How hard is it to learn to play a violin?

Question:I always wanted to learn to play. i am 19 years old right. do you have to learn from young age or any age is fine.

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: I always wanted to learn to play. i am 19 years old right. do you have to learn from young age or any age is fine.

I taught myself to play the fiddle by ear starting when I was about 33 (I'm 49 now) -- I've played for square dances and for cloggers, and I'm currently in a bluegrass band. I have to tell you though, that I've played guitar since I was 13, and banjo for 2 years before I took up the fiddle -- so by the time I started teaching myself fiddle, I already had a pretty good repertoire of fiddle tunes memorized from having played them on guitar and banjo.

But you don't have to start as a child. If you want to play folk music (American old-time, bluegrass, traditional Irish, Cajun, Scottish, etc, etc) you can get good enough to play in jam sessions and maybe even be in a band in a couple of years or so. Of course it all depends on how much time you spend practicing and listening to the music you want to learn to play -- if you can spend 3 hours a day playing and practicing, you'll make faster progress than if you practice only a half hour a day. You don't have to learn to read music to play folk music on fiddle -- in fact I would say its more important to develop your ability to play by ear than it is to learn to read. It would be VERY helpful if you could find a teacher who plays the style of fiddle music that you want to learn, and if you can find other folk musicians who play the music you want to learn, so that you can at least watch and listen, even if you're not ready to play along with them. A lot of fiddling technique and style really has to be absorbed by careful listening, even if you read music, because a lot of the stylistic nuances of fiddle music aren't explicitly notated in the sheet music -- its sort of left up to the individual fiddler to know how to make the music sound Irish or bluegrassy or Cajun or whatever.

If you want to learn to play classical violin, you most definitely will need a teacher, and you will have to learn to read music as well. Starting classical violin at the age of 19 means you will probably never play professionally -- but you can certainly learn to play well enough to have fun and maybe join a local community orchestra or amateur chamber group.

Edit: Emeryboy2 -- fiddle playing is way more than just "playing the violin fast". LOL!!!

If you want to play beautiful, complicated music that leaves listeners awestruck -- you want to play classical violin.

If you want to play music that has a danceable, driving beat, that makes people want to get up and move or at least makes them tap their feet and clap along -- you want to play fiddle.

My brother is a Perfessional french horn player and he never played violin, but then 2 weeks befor a gig he learned how to play enough to play secong violin for christmass caroles. He's 21, so I wouls say if you already know music theory, no it's not.

it depends how you want to play it it harder to play the fiddle(that is the violin played fast) than just violin

its very hard

You can never be too old to learn something!

To answer your question, there's a lot to think about when you're playing the violin.

- You have to know where the notes are on the violin (where to put your fingers). You have to know EXACTLY where to put your fingers because if it's a little off, it will sound out of tune. Of course, when you're starting out, your teacher will probably use fingerboard tape to tape where to put your fingers, but as you get more advanced, you have to know where that note is every time you play it in a song, without tape.

- Bow: The bow is the "stick-thing" used to make the violin sing. You have to make sure that your bow is parallel to the bridge (the wooden thing under the strings) and it can't slide around (I'm having this problem myself). This causes an inconsistent tone (it will sound wispy in some places, and stronger in others).

Hope that helped and wasn't too confusing!

no problem i think.....but if wanna play in orchestra it would take a long time to practices hard....

The violin is difficult to learn
You can start at any age

Any age is fine. See:

http://beststudentviolins.com/PedagogyTe...