# Tell us your strings story!



## Ingélou

Just out of interest - what was it that 'hooked' you and got you interested in playing your instrument - and what sort of music is your main passion?
I love reading about other people's lives and experiences.

Thanks in advance for any replies. :tiphat:


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## Ingélou

I learned the violin at school under the York Education Committee's scheme whereby free lessons were provided in school, once you'd purchased a dirt-cheap violin. It was my parents' idea, but I did take to it. I practised a lot, aged ten or so, and a visiting teacher said I was good enough to join the York Schools Strings Junior Orchestra.

Then I went to grammar school (high school), and became the usual silly giggly teenage girl. I stopped doing much practice, but kept on going to the junior strings orchestra till I was much too big for it. I persuaded the teacher/conductor to let me go into the senior strings orchestra, where I struggled to play a line of music, even in the 'Fourth Violins'. I was miming for 90% of the time. We had a concert at the Guildhall with some of York's best choirs - and I played a very audible wrong note in the Marche Militaire, the one piece that I thought I could play.  I gave up the violin the next week. 

To be honest, I'd already been asking my parents for some months if I could give up, but they wouldn't let me. School work had started to bite, and I was out of the giggly stage and into the anxious scholastic phase.

I came back at age thirty after we'd been to a Scottish Dance school. Taggart got out my old violin and tried it, so to stop this, I took it up myself, and steered him back on to piano! I took lessons to learn folk fiddle, but only for a few months, as I soon got a new and demanding teaching job, to which I commuted by train, and there was no time. Eventually I sold the two violins I'd collected to help pay for a house move. Taggart had also given up on the piano, except for occasional hobby splurges at home.

Then, in the first week of his retirement, Taggart impulse-bought a piano and started lessons again. Seeing the difference it made to him and our house, I wondered about buying a fiddle. But that's all I did - wondered, until Taggart phoned the music shop, found out that there was a new consignment of cheap Chinese violins, and we went down and got one. I thought it might do for trying out how a tune sounded. The luthier persuaded me to leave it with him so he could restring it with good strings and set it up for me. I returned to pick it up on Christmas Eve 2011. He wouldn't let me try it out in the shop, but when I got home, I played it and had two surprises - firstly, that I could still play, and secondly, that the fiddle sounded okay!

We played together all over Christmas, and in January I contacted a violin teacher for lessons.

And now? The violin has taken over my life. How did I live without it for forty-five years?


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## Ingélou

I like most styles of music, but when I was a child, my father played Scottish traditional tunes on his melodeon, and we also had 78s of Jimmy Shand and the Irish folk singer Delia Murphy. So folk has always been where my heart lay. This was reinforced at school when I discovered that I loved dancing - at my grammar school, when it was wet outside & the gym was occupied, our Physical Education classes would go into the hall and learn the Eightsome Reel, along with ballroom dancing like the cha-cha and the St Bernard's Waltz. Being tall, I always had to dance the man. 

After university, I met & married Taggart, who turned out also to love folk music. Our record cabinet always contained a lot of folk music LPs. And we soon started to go dancing together - first English Country Dancing, and then Scottish.

However, when I was learning the violin, the book we used, Eta Cohen's violin tutor, was full of Bach and Handel, and I did love the tunes - unlike most of my friends, who were only interested in pop. And another interest that Tag & I have always had in common is early music.


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## tdc

I started in guitar lessons at a very young age but didn't get very far with it. When I was a teenager I became very interested in rock music and started playing a lot of guitar, first acoustic stuff mostly, then I went through a big electric phase where I was learning a lot of stuff like Zeppelin and early Clapton. Then around 7 or 8 years ago or so I became very interested in classical music after watching an amateur guitar player performing a Bach piece on a nylon-stringed guitar on youtube. I then became very driven to play classical music - initially with aspirations of being a professional musician. For a period of several years I was practicing around 5 hours a day. I currently don't practice that much anymore, but still try to get in at least an hour of practice everyday. I want to continue improving or at the very least keep my playing at as high a level as possible. Perhaps eventually I will get my daily practice hours way up there again. I've entered into a bit of a burn-out phase with it, but I also want to learn keyboard and composition, so have realized being a professional musician is perhaps not really realistic, considering I desire to do other things with my free time as well.


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## senza sordino

My story is a long and discontinuous. My mother plays the piano and we had a piano in the house. My parents asked me if I wanted lessons, I was 6 yrs old. I said no. Who at 6 makes good decisions? Who asks kids of 6 questions like that? Usually parents just put kids into music. I loved listening, and I could sing well at that age. There is a an old tape of me singing at five yrs old. 

We moved countries. I started to learn the recorder at school. Then we moved schools, so no more recorder. At the new school they had guitar lessons. I did well. My parents bought me a guitar. 

Then we moved countries again. I continued to play the guitar and teach myself.

Then we moved countries again, back to the second country. I had private guitar lessons for a few months. I didn't like the instructor. I was a teen with no confidence, and he was quite critical. I stopped. 

I continued to play the guitar in my bedroom, alone where no one could hear me. As a young 20 yr old I even taught myself the Adagio to Concierto de Aranjuez and Asturias. 

I went to university. I got a job. All this time I listened to classical music. 

Then one day just when I turned 32 I decided to take violin lessons. I had a dream of playing in an orchestra. I took lessons for two years. I did very well very quickly. I took the grade four conservatory exam after six months and grade six a year later. (Out of 11 here in Canada). Life intervened again and I stopped lessons. But I did join a local amateur orchestra. I played with the same orchestra in the second violins for 15 years. 

I started taking lessons again just over one year ago. I've been working on a lot of solo repertoire. I still play with the orchestra. 

I've always felt I could have been a professional musician in some capacity if my musical education hadn't have been so discontinuous. But that's water under the bridge. I can't live in regret. I can move forward and enjoy what I do now.


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## desire machine

fml ...I wrote a long post and accidentally deleted it, maybe I'll repost another time.


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## Ingélou

desire machine said:


> fml ...I wrote a long post and accidentally deleted it, maybe I'll repost another time.


Oh, please do - I would love to read it. :tiphat:


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## Pugg

My parents had a piano in their salon, so you could say I grew up with it.
Still have one in my / our own house and uses it on a almost daily base.
Just a half hour or so, also I am a sub for the choir my mother singing in, if their regular accompanist is ill ore something like that :tiphat:


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