{"id":387218,"date":"2026-01-02T16:54:11","date_gmt":"2026-01-02T16:54:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/387218\/"},"modified":"2026-01-02T16:54:11","modified_gmt":"2026-01-02T16:54:11","slug":"my-rookie-era-nobody-sounds-good-when-they-first-play-a-violin-music","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/387218\/","title":{"rendered":"My rookie era: nobody sounds good when they first play a violin | Music"},"content":{"rendered":"

I knew the violin was an unforgiving instrument but I had always wanted to play it. I didn\u2019t make the decision to learn lightly.<\/p>\n

My violin is about 120 years old. It\u2019s a family heirloom: imported from Europe before the first world war by my German-Lutheran great-great-grandfather, a wheat and sheep farmer in western Victoria. It came into my mother\u2019s hands in rather battered condition more than a century later, after the death of a beloved great-aunt. Mum pledged to get it fixed up if one of her children ever chose to learn.<\/p>\n

Last year, at the age of 40, I finally did. I apologised in advance to my downstairs neighbours. I found a teacher, a well-known Melbourne fiddle maestro, and had my first lesson on the restored instrument in July.<\/p>\n

Nobody sounds good when they first play a violin<\/a>. Unlike guitars, violins don\u2019t have frets: you have to find the notes by ear. Years of piano training and choral singing gave me a head start there but I still didn\u2019t expect to make magic. When a professional musician friend told me it took her a good 12 months to get a decent sound out of one, I lowered my expectations even further.<\/p>\n

Steph Convery learning the violin <\/a>\u2018I practised every day, for anywhere between 30 minutes and two hours\u2019<\/p>\n

My goal at the end of three months was modest: to play something that wasn\u2019t a nursery rhyme and didn\u2019t screech.<\/p>\n

My strategy, however, was bold. I chose to embrace the horror. The best way to stop subjecting my partner, neighbours and my poor, terrified cat to bad violin, I figured, was to immediately subject them to as much of it as possible and get past the screechy phase quickly.<\/p>\n

So I practised every day, for anywhere between 30 minutes and two hours. And I fell in love with it. Yes, it sounded like fingernails down a blackboard but it somehow felt expressive and all-encompassing, the way singing does.<\/p>\n

I discovered that not only are violins unforgiving, they are existentially fussy. They are picky about the weather \u2013 too dry and they can crack; too humid and the whole thing can come unglued \u2013 and even sunlight plays havoc with the tuning.<\/p>\n

\u2018After six weeks, I was done with the introductory workbook and was playing \u201cproper\u201d songs.\u2019 Photograph: Ellen Smith\/The Guardian<\/p>\n

I also learned that the violin\u2019s biggest difficulty is simultaneously its greatest joy: to play well you must relax. The bow judders and scrapes with too much tension. A sweet sound requires mindfulness and calm \u2013 a tall order for a beginner, because there is nothing calm about that noise. But I found the desire to get past that first hurdle, the discipline I\u2019d established to ensure I played every day, crept over into the practice itself. Playing the violin became a way to clear my mind of everything else, because the violin by its nature demanded my undivided attention.<\/p>\n

Sooner than anyone expected, least of all me, the dedication started paying off. I started sounding good. After six weeks I was done with the introductory workbook and was playing \u201cproper\u201d songs. Before three months had passed, my teacher was handing me grade four repertoire to learn.<\/p>\n

A few months ago I played for an audience of friends for the first time: five whole songs, not a nursery rhyme among them. They weren\u2019t perfect but I was proud. \u201cYou\u2019re flying,\u201d my teacher said.<\/p>\n

Now I just want to see how high I can get.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I knew the violin was an unforgiving instrument but I had always wanted to play it. I didn\u2019t…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":387219,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":{"0":"post-387218","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/387218","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=387218"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/387218\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/387219"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=387218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=387218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=387218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}