186th day sober. I listed Ebay things last night and got my practice in, although I didn't feel like it at first but then I got into it. It's amazing how much more natural it's feeling, and I did the open string stuff and the first page with the first fingered note and part of the next one. When I was playing trumpet I had to be stubborn and play each exercise at least 5X if not 10X, and this has carried over into violin, where it's no sweat for me to practice each exercise many times before moving to the next.
I want to say that even at my level I know this violin is not as good as the rentals I played years ago. Nor is the bow anything to write home about. But I am going to be stubborn and keep on with them as long as I can so it will be more of a treat when I get something good. This violin does stay in tune and I'm pretty happy with it because it does all I expected it to do. I can practice like crazy on it for at least a year before even thinking about anything else.
As for busking, there's no way I'll be ready to play Xmas carols in December unless I feel like getting out there and flogging away on them with the trumpet. But that's OK since I'm saving half of each pay check ($175) each week and at the rate things are going, in a year or two will be able to get a new Luis & Clark carbon-fiber violin, the kind Tanya in New Orleans plays, if I like. When I was playing trumpet I told myself when I got to a certain level I'd get a really nice horn like a Bach Strad or a Yamaha "Shew Horn" so it's pretty much the same thing.
On YouTube I've been seeing videos of these hucksters who will set up by a Wal-Mart etc. in the parking lot with a cheap electric violin and an amp and so on, and mimic playing, with a sign out saying stuff about their hungry children and so on, and apparently it fools a lot of people because most people are kind of dumb. But it also probably alienates a lot of people who see right through it. But this is why I don't like the idea of backing tracks and amps and so on. Not only are they a lot more equipment to go wrong, but it's easy for a lot of people to think, "Oh, it's just on tape he's not really playing". I think this hurts Gabriel The Violinist because he always plays with a pretty loud backing track.
So I'm getting less and less interested in electric violins, because while they seem neat, playing one seems more and more like a direction I don't want to go in.
Another interesting observation: I follow Reddit subreddits like r/collapse and r/preppers and there are always these lists of what to have when the apocalypse comes, and musical instruments are never, ever mentioned. There are always long lists of electronic geegaws that will just about immediately fail, but never good old acoustic instruments. Yet Selco, who survived the Yugoslavia breakup, mentioned in one of his posts a typical guitar geek, the skinny type with long hair and so on, doing just fine because there was no music without him. The local warlord killed much more "useful" people than him on a whim, but he was kept safe. This of course was in the 90s and not the 1790s, so there was modern tech somewhere on the Earth but it might as well have been the 1790s and someone who could play music where there was no electricity, no radios, etc. was treasured.
I slept late enough that I missed the window to take things to the post office etc. and that's if I had them packed, which I didn't. I slept until about 5:30. Once it was a bit later, I wanted to go outside to put a box I'd left in front of the trash enclosure inside it, as no one had picked it up, but quickly went back inside as there was a zombie staggering around out there. I looked again and the zombie was gone and so was the box! The zombie was now rummaging through the HVAC's place for metal and had apparently taken the box - so I didn't have to worry about it now.
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