getting there!

After about 9 months of violin, much of the noise sounds like music!

It's still a ridiculous instrument, sensitive to the smallest misstep in timing, or barely-perceptible muscle tension. It's a lot like singing that way, where you get these odd tips that are often not physically possible--my favorite is "sing while opening more space between your upper and lower molars"--but using that image, you can get your body into the right position. "Relax your sternohyoid muscles" is not helpful feedback for most of us.

My new teacher told me about "leading tones," which may have been in that second semester of Music Theory that I dropped out of. In the violin context, it means that certain notes--predictably, thank heavens--get played at a slightly higher pitch than normal, which amounts to placing your finger a millimeter or two higher than you would normally. In science-y terms, if you would normally play a B at 493.88 Hz, unless the next note is C, in which case you might play it at 494.5 Hz. He said, "Our brains make it sound better that way," and it did explain some passages whose correct intonation has escaped me.

On the other hand, it is a tremendous sense of accomplishment to actually get better at playing the violin, because the violin does not help you in the slightest.