156th day sober. Last night, while watching a 1-hour BBC documentary to time myself, I did "exercises" where I pantomimed playing a violin. The reason for doing this is to get my muscles used to the motion. I interspersed 30-50 "bows" with various exercises to move my arms/shoulders around and loosen up. The reason for this is to avoid the thing beginners have where they start out and 15 minutes' playing makes them sore the next day. I want to be a little bit more prepared than that.
There are a lot of confusing "methods" of bowing. There's the Belgian bow hand, the Russian, etc. There's the Russian method of using the whole arm, other methods that keep the shoulder still and use the forearm and wrist, etc. I have run into the problem of differences in arm lengths and even the ratio of the length of upper arm to lower arm, in other activities like archery. So, this is another reason why I intend to stay away from teachers and while being open to all the "input" I can get ahold of, for my own style of bowing, of arm-use, etc. I will start with paying attention to what's happening where the bow meets the strings and work back from there.
I am only hoping to get good enough to busk, and to "get around" enough to play music I like, not become a concert performer. So I can learn any way I like. Although, years ago in Santa Cruz I saw a self-taught violinist who was doing vibrato by wiggling the string back and forth like you do on guitar - I draw the line at that.
I guess the best way to describe my way of thinking is, when you take a sport like baseball or basketball, they don't tell players of different sizes and shapes to all do it a fixed way, but give them general principles like follow-through and of course ambitious athletes all observe "the greats" a lot to see if any aspects of their methods might apply to them, and they freely work out what works for them.
I called Ken's wife, Suzy, to tell her a large box will arrive at the house for me, probably on Wednesday. And we talked a bit. Things are fine, their daughter's all moved in to the house she bought in N. Las Vegas, and all's going pretty well. I told her about my trumpet playing and the money I'd made, and she said "You must be pretty good!" to make that much. I said it's that music on the street is becoming really, really rare. Like I'm just about the only one doing it where there used to be tons of street musicians.
I also told her that frankly, it's kind of surprising I was making money at all because "trumpet's pretty gross" to which she replied, "I know." Since she's trained as a pianist and singer, I wonder if she was in a high school band and had some of the typical experiences with smart-ass brass players and their spit valves?
The reason I steered things this way is, the box I'm getting will probably say KENNEDY VIOLINS on it. It won't be any secret what's in there.
I'd also mentioned how things changed once the students went back to school, and that I'm gonna take some time off until December when I can play Xmas carols.
What I'm *not* mentioning, is, that I wonder if I might be able to play enough Xmas carols on violin, in two months' practice time, to go out busking in December all right, but with the violin? There's no way I'll sound as crap as I did on trumpet during my early busking sessions. And Xmas carols, by and large, are very easy to play.
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