

Why is the violin so hard to play? - nostrademons
http://plus.maths.org/issue31/features/woodhouse/index.html

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tipjoy
Interesting side-topic: how many hackers out there are also musicians, and
what do you play? I started playing violin when I was 2, but haven't played so
much since leaving college. Maybe we could get a quartet together or
something... you know, "I'm starting a hacker quartet, BUT I'm still going to
work on my startup" :)

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brianmckenzie
Violin was my first instrument, but I've mostly played guitar for the past ten
years or so. I guess I was a musician long before I was a hacker, and I see a
lot of similarities between the two - the variety of things you can do, the
amount of time it takes to become decent at either, etc.

Surprisingly enough I've never tried to bring the two together. Signal
modelling/processing software...talk about 'hard problems'!

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nostrademons
I took a similar path - violin for 9 years, then switched to guitar when I was
about 16 (to be cool, of course). I didn't completely drop the violin, but
guitar was my main instrument for the later part of high school. But then I
picked the violin up again for All States my senior year, and kept doing it
for college. Surprisingly it's violin that stuck - I still play a couple times
a week, while I haven't touched my guitar in close to a year.

I've also dabbled in a bunch of other instruments - 3 years of clarinet in
middle school, enough viola to play and (barely) read music, picked up a fife
and tin whistle in Williamsburg, reasonably fluent on bass guitar, and I've
been trying to teach myself piano over the past couple years, with only slight
success.

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ecuzzillo
This is the best article to come out of the switch to hacker news yet.
_exactly_ what I'd read all day long, time permitting.

~~~
Goladus
You might find this book interesting:

[http://www.amazon.com/Equal-Temperament-Ruined-Harmony-
Shoul...](http://www.amazon.com/Equal-Temperament-Ruined-Harmony-
Should/dp/0393062279)

Conversationally written and accurate (so far as I was able to tell, I only
had time to read a few chapters)

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jamesbritt
I think what attracted me to the fiddle was a) the belief that the goal was to
expend as little effort as possible, and b) it had very few parts.

I think these are same things I look for in programming languages. Maximum
expressibility with a minimum of interference.

The violin is the Lisp of musical instruments.

(Or, Lisp is the violin of programming languages.)

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aston
Not having frets doesn't help, either.

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awt
The hardest part of learning to play (and to master) the violin is definitely
learning how to use the bow. Actually learning how to play in tune is hard as
well. It's just hard.

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colortone
Yeah, I was surprised that the article didn't even mention intonation. That
deserves some lip service at least.

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adnam
I play several instruments, but it's the violin playing that goes rusty
quickest. Past a certain stage, you can get out of practice with just one or
two weeks of neglect.

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juwo
the article deals only with the mechanics but surprisingly, omits the really
hard part - getting emotion to be depicted in the violin tone. that's why I
gave up the violin after 3 years.

