fortuitous!

I got a violin I love just in time to learn how to shift my left hand up and down the violin. These are called "positions," and they're numbered, 1st through whatever (7th or 8th, I think, not used by normal humans). You might think, looking at the unmarked black expanse of the violin fingerboard, that finding a note is a pain in the ass, and you are 100% correct! This is why I have spent 2 years and 11 months learning to play in tune (with considerable if not universal success) via ear training and muscle memory, and now I get to learn to play in tune again. It's nowhere near as bad as I would have thought, though, because shifting to higher positions builds on the muscle memory of 1st position. (In 3rd position, your index finger goes where your ring finger was when you were in 1st position.)

I've also been drifting away from the Suzuki book, learning fiddle tunes instead, but the way to be able to tackle any fiddle tune is to play music harder than fiddle tunes, so I've been learning some Baroque stuff instead. Exhibit A is this Vivaldi concerto, starting with the third movement:

I like Yitzhak Perlman's version, partly because I have happy memories of seeing him on Sesame Street when I was a kid, but mostly because he plays it slower than the other versions I found.

The reason I'm glad to be learning this on a violin I love is that the notes are really high, and trying to play this stuff really separates out how good the instrument sounds and how well it's set up, and if I tried to do this on that stupid rental I happily returned last week, I would probably go nuts.

(Among other things, I always had this one problem where playing the pitch of the E string on the A string just sounded terrible no matter what I did. Probably in the future I could take that violin and make it sound good, but for learning now, it was just pissing me off. In the meantime, now I know what to check for when evaluating a violin for myself.)

So the fiddle is still marvelous. Since I can record it easily, I've started playing around with recording stuff, specifically multi-tracking some duets. Let me tell you, I have never encountered anything that exposes flaws in my playing like trying to accompany myself. It turns out that feeling like you're playing in tune, or even playing in tune with the previous phrase, is not that same as actually playing in tune the entire time. What a stupid fucking instrument.

Back later, I gotta go practice.