I've just started learning the viola. I'm Grade 6 flute and Grade 4 piano already.

I've joined an amateur orchestra and I'd like to know about what level (grade standard) I'd need to be in order to move over to the strings section. I'm having lessons and am enjoying learning - in spite of the alto clef!

The standard of players in the orchestra is variable, but I don't really want to look like an idiot by being unable to play anything. I was watching the viola players last week and they didn't seem to move out of first position at all.

Any opinions or suggestions?

To be honest, it depends a lot on how much time you're able to put in to it. Of course, having a musical background is great and will help a lot (and alto clef isn't that bad.....), but strings are a totally different thing to both piano and flute - as you've no doubt discovered already. Finding the note is different from 'just' pressing the key and can take a lot of practise.

I think your best bet is to talk to people in the section you're interested in as well as those who run the orchy you're with. They'll be in the best position to advise you.

Congrats on taking up viola, btw!

My guess is that they will welcome you with open arms as soon as they get wind of the fact you are a viola player!

Make sure you are comfortable making a good, clear sound, playing in tune and sightreading fairly fluently before you move over to the 'dark side'. That way you will enjoy the experience more and, importantly, be able to make a good contribution to your section right from the start.

Thanks for the replies. I can only manage one lesson a fortnight due to home committments, so it's kind of frustrating! There's only three viola players in the orchestra and two of them don't seem to play much.

Would you be able to talk to one of the viola players and ask them about playing and maybe ask if you can have a look at their music?

Good luck with viola though, hope you get much joy from it

Yes, I might very well do that. I was peeping over their shoulders last night as the woodwind section was sitting behind them. I saw a lot of semiquavers and didn't look much after that!!!!!!!!!!!!

Oh semiquavers are OK - as long as they're all on the same few notes!!!!!

Yeah, I never thought of that! good point! My optimism remains intact!

i think its best to ask the conductor/person who organises it what standard the pieces are. obviously being grade 6 flute wont really help with the viola technique . if the pieces are too difficult then its always something to work towards.

however, saying that i joined an orchestra on viola a week after i started learning.

There aren't many viola players around, so normally there's a demand for them

At my school, my teacher doesn't really care about the fact that I only started a while ago and can barely learn to play. And seeing as you already play instruments, you should be able to learn the viola part for the orchestra fairly quickly and be able to play along after a bit of practise, regardless of the fact that you might not totally get all the notes you're playing!

Holy Muffins!!!! A week after starting???

That's good going!

Holy Muffins?!?!

I've never heard that before.

Love it!

Cheers,

Matt. (Whose vocabulary is expanding all the time.)

yes it was, but i did have my grade 8 violin so it really was only a question of learning the clef. and i have my little tricks for reading it so i ahve very few problems (as long as i start on the right note)
x

Yey, we play the same instruments!!

Isn't alto clef a ######?!!

No, you just need to get used to it. I struggle with bass clef, but I know I just need time and work on it.

I have to say that I'm NOT loving Alto Clef!!!!!!!!

I'm just seeing the notes as positions on the strings rather than trying to name them as I'm playing - I'm hoping that it just sinks in that way, rather than making an intellectual exercise out of learning it!!!!

It's the only thing that's causing me probs really. Other than that, I LOVE the viola and it's great to have lessons.

My beginners book is full of music for kids though - I'd really like to have a 'proper' book with some classical stuff in. I hate the Old Macdonald stuff!!!!

If anybody can recommend a beginners viola book that's more geared towards adults then I'd be really grateful - something I can order off the 'net perhaps?

If you treat the alto clef as an extension/overlap of the treble clef, with middle C on the middle line, it all makes sense - that is what is working for me anyway. I am a violinist beginning viola, and don't have much experience of alto clef but it's falling into place with this approach.
Also writing out simple tunes to play for yourself would help - I haven't really looked for any books yet so this has been useful for me.
Hope that is helpful,
N


And I have just thought, if you have something like Sibelius it is easy to transpose music so you could use some of your easier flute/piano repertoire as a way of playing things you like.

N

the way i do it (as i learnt violing first) is to either imagine that the not written in alto clef is a 3rd lower and play it as it would be played on a violin but on the viola. eg, middle C in alto clef would be the G above that in treble clef, 3rd finger on D string, so play that on viola, and it is 3rd finger on G string which is the C.

alternatively, the viola music has the same fingering as third position on the violin, so use 3rd position violin fingerings in 1st position on viola and it comes out right.

though knowing what the notes actually are and my ability to read them as 'viola notes' is improving.

echelon, I agree with nova. In fact, since you play the piano, you already know the alto clef. Think of the treble and bass clefs together, with middle C on a ledger line in between. Now imagine that the top three lines of the treble clef have disappeared (or turned into ledger lines). Same with the bottom three lines of the bass clef. Hey presto!

As to books, why is your teacher making you use a children's book which you don't like? Any decent teacher will be able to recommend a more suitable book. If yours can't or won't, you won't go wrong with the New Tune a Day book by Sarah Pope. Very clear, very sensible, no childish pictures etc. You can get it with either a CD or a DVD.