin while still holding the 
bow in your hand. It continues mezoforte. As I recall, there's a 24-bar 
rest after that. (Try counting to 24 and not getting bored or losing 
your concentration while the other instruments play around you.) And 
then as the piece goes on, it gradually gets louder. So you start off 
playing really timidly, and gradually you start to open it up. By the 
time it gets to double-forte, you're really ripping the strings off your 
violin. And then it wants TRIBLE-FORTE! And you're like "Jesus, I don't 
even know how to *do* that! Does a violin *go* that loud??"

It took me over an hour to tune my new violin. The tuning pegs just 
/will not/ stay still. And every time you tune one string, all the 
others go flat. But eventually I managed to get there. And it seems to 
be staying in tune reasonably well now.

Obviously, the first thing I did was to try to play Ode to Joy. And let 
me tell you, it sounded horrifying. I mean, it sounded /offensive/. 
Really nauseating. It was so awfully out of tune, it hurt.

I've only spent a few hours playing my violin, but now I've reached the 
stage where when I play, /most/ of the notes come out roughly in tune. 
Apparently I still have it. :-D Still sounds awfully scratchy. Then 
again, the bow is utterly wrecked. And I was never very good in the 
first place...

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