Fiddling around

Returning to the violin after a 30 year break

Jun 15, 2024

Hello everyone

Well, I’m still reading and creating Zettelkasten notes on Elizabeth Strout’s Amy & Isabelle, so you all have a reprieve on hearing my thoughts on that book for another week you’ll be glad to hear.

This week I’m going to tell you about how and why I returned to playing the violin after a 30 year break.

Last June, on a whim, I got down the old Skylark violin I’d had as a teenager, wiped off the dust, googled what strings a violin had, tried to tune it, and promptly snapped the bridge in half. Now, to be fair, the bridge was thin and was probably on its way out anyway, but I didn’t know enough about what I was doing to think about checking that the bridge was perpendicular to the violin before putting the pressure of taunt strings onto it. I got it fixed well enough that it could withstand the strings, and, while I was waiting for a replacement bridge, tentatively started practising.

So why did I decide to return to playing the violin? Well, through therapy and using the CBT parts of the Pathways Pain Relief app (which I must get back to - my pain levels are so high right now and this was helping), I realised I wasn’t actually having much fun in my life. I was looking for something to make me feel more alive, and I remembered how much fun I had had as a child, playing music and dancing. Consequently, I was heading off to FolkActive Dance the following Wednesday.

I was aware of this monthly dance session because, for several years, I had wanted to join the Southampton Folk Orchestra, also run by FolkActive, and had been attempting to teach myself to play the recorder. The recorder is hard to play, people! I was terrible at it! It occurred to me that I did actually know how to play an instrument, the violin (I’ve played viola and cello (badly) too, but those are a story and instruments for another day). Maybe, I thought, I would be able to make faster progress if I tried to relearn that?

So, I joined FolkActive Dance, got unexpectedly recruited to a Morris Side (again, another story), and then, a few days later, in the same hall where I had been dancing so confidently, found myself sat nervously clutching a violin. I had been persuaded by C, who runs the orchestra and leads the band that plays for the dance session, not to just ‘come and watch’ the orchestra for a session, but to come with my instrument. C is gentle and kind, but she is also quietly insistent! She and the rest of the orchestra were so welcoming. I was immediately taken under the wing of V, who shared her music stand, offered to tune my violin, and then said, ‘I definitely know you from somewhere!’ It turns out she looked after William when he was ill in hospital, and remembered both him and me. We later discovered that we had also both been student midwives, and knew each other from the now defunct Student Midwife Sanctuary forum. (What a wonderful, hilarious, educational (and at times explosive) online space that was!)

I went away from those first few SFO rehearsals, having been able to play only a very little pizzicato, utterly dazed and incredibly happy! Over the summer, when the orchestra wasn’t meeting, I practised hard, and returned in September, with a new violin, able to use my bow and to join in with playing a fair amount of the music. I got to play in my first concert in decades at the end of September, when SFO played at Music in the City (an annual music festival in Southampton).

A year later I have made progress. I still can’t play the pieces I could play aged 16, but I wasn’t a particularly accomplished player then anyway. I spent much of my childhood in a confused daze, overwhelmed by a world I didn’t understand (I still don’t, but I’m better at figuring it out, at least some of the time), and that affected, I can see now, my ability to learn. I lacked any real understanding of what I was supposed to be doing on the viola (my first instrument) and then the violin, and had little understanding of music theory. This time round I am trying to build a stronger foundation - good playing technique (I really need to work with a teacher once I have a bit more time, energy and money - C, who runs the orchestra, is a fiddle teacher luckily), developing a more sensitive ‘ear’, building up my understanding of music theory…

I am also trying to work my way systematically through learning various folk tunes, focusing on learning the music played at the Alton Steady Session (a folk music session where the music is played at a ‘steady’ speed). I am mostly learning them using ‘the dots’, which is what folkies call written notation. I want to learn to play by ear, and already I am getting better at this. I think it will actually suit my neurodivergent brain a little better.

A while back I found a treasure-trove of recordings on Paul Hardy’s labyrinthine website. When his Cambridgeshire-based steady session was closed over the Covid lockdowns, he started recording pieces each week, and, when I am ready to learn more pieces by ear, I will use his now enormous library of recorded tunes, which you can find here. But, for now, my original plans to learn one new tune by ear each week have been abandoned.

Despite all these grand plans for sensible, structured learning, what actually happens, more than half the time, is that I take out my violin and I play whatever I feel like! And, honestly, I’m fine with that too. I’m making progress, and, most importantly, I am having fun. And finding a way to have fun was why I started down this road in the first place. Yes, I would like to be a useful member of the Southampton Folk Orchestra and maybe one day be good enough to play for Morris sides or other dances and ceilidhs. But most of all I want to have fun making music with friends and strangers, whether that is at folk sessions (steady or otherwise) or playing duets with my oldest friend K, who took up the viola as an adult. We got to play together for the first time earlier this year, and we had such a good time!

When I was finding a title for this newsletter, I googled (childishly) the meaning of ‘fiddling around’ and found the dictionary definition of ‘spending time doing small things that are not important or necessary’. People need time doing things in a non-purposeful way, whether it is gardening, tidying the house, wandering around a bookshop, chatting with friends, strumming a guitar. Pottering around, puttering around, fiddling around… I may have developed this wandering through life into something of an art-form!

Whatever else you do this weekend, enjoy some fiddling around!

Emma xx

Welcome to all my new readers! It is wonderful to know that so many people are reading and enjoying my writing. To read the Wondering Steps archives, learn more about me, manage your subscription and more, click the button below.

Wondering Steps homepage

If you have enjoyed this post, please hit the heart button at the top or bottom of the page to ‘like’ it. I love reading and responding to comments, so click the little speech bubbles at the top or bottom of the page or the button below to leave me comment!

Fiddling around

Returning to the violin after a 30 year break

Discussion about this post