Guitar Violin

Violin For Beginners: How to Get Started on the Violin

People who wish to learn the violin rarely understand how tough it is to master. Perhaps you have played a guitar or ukulele and think, “Hey, what could be so hard about a violin?” That’s a common misconception. Playing the violin for beginners can seem daunting no matter how much or little musical experience they have. 

With a guitar, even if you play the wrong note, it will still more than likely come out in the same pitch, so it at least sounds okay. Not so with a violin. Plucking is very different from “bowing” or running the bow hairs across the strings. The sound can be crystal clear and in perfect tone, or it may sound like fingernails on a blackboard. Learning to “bow” a violin adds another element of difficulty to the mix.

If you are great in physics, the explanation is easier to comprehend. For the rest of us, picture in your mind a slow motion camera. A hand plucks the guitar string and the string forms an arc that expands, like a wave, then straightens back into position. That makes a “ping” sound. This is called the vibration mode or resonance tone. The tighter the string is, then the ping becomes a higher pitched tone, right?  That’s the amplitude. It adds a harmonic element to  the several  arc vibrations until the string settles back down and the energy is dissipated. Agreed, we are talking milliseconds here, if that. With the guitar, you can change the amplitude by how you pluck, and with what like a finger, fingernail or pix, and also by where you pluck at different places on the fingerboard.  But the tonal quality still remains about the same. Not so with gliding a bow over the strings. 

When you glide the bow hairs over the violin string it makes an elongated oval-like vibration, not a linear wave like the guitar. Why? It is because as the string vibrates it is continuing to come in contact with the bow which is applying force or friction. Again we are talking milliseconds at most, but even with the naked eye you can see the string vibrate. Hermann Van Helmholtz discovered almost 150 years ago that, unlike the guitar string’s arc, the violin string makes a V, then an inverted V in a more elongated back and forth motion. If the bow doesn’t make a firm contact, the V becomes skewed and the sound becomes a screech. 

What this all means is that the playing the violin for beginner students consists of more than learning where to put your fingers. It also is about how much pressure to apply to the glide of the bow hairs and how far to glide the bow forwards and back. It also depends on the amount of rosin that has been applied to the bow hairs, which of course is transferred to the strings. Getting those factors down correctly takes practice, a lot more than plucking a guitar.

So be patient and allow yourself time to get these techniques of applying rosin, then bowing the strings down to a being natural thing for you to do. And remember, even the masters hit a screech every now and then.

About the Author

My name is Benjy Portnoy, and ViolinLessonsNow.com is a website that I set up to help people learn how to play violin. I first picked up the violin in third grade (many years ago), and it helped spurred my endless love for all types of music ever since.

In making this site, I’m hoping to share that spark and passion for music with players of all ages. The goal of this site is to help anybody – female or male, young or old to learn more about this seminal instrument and start down the path of becoming a solid player with good habits. Get great tools and free tips on learning the violin, including a no-cost, 7-day mini-course: http://www.violinlessonsnow.com/violin-for-the-beginner/

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