Learning to play the violin is difficult enough with a teacher, so to make it even more difficult, now you will learn how to teach yourself to play the violin.
Everything you will read here comes from my experience, as I am committed to providing value to my readers, and don’t want what I learned to go to waste.
Learning violin theory online for free
Learning theory is much easier (and boring) than learning the practice, it’s easier in the sense that there are not many ways you could get it wrong, you just need to do the lessons below and practice it by yourself, there are no shortcuts. And it’s easier because when you learn to play violin by yourself there are too many ways you could get it wrong, the angles, position of the fingers, the bow, the pressure to apply, the tension in your wrist, arm, shoulders, holding the instrument, they are all very complex processes which are almost impossible to learn watching people play on youtube or explaining, you need someone next to you to correct your posture and see where you’re getting it wrong. There are too many variables involved and I probably spent weeks learning by myself things I could have learned in 10 minutes had I had a teacher by my side.
hese are the resources I have accumulated during the last few months and the ones I wish I had had when I just started, followed by the order I would do it if I had to do start all over or teach someone from scratch.
First:
http://www.musictheory.net
http://teoria.com/en/tutorials/reading/
and then watch all these videos:
And that’s it you will be able to read and write any musical piece after this. Now the practice:
Learn violin practice by yourself for free
Yes Ideally everyone should have a teacher, unfortunately, many times it’s no possible
Because I didn’t have these resources before, I learned everything in a different order so here is how I would do it if I could start all over.
First, watch the videos by this guy:
http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzkT7lUQcMUMawwTlkdNZ3Q
then learn at least the three first positions:
Then practice with real song to gain in a few weeks the speed and dexterity that would take you years if you were to learn from the music sheets, so play every song on this playlist:
Once you did all that, you need to put it all together, download all the suzuki books and learn all the songs while sticking to the order they are on the books. And that’s it.
How long will it take to play well and read music at an intermediate level?
20 years ago we used to believe there are 7 learning styles and we all learn in different ways, now and ater much research it has been proven that was just not true and we all learn the same way, that being said, It will take 3 months if you study 8 hours a day, 6 months if you study 4 and a year if you study 2. I would recommend that if you have 2 hours a day you spend one hour in theory and one hour practicing on the violin.
That is, provided you actually want to learn it, if you don’t want to, here’s a list of excuses for you to tell yourself of why you can’t learn it:
- I am too old and you should start when you’re young, if you don’t start when you’re 3 years old you will never be able to play professionally by the time you’re 20.
- You can only learn well with a teacher, otherwise you will get too many bad habits, and I live in a remote area of the Mongolian Orkhon valley, so unfortunately there are no violin teachers here.
- I don’t have musical talent, and music is not something you can learn, you need to feel it, and talent is something you are either born with, or you don’t have it at all.
- I don’t have money and I think it must be expensive because it looks expensive, right? I mean people who listen or play classical music look classy, so I guess it’s expensive.
- I don’t have time and even if I had it, why would I learn something I will not be able to use anymore after I die. It would be better to learn how to be enlightened or achieve nirvana so that I can use it after I die.