Learning the Violin - The Early Years
I started to play the violin in Grade 5 when I was about ten or eleven years old. Many kids start a lot earlier on very small, impossible to tune instruments. It looks cute and sometimes a tune can be recognized. In conversation with many music teachers, they suggest a later start. At least knowing the alphabet can help when learning to read music. I had a bit of a head start. I already knew how to play the piano and could read music pretty well by Grade 5. I don’t have a lot of memories of those first lessons. It is not easy to learn the violin and even harder on the parents who have to listen and keep the faith that it will get better. Maybe my brain has buried those memories as too painful. When I listen to kids on their instruments, I try to be encouraging. I sounded like that once, I think. Really, I don’t remember. Some days, when I haven’t played in a while, I still sound pretty bad. The instrument itself gets grumpy and has to be coaxed back to life. My muscles screech at the unnatural position I am putting them in. I tend to practice in ten-minute chunks with breaks in between and a glass of water beside me. I have always needed that glass of water. I remember my mother commenting on this from her work in the kitchen while she listened and cooked. Anyway, the sound eventually does get better.
I had a
series of violin teachers. Mrs. Stella Peters was a fantastic first teacher. She
taught me in Grade 5 and 6 in a group at Queenston School. She had a striking
blonde, finely spun beehive and wore bright pink lipstick. She was garrulous
with good humor and a light heart. Mostly, I remember her laugh and her energy.
She would bluster into the room and tune every violin. What a chore! I always
looked forward to the lessons because she made them fun.
The first
thing you learn is how to hold the instrument and the bow. We did many
exercises waving the bow in the air and using our thumb and fingers to climb up
and down the stick. The cheeky thing about the violin that you quickly learn,
is that bowing is way harder to master than all that fancy finger work.
Once you
know how to hold the violin, you play open strings. G, D, A, E. Screech, squeak,
scratch. Long bows, shorts bows. The bow bounces and stutters and slides too close
to the bridge and then drifts over the fingerboard. Hell on wheels! How did she
stand it? I’m pretty sure she smoked.
I progressed
from Manitoba Hot Dog on open strings to Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.
We played everything in a group. Short individual lessons were had with Mrs.
Peters at the piano. I remember standing beside her holding my violin, with the
colored strips of tape for my finger placement and the fat kitchen sponge
attached to the back by a rubber band that served as my shoulder rest. For two
years, this was my introduction to the violin.
Playing on my first violin: A Stradivarius according to the label glued inside. These are not as rare as you'd think and they don't all sound amazing!
There are
two things in music that I found hard to learn: Playing on the offbeat or syncopation. The
syncopation makes the music come to life. It is what makes the most sense in
classical music. Otherwise, it would be boring. But, when in the second violin
section of the Winnipeg Youth Orchestra and you are faced for the first time
with a bar that starts with an eighth note and then a series of quarter notes
of equal measure and ends in another eight note tied to an eight note in the next
bar, your brain freezes after two notes and you cannot find your way back. Mostly
because everyone else is playing on the beat. The conductor stops and tells you
you are wrong because you have started playing on the beat. It happens every
time, until finally it doesn’t. Your brain cannot read this music. Your brain
has to hear it. When you hear it, it makes perfect sense.
Rhythms got
a lot trickier than that later on (Gilbert and Sullivan!!) and I still am best off
hearing it before I can play it properly.
An artist
friend of mine recently recounted to me trying to teach portraiture to a group
of grade five students. It surprised her to see how they struggled with the
most fundamental, mathematical formula for drawing a face. I asked her to teach
me, as she did the kids. With great confidence she guided me through it. You
draw an upside-down U. And then you extend it beneath but slightly tapered, so
you have an egg and not a perfect oval.
Then you
divide this shape in half and that’s where the eyes go. In half again below and
that’s the nose and half again, that’s the mouth and a half again that’s the
bottom lip and the ears are not beside the eyes, but more by the mouth.
Now, make
two small upside-down U’s for the eyes. Add the pupils in the middle – pupils
have to be round. Know, that she is doing this while I try to follow. You’d
think it would be a matter of just copying what she is doing. If it’s just
math, these two faces should look identical. But her face looks like art and mine
does not. This experiment clearly reveals that art is more than math. Otherwise,
my portrait would not look like it has been punched in the nose. Unless I am
Modigliani. I assure you, I am not.
I thought I
knew where ears went: in the middle. Halfway. But no. “The top of the ear
aligns with the top of the eye/lower eyebrow line and the base of the ear
aligns with the bottom of the nose. The total area is larger than one thinks.” Ears are huge!
The dotted
note in music is a difficult rhythm for students to learn. They can hear it.
They can clap it. But when it is written, it is hard to decipher. When I asked
a group of beginner violinists how they understood the dotted half note one of
them said: three plus one. A dotted note is long. It equals three. It’s longer
than you think. The ear also equals three and takes up a lot of real estate on
the side of your head.
There must
have been some sort of a violin class recital, because again a conversation was
had between Mrs. Peters and my mother about private lessons. I was about to
leave my elementary school and enter French Immersion at River Heights Junior
High for grades 7-9. My friend Nancy was my lifeline in this period of transition.
Our life paths were thankfully in synch. Nancy has been my friend since
Kindergarten. She was in the group lessons with Mrs. Peters. Her parents signed her up for French Immersion
too. Mrs. Peters was pleased to be sending both of us to River Heights Junior
High because Carlisle Wilson was the music teacher there. He was a professional
violinist and also conducted the Winnipeg Youth Orchestra and the Junior String
Orchestra.
Playing with my Onkel Detlef in Germany at Christmastime. The violin was a gift. More on my violins in another post.
There was
one concert, where Nancy and I had progressed to the front desk of the second
violins, and there in the front row was our old teacher, Mrs. Peters, beaming
at us. “I remember you,” she said, moments before the concert was to start. It
made her happy to see we had carried on. I think we played Wildwood Flower,
a piece that can be played loud and confidently. The melody immediately comes
to mind and a memory of sawing happily on my violin.
I’m not
sure, thinking back, if I ever heard Mrs. Peters play the violin. Surely, she must
have stood beside me, with her violin, ready to play along with me. I remember
the smell of cigarettes and perfume. Without her, I never would have launched
my career as an amateur musician. If anyone had told me in Grade Five that music
was math I would never have asked for lessons. But one thing stands true to
this day. You can never get away without counting!
End note:
If I were starting on my music lessons today, there would be thousands of
photos and videos of me and my violin. However, I had a hard time finding any
of me in those early days.
Looks like I stuck with it! Mrs. Peters would be proud!
