erm....ask for advice, i'm a grade 3and a half piano student .i'm going to have my first violin lesson this october.and i wan to know that whether my little expereince in piano can make me to ''higher grade''in violin.i mean should i start with beginner or grade1??????

Beginner. You might progress quickly but you can't start in a grade one class.

Liz

Yes you'll definitely start in a beginner class. Would it be a group class? If you are an older beginner on violin eg. 13 it would be better for you to have an individual lesson as you would probably move faster than a complete beginner in music as you can read the notes and rhythm already. Once you get the hang of the bow hold etc. you should progress quite quickly and be able to do Gr1 exam within your first year.

yes , i agree with both of u.i think i'm going to ahve personal lesson, coz group lesson is not popular among here.i think i will start from beginner but maybe i can move faster to grade 1 or 2.

You will be fine with reading the notes, but as you may have noticed the violin is COMPLETELY different to the piano, but once you understand how to hold a bow, your posture while playing, and your intonation, but that won't be too difficult.

is it hard to hold the bow or the posture while playing violin???i'm just very very curious about how violin functions.????it got only 4 strings and yet it can produce so many sounds??how could it be????

Its not hard holding the bow, or the posture, I just had a bit of trouble with my wrist that was holding the violin as I kept collapsing it, which makes playing very difficult, that came from years of changing teachers that were in general sub-standard, but my current teacher sorted all ofthat out when I first went to him. I can't seem to find a way to explain why it has a such a wide note range, but once you begin playing you'll understand.

You definatly have to start from beginner, otherwise you wont get the technique etc. there are several different positions that produce lots of different notes and sounds and different things you can do with the bow.

how long will it take me for me to elarn the basics thing, my lesson last for an hour per week.

Well, i learn violin after i got my piano AMus, and, well, it took me half a year to get the bowing technique right, and approximately grade 1 standard after half a year!

what!!!!!!???half a year, so long?????does it take so long time?????is it possible to move to grade1/2 in a few months, 2 or 3months etc.

On violin, I think "grade 1" standard is actually quite high if you have started from scratch, with also quite big gaps between grades 1 and 2 and 2 and 3. That's why it might take a while.

If you really want to learn, you'll have to be patient!

I took about a year to get to grade 1 standard, and that was with half hour lessons. I've know someone to do their grade 2 in about 9 months of learning, he got a merit, that'll be the sort of result you can get if you really truly are dedicated, and he played the piano before.But remember, go straight in at beginners because if you go straight in at grade1 you won't know the technique, where your fingers go etc.

okay, i will start with begineer, i wan to know that whether is it possible for me to jump to grade 1 about one month that about 4 hour lesson all together, which means could i master the technique in 4 hour lesson?

It takes a lifetime to master the technique..

Why are you so desperate to do it really quickly? why not take your time, enjoy it and do it well! it took me a yr to do grade one with half hour lessons.

Hee hee, happygirl sounds so much like me, I get goosebumps. I began learning it 2 years ago, and I had an Amus in piano as well. It took me 1 year to take the Grade 2 exam. That was with daily practice for an hour each day at least. I had half an hour lessons per week too. My teacher also suggested Grade 3 but I thought Grade 2 would be a bit more managable at that time. But now I realise I have to take it slower (i.e. one grade per year) to get a lot of techniques right.

It's completely different from piano, even from the first lesson, you might go.. oh my gosh... I might have to give this up, it's too hard! But hang in there and you'll get there.

I wonder how many years it took happygirl to complete her violin studies in all, she seems so young But yes I think the fastest and most reasonable would be Grade 1 in half a year. After that you might take longer because it gets harder.

oooooo, what song will probably a begginer a violin player plays?will i begin wif mary and a little lamb, baa baa black sheep etc. again?

And twinkle twinkle little star, thats really easy. But you probably won't use the bow for a couple of lessons, you will just become acustomed to the violin first, first you'll probably learn it in banjo position then after a lil bit you'll put it under your chin and just pluck, then you'll learn how to use your bow.

oh no!!!!does it mean that i won't be playing any songs at first few lessons?huh???!!!it should be very boring isn't it?my lesson last for an hour!then would i be sitting there adjusting my position and plucking the strings for a few hours?????and.......i'm going to play those childish song again, i oredi took that in my earlier piano lesson, now, again???????

it takes a long time to master the technique.. getting the fingers in the right position and mastering the bowing is the hardest part of playing the violin. Once you've managed that, its just practise. A stringed instrument is the most technical of all instruments, there's so much to think about and get right.
Mind you, I'm obsessed with all string instruments!! I think piano is quite hard to play... I'm at the very slow with 2 hands stage!! and its hard!! Start at beginnner and you will progress very quickly.. don't be in too much of a rush and enjoy playing!

QUOTE (i like piano @ Sep 30 2004, 01:44 AM)

oh no!!!!does it mean that i won't be playing any songs at first few lessons?huh???!!!it should be very boring isn't it?my lesson last for an hour!then would i be sitting there adjusting my position and plucking the strings for a few hours?????and.......i'm going to play those childish song again, i oredi took that in my earlier piano lesson, now, again???????

Why are you complaining about it? Its all about the process, you can't run before you can walk, do you expect to completely learn how to use your bow properly and where to put your fingers when you are playing in one lesson? The violin is highly technical, and you need co-ordination, and you have to be able to tell whether or not you are in tune or not. Just enjoy it all, because there are times when you have to pluck anyway, my orchestra part has got about 2 pages just full of plucking.

okay , i just wan to be faster lah, coz i'm really eager to play nice songs .coz my brother always laugh at me when i ply childish song, although he didn't do it deliberately, but i was badly hurt in my heart, coz i'm oredi 15 , although not an adult, but at least a teenager, so...sigh...........i'll try to practise for 4 hours for violin everyday , coz i'lll be finishing my final exam at the 8th of october

Don't rush.

If you take Grade 1 when you're not ready, you'll end up failing, and that would be worse to your self-esteem/pride, if this is what it's all about, if you fail, then if you just wait a while and learn properly.

Hi. I can understand your eagerness to progress quickly. I felt the same. I started learning aged 21 but made sure I took my time learning the basic technique first, as I knew how important it would be for the higher grades. I could have done my Grade 1 much earlier, but decided to wait a year. Two terms later I did grade 4 (this summer) and now I'm working towards Grade 6 for Easter. So you can see that in two years I'll have got to Grade 6 standard (hopefully, nearly learnt pieces already!), but you must concentrate on the basic technique first - I rather enjoyed playing nursey rhymes again - not sure my mum or neighbours did though! Good luck!!!

What are you worrying for? I'm 30 and I started at 28, and there are a couple of us here who started at 30, 40... and a few of my friends started in their 20's, so no big deal. Yes, that's what I meant when I said, you might go "Oh my gosh, it's so hard" because in the first lessons you can't play any songs yet! Hee hee, but you get to pluck some nursery rhyme maybe. And if you're lucky, just drawing long bows on the D string.

Frequenting these boards for the past few months I am starting to see a worrying trend of people saying "Oh, I am starting this instrument. How soon can I reach Grade X? Can I reach Grade X in Y number of months/years?" X usually being a high number and Y being an unusually small one.

As Another Pianist has advocated in numerous threads and people here have pointed out, Why would you be in such a rush? I know, I know, everyone (including myself) wants to progress at lightening speed but once you do knuckle down to the work, you should be able to seperate fact from fantasy. Have that aim for the higher grades, but at the same time, you should have smaller, more short-term achievable goals. Unless it is a prodigy in question, someone who got to Grade 8 in 2 years would not play anywhere near as well as someone who got there in 8 years (weekly practice and lesson times being comparable).

The violin is very different to the piano in terms of just about everything. It might take you a while to even get used to holding it and feeling comfortable playing anything on it. For a beginner, it is much much easier to pound out Twinkle on the piano than to find it on the violin.

Bottom line is, if you are doing the violin because you really want to do it, because you love it and because you want to produce the beautiful sound of a stringed instrument, your day to day goal should not be "how soon can I get through the grades". Your goal should be "how can I get my bow hand to be more relaxed", "how do I improve my intonation, my tone, the flow". Your goal could be trying to emulate the singing honeyed tone your teacher can make on her violin when compared to yours (I know this is my ultimate goal). Bowing on open strings only for now is not boring if your attitude to it is that you don't want to hit the D string when on A, when you want the string crossings crystal clear and you want a full-bodied tone out of it. If you are in a rush to get to Grade 3 now, of course it is going to be boring and seemingly pointless.

Going through the process slowly, getting a distinction in each exam you enter for (or the best mark you could possibly obtain) is better than flying through the grades in a short amount of time and scraping a pass at Grade 5.

BTW, 15 is young. I started this Feb at 25.

I'm grade 4 Viola and it only took me a year, and I played piano before, so it is posssible.

I play piano and violin. I say the technique required for violin is about 10x harder because:

a) You have listen to yourself carfully and
you have to coordinate three or four totally different and unrelated movements at one time (Moving and holding bow correctly, standing correctly, holding violin correctly, vibrato)
c) the finger numbers are different
d) as you move up the fingerboard the notes get closer together
e) bowing at different distances from the bridge the bow reacts differently
f) different bowing angles affect you sound
g) if you don't stand correctly you sound horrible.
h) if you use to little bow you squeak
i) if you use too much bow you're sound becomes horrible
j) there are many more techniques than on piano.
k) you have to ensure your bowing and fingering is correct.

on piano:-
a) counterpoint
coordintion
c) finger technique

on violin your first lesson, you probably won't even go near the bow. or if you do you will be playing open strings for the first few lessons.

don't care about grades. I made that mistake.

Always dangerous to talk about averages BUT

all the kids in Y2 that I started teaching in June 2003 took Grade 1 in June 2004 - when they were all 6 years old. There were 3 Distinctions, 5 Merits and 1 Pass which I was very happy with. Their school rule on playing in the orchestra is that they have to have taken this exam first so that is partly why I put them in so relatively early. They have individual lessons AND a weekly group class which makes all the difference I feel.