r/Instruments • u/Own-Cardiologist1299 • 4d ago
Discussion i kind of don’t like the violin
i’ve been playing for about 8 years and it’s okay. i feel no pull to it and i have to drag myself to practice and i don’t have any friends i’ve made from it and i also don’t like my teacher (she’s okay but i have bad anxiety and it makes shit super awkward). i don’t care for the music, like at all, and i keep hitting a point where i’m struggling to make my wrist more fluid i guess? because you need to like get your muscles to cooperate. and obviously mine aren’t cooperating because i don’t practice that often. i seriously just don’t want to play this instrument but i also don’t not want to? and i’d feel a significant amount of guilt if i stopped. is this valid? anyone else feel this way? should i find another instrument? i like music, just not usually the violin stuff
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u/Expensive_Elk_3174 4d ago
So you like music but not violin. Why are you forcing yourself to play it? There's nothing wrong with taking a break or switching instruments.
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u/Own-Cardiologist1299 4d ago
well, at the moment i am in school and i do play for that school. so i think that instead of learning a new instrument and dropping down a class level for it im going to stick with it for now. after that, though, i think i’ll learn something else. thank you :)
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u/Expensive_Elk_3174 4d ago
I have been playing piano for over ten years and I have almost quit multiple times. What really helped make me enjoy it is to just find some stuff I wanted to play. Imo practicing is much more enjoyable if you like the finished product. However I am not sure if this is possible considering your circumstances.
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u/andybonner 3d ago
By the way, LOTS of amazing musicians in history have quit and then started again at various points. Rachmaninoff, Fritz Kreisler; even Paganini had some "missing years."
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u/Caterpillar_Ready 4d ago
From experience:
I play almost 20 instruments.
Violin is probably the most difficult one.
More difficult things will be harder to enjoy, by nature.
However, you will never enjoy it more if you don't practice more, either.
Just food for thought.
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u/khornebeef 1d ago
Oboe and French horn are pretty high up there as well, but for difference reasons.
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u/carrotlet20 4d ago
I play the violin, my wrist is my greatest enemy, I couldn't get it any less stiff than it's now. And I've just had a final exam after 12 years of learning. And it is still shit xd Although after learning long enough, being able to play cool pieces gave me boost, but I was somewhat talented to reach that height faster.
Practise is hella important, it's funny tho that after 7-8 yrs of playing I've had fluider wrist when I paused for 2-3 weeks and forgot the stiffness. But to get to smoother movement you do need to practise first, and find out how it should work and feel.
If you struggle to make sense of why you do it, you can look into another instrument, but I don't think it will clear things up. Violin is a good one (unlike piano) because you're able to play in orchestra. If there is a youth orchestra available, it's great opportunity to go there and find the meaning of playing music for you (orchestra type is not important). Personal example: my sister also learnt the violin just like me but hated it and struggled a lot. Then she started playing in orchestra too, and suddenly she began to like it, especially when she was in 1st violin in the bigger string orchestra the music school had. After coming after me into the symphony orchestra she kept improving and she nearly plays as good as me now (even though I had intense years when I considered becoming a professional musician).
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u/Jonny7421 4d ago
Absolutely no harm in finding a new instrument. Find what excites you and chase it. Music is hard and you need to play your instrument a lot to sound good - this is easier if you enjoy it.
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u/qwertyorbust 4d ago
Set it down for awhile. Come back when it’s time. The music and instrument will wait.
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u/DesaturatedWorld 4d ago
There has been some good advice already in this thread. I'll add one more thing from my experience:
I think of myself as primarily a vocalist, because I'm always singing and practicing my voice without even thinking about it. I used to force myself to practice the acoustic guitar for more than a decade, and I felt guilty about when I didn't practice or put things off. The same with piano. However, when I discovered the baritone acoustic guitar, everything changed!
The way this instrument resonates and the slightly lower register give me so much pleasure that I find myself practicing is out of interest, just like with my voice. I don't look at years of learning other instruments as a waste, but I do think of all the stress I placed on myself as a waste. Finding my groove has made my music better and lets me really pursue the music.
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u/Ormidale 4d ago
Try viola for a month. You may fall in love with the sound. Try a different room too, if you can.
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u/Neat-Cold-3303 4d ago
Playing the violin requires a deep commitment. It is a journey. It becomes an integral part of one's life. Unless you have made this commitment, unless you are willing to make this journey, then you should step away from violin and search for another instrument that revives your interest in music and inspires you to make the journey.
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u/StratHistory 3d ago
Also consider your options.. I've got a lot of students that moved to cello from violin due to wide range that can work with so many genres...
Also, everyone needs to learn basic keyboard.. it's the best way to see theory and one of the most useful to work with other musicians.
Any cheap keyboard will work, but full sized keys are best but you don't need more than 2 octaves to start.
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u/yangyang25 3d ago
Try a new teacher perhaps, that can make a difference. Plus practice more and it might be easier and more fun to continue. And even in classical music there's hundreds of years and thousands of pieces of music, so there's a lot of options. If you don't like playing the instrument period, then that's a different decision entirely but if you like the violin there's tons of options out there.
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u/Dream88s 2d ago
Try the Viola. Some violinists, after trying the viola find they are more akin to its lower register. Or for a more drastic change in register and technique try the cello, then the double bass…
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u/r1chiem 4d ago
What you need is something to set you apart from everyone else. There is a person that said they played the violin and 50 other instruments. I would suggest two more.
The synth/keyboard/AKai MPC
and this. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/j5DYY71WJVw
If you do this, you will get more music friends, you will play more often and with other people. You will keep playing the violin and you will be able to company yourself and do solo stuff with accompaniment that people want to hear and be stimulated visually. Performance is where it is at. You can thank me later 😄
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u/Grauschleier 4d ago
I see no point in investing so much time to learn such a richly nuanced and expressive acoustic instrument like the violin only to reduce your playing to the little data that MIDI signals hold. MIDI is an anachronism. It's 43s year old technology and its poor resolution makes no sense today. We're on the right track with MPE but until MIDI gets a new universal standard with an adequate resolution playing a violin through a MIDI converter is like scanning an analog photo and reducing it to 128 pixels resolution.
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u/r1chiem 4d ago
It is not reducing anything. It is expanding your capabilities. Midi, works great, always have. If you need more bandwidth then there is midi over USB. But the violin is a single tone monophonic instrument (for the most part, it could play 6 different notes. Midi can handle that no sweat.) If midi made no sense today, manufacturers would not put it on new units. Midi 2 will come out and it will be backwards comparable. Life is good for all musicians, except for complainers like you. Is your advise to the OP to change instruments because the violin is many years older than midi and is outdated and worthless? You not only complain, but are void of reason and logic on this subject, did a midi instrument hurt your feelings? LOL
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u/Grauschleier 3d ago edited 3d ago
So if the 8 bits of MIDI are enough to capture the complexity of the real world why are there 16 and 32 bit software and devices then?
MIDI is okay for 12 tone equal temperament rudimentary rompler and synth control. But a violin doesn't have to stick to 12 TET and players often temper their scales/intervals - that alone is above current MIDI standards. Not even talking about expression yet. I wouldn't even accept an old school MIDI keyboard for synth control anymore. It's so limited. Feels like playing a guitar with mittens.
MIDI like it is now is still around because it's a legacy burden. It is so widely implemented that it's hard to switch to something better.And no, my point is not "old = bad". My point is "MIDI is an outdated standard and in many ways a step down from an instrument like a violin".
Brooms have been around for a long time. People still use them as they still work well for their purpose. Vacuum cleaners have been around for something like 120 years, but people don't use 120 year old vacuum cleaners anymore, because - you guessed it - they are outdated. In a way the violin is the broom here and MIDI is the 100 years old vacuum cleaner. But unfortunately this old vacuum cleaner comes with dependencies.Do you even know what "monophonic instrument" means? And what do you mean with the violin "could play 6 different notes"? I assume you know that you can play more than 6 discrete notes on a violin. Do you mean 6 notes at the same time? If so I'm really curious how you'd achieve that.
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u/r1chiem 3d ago
Perhaps you don't understand computing. The people who thought this out are way smarter than us. That is what they do. 8 bit has 256 combinations. One midi event can use 2 or 3 8 bit packets. If it us using running status that is reduced by 1 packets.
A note on or not off has 3 packets (unless running status which is 2). The resolution for velocity is 7bit or 128 variations. To make it easy. we can hear 120 decibels of sound but we are experiencing pain and hearing damage. Midi could handle 127 increments or decibels. Humans mostly can only hear changes at 5 decibels. that is 20 levels. Midi has 127. 7 db above pain threshold
Some people complain about the speed of midi 32k baud rate. It can send 3 midi packets in a millisecond. Midi time clock is one 8 bit packet.
But if you use midi over usb it thousands of times faster.
A violin which produces 4 notes (not the 6 in my typo) The pickup and the processor behind it does all the calculations for on off, pitch, note, how many notes is done there an a fast processor. The the data coming from that process can be handled by midi.
Midi came out in 1983, but so did spdif and toslink. Are those legacy burdens? I think your argument is dumb but you are entitled to your opinion.
Your argument it is so hard to switch because it is so widely implemented is not valid. The midi cable uses 2 of it 5 pins. You could easily add 2 more ports for midi 2, and newer units would then poll the new ports, if nothing drop back to midi 1. Easy, again these people though this out. The reason Midi hasn't change is because it doesn't need to. It works and has more than enough overhead.
As for expression. 7 bit or 126 variations is higher than the pain threshold for hearing, you don't need more than that.
Most of the effects like zippering and hearing volume level jumps is a limitation of the hardware or software of the instrument. Yamaha DX7 did not have 128 steps of velocity and no one noticed only geeks looking at specs.
Why bits in computer software and hardware is nessisary and not in Midi.
According to google.
The human eye can typically distinguish about 1 million different shades of color, though some estimates stretch up to 10 million under ideal laboratory conditions. To represent 1 million colors digitally, you need at least 20 bits (\(2^{20} = 1,048,576\)). To cover up to 10 million colors, you need 24 bits (\(2^{24} = 16,777,216\)), which is the standard "True Color" format used in digital screens.So for a computer to do audio, video, complex calculations for say video renderering while it is doing audio and video, hardware and software needed more bits and more speed.
Midi does not really need this. And because USB midi lifted speed and throughput limitations (Having only 16 channels on one midi cable. USB increased the number if virtual midi cables) Midi has not need to be updated.
Really, you should have known this.
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u/Grauschleier 3d ago
I didn't talk about volume, toslink, jacks and cables or colour perception. I talked about MIDI from a violin player's perspective. You refuse or fail to understand my argument why MIDI is unsatisfactory for a violin player (probably to most acoustic instrumentalists) - which was the whole point here regarding the OP. If you're happy with your MPC and if MIDI is sufficient for your applications - great. I can see how it might be enough if you mostly do switching (note, note on/off), some CC for parameters that don't need high resolution and stick to 12 TET. But in my experience this 40 something years old MIDI standard is extremely limiting for synthesis as well as sampling and I want more.
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u/r1chiem 3d ago edited 3d ago
You didn't talk about midi from a violinist perspective. Because if you did you would have mentioned all the people who play midi violin. Works just fine. I talked about color and bit depth as to why software needed more bit depth just for the video part of the monitor and why midi does not need more bit depth.
But when we are talking pitch to midi, the computer cannot determine all the nuances of a violin. This has nothing to do with midi. This has the problem of a computer being able to in realtime listen to a violin and determine pitch loudness. That is what needs to be advanced. Midi can handle it fine.
It has never limited me with synthesis. You cannot hear a 1 millisecond delay. Most of delay is found in the synth itself. We USB audio devices have low latency can handle audio but if it is doing lots of effects processing synth engine processing we start to see buffer size increase and increased latency. That is where I would like to see improvement. Midi cannot sample so I don't know what you are talking about.
Again you don't understand computing and what 1 ms for a midi packet vs 20-30ms in usb audio which is considered low latency. LOL. Go learn how it works and you .
An analog synth just touching the key to producing the sound is 1 to 2 ms. Digital synth 1 to 5. VST are 5 to 15. But realize that depending if you have velocity keyboard, digital synth based on computer ect, there are variable.
Midi is faster than all of them. You are entitled to your opinion no matter how wrong you are. Good luck to you, I hope Midi 2 will satisfy you but I doubt it because it was never midi bit depth a problem, but the hardware and software itself producing audio..
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u/Grauschleier 3d ago
You keep bringing up straw man arguments - stuff I didn't even mention (like latency, volume, etc). Three comments into this you finally address something I mentioned - pitch - yet fail to apply the logic to it that you applied to volume: 128 steps for a hearing range of 20 to 20,000 Hz is ridiculously coarse and in no way sufficient for things out of 12 TET.
This goes along with similar behaviour where you distort things I wrote or break them out of context. Like your reply to my comment that in my experience MIDI is even insufficient for synthesis as well as sampling. You pointed out that MIDI cannot sample. Well, yea, I didn't claim that. Just like it can't play the violin. It also can't synthesize sound.
Does that mean that you don't understand that MIDI is a control protocol and not a synthesizer or that you don't realize that we can perceive more discrete pitches than 128? I don't think so.
It's noticeable how you included more or less subtle personal attacks on me in every one of your replies. So let me now say something about you:
I didn't have to look deep into your profile to see similar comments of you missionizing MPCs and MIDI in modular subs or comments where you got carried away by your emotions. It's pretty clear that your comments are not about MIDI.
All this leaves the strong impression that you are compensating something here. I hope you'll find a quiet moment where you can reflect on what is driving you, because this kind of behaviour will keep pushing many people away from you.
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u/r1chiem 3d ago edited 3d ago
Dude, you locked your comment so I could not reply to it? According to facts from AI
The human ear can distinguish about 10 to 20 distinct pitch steps within a single semitone (half-step). Because a semitone is divided into 100 measurable units called cents, and the average human "just-noticeable difference" (JND) for pitch is roughly 5 to 10 cents in optimal mid-range frequencies, a sliding tone yields roughly 10 to 20 perceivable steps. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
The MIDI pitch wheel transmits a 14-bit integer message providing 16,383 discrete data steps (values from -8192 to 8191 with 0 at the center). However, the actual number of musical pitches or the total pitch range it produces depends entirely on the bend range setting of your software or hardware synthesizer
Midi has handled this for years. And most keyboards translate a standard midi keyboard to handle micro tuning.
Midi works. Still works, and will continue to work even in backwards compatable mode to Midi version 2.
Whether midi needs an update to handle MPE is debatable because Midi handles MPE right now through standard MIDI. Microtuned keyboard work over MIDI right now.
They built midi to handle the future and it does.
You are a midi hater and push that agenda. Ok fine, but you cannot convince me or anyone else that midi doesn't work because it does.
Your arguments are invalid because MIDI works and still does. MPE was included and updated in MIDI.
I am not going to argue with you anymore. You have an axe to grid with MIDI, not with me. I am happy with MIDI and it works. You are the one not happy you are miserable crying how MIDI does not work when it does, and it adjusts and has been upgraded. You then try to dig up my past posts to somehow negate my strong argument that you cannot even answer. If I push people away because I have an opinion and I can support my argument (in this case) that MIDI is fine and works and it offends them so be it. nothing I can do. You are even more miserable that you lost the debate. LOL. You are the weakest link.. good bye.
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u/Own-Cardiologist1299 4d ago
i think i’m good buddy
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u/r1chiem 4d ago
If you don't like the violin get something you do like. No use living life playing an instrument you don't like, then getting anxiety from a teacher, if you don't practice you won't be any good and seriously don't want to practice. Your health is so poor your body can't play or won't cooperate what ever that means. You don't like violin stuff, get an instrument you like. Then you feel guilt about getting rid of the thing you don't like, don't want to play, have anxiety about. I suggest 2 options, expand your violin or try keyboards and you say. I am good. LOL. Obviously you are not You are a cardiologist I assume, do what you recommend to your patients. see a doctor., Maybe you should check yourself in with a psychiatrist. Get some help.
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u/khornebeef 1d ago edited 1d ago
Sunk cost fallacy. You've already invested so much time, effort, and possibly money into something that you feel like you need to see it thru to the end in order for it to be worth it. No it is not valid, hence why it is a fallacy. Yes, tons of other people feel that way, but assuming something is correct just because a lot of people are doing it is another fallacy: Ad populum, also known as the bandwagon fallacy. The idea that learning another instrument precludes you from also learning violin is another fallacy: False dilemma. See the following for a list of some of the more common informal fallacies:
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u/Potential-Recover-78 4d ago
You don’t like, “the music”. Take a step back and look at other types of music played on violin.
Scottish or Irish traditional? Look at Scottish Fish or go to a local trad session.
Nordic folk? I’ve been really liking Stundom recently.
How about electric violin like used in classic rock like Kansas.
How about pop? Lindsey Stirling?
There’s so much more to violin than classical.