My rookie era: nobody sounds good when they first play a violin

The instrument’s biggest difficulty is simultaneously its greatest joy – to make a sweet sound you must relax More summer essentials I knew the violin was an unforgiving instrument but I had always wanted to play it. I didn’t make the decision to learn lightly. My violin is about 120 years old. It’s 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’s 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. Continue reading...