i went and bought a violin at a local music shop, and i'm wondering what i need to know about setting it up, tuning it, and maintaining it. any free lesson links would be cool, too.
thank you in advance.
You ought to get a violinist to look at it and tell you what needs doing. Just hang around a concert hall 'till an orchestra shows up to practice. 8)
On your own you should check the soundpost, change the strings, and wipe off the rosin that's fallen on to the violin and built up on the strings every time you finish playing. Over time it will eat a hole in the instrument. Strings are tuned GDAE, from lowest to highest. The G is the same as the one on your guitar, and the E is an octave higher than the guitar's high E. If you have fine tuners (little knobs on the tailpiece) then you should be able to tune all right. If not, just pretend you're in tune. Those tuning pegs are a real pain to try and be precise with. Get some fine tuners if they're not there already. The soundpost should be standing just behind the treble side foot of the bridge, inside the violin. You can see it through the f-hole. A shoulder rest will make it easier to hold the instrument up.
Many thanks. yes, it does have fine tuners, and i found that to be quite useful. the tuners are EXTREMELY sensitive, and i hink it has a shoulder rest, because it's not too hard to hold at all.(although the bow holding isnt quite right...) im having trouble getting good tone, but it seems that rosin makes that a bit easier... im also rather unsure of strings.. it has steel strings on right now. Ive had it tuned to DGCF (standard guitar tuning down a whole step and up an octive) Im also a bit confuzed about bridge placement, relative fret placement... should i mark the "frets" somehow? (after i put the bridge where it's supposed to be... i have the "12th fret" marked with two dots in white out lol. well i have a jam space to set up today, so im gonna surf the forums for a bit, then get stuff done. thank you again. im probably gonna search the net some more for vids of violin players or something but if anyone happens to stumble across a link, post it here for me please... thanks again in advance, and thanks again to paul.
Yeah, the rosin's essential for getting a good sound out of a bowed instrument. As for getting a good tone, that'll start to come in a year or two, if you work really hard at it.
"A cheerful heart is good medicine."
This page here is full of photographs demonstrating proper technique. It's directed at children, so it shouldn't assume to much prior knowledge.
Here's some writing on the topic.
A shoulder rest is a plastic thing that clamps to the bottom of the violin and holds it up a little from your shoulder.
Marking frets (or, rather, where they would be on a sane instrument :) ) can be helpful. You may notice that some of the kids pictured at the first site have yellow tape marking out where the notes of the major scale are on the G and D strings. Eventually you want to get rid of these, of course.
well, i took off the chin rest... and now the violin looks much better, and for some reason sits nicer on my shoulder(it didn't reach up to my chin anyways) the site links helped IMMENSELY thank you once again. i've already figured out a few cool tunes on it, and am currently working on a violin piece for a song we wrote... it's a melencholy/eerie outro bit.
im sure im not the only one who will benifit from this!
ps can rosin damage guitar strings?
I don't think it will hurt them, although you might want to wipe it off after playing. Otherwise your strings will be covered in white powder, and that could be annoying. I've been getting into the violin recently as well. (I've dabbled in the past, but I'm better now that I was then.) I transcribed a piece of music from one of the Commander Keen games, and I found that it fits perfectly on a violin, so I've been playing that.
