Violin Instrument Quotes

Life' wrote a friend of mine, 'is a public performance on the violin, in which you must learn the instrument as you go along.

She smiled. Her skin looked whiter than he recalled, and dark spidery veins were beginning to show beneath its surface. Her hair was still the color of spun silver and her eyes were still green as a cat’s. She was still beautiful. Looking at her, he was in London again. He saw the gaslight and smelled the smoke and dirt and horses, the metallic tang of fog, the flowers in Kew Gardens. He saw a boy with black hair and blue eyes like Alec’s, heard violin music like the sound of silver water. He saw a girl with long brown hair and a serious face. In a world where everything went away from him eventually, she was one of the few remaining constants. And then there was Camille.

…the violin — that most human of all instruments…

Life is like playing the violin in public and learning the instrument as one goes on.

The Christian idea of marriage is based on Christ's words that a man and wife are to be regarded as a single organism - for that is what the words 'one flesh' would be in modern English. And the Christians believe that when He said this He was not expressing a sentiment but stating a fact - just as one is stating a fact when one says that a lock and its key are one mechanism, or that a violin and a bow are one musical instrument.

The true mission of the violin is to imitate the accents of the human voice, a noble mission that has earned for the violin the glory of being called the king of instruments

How can I keep my soul in me, so that it doesn’t touch your soul? How can I raise it high enough, past you, to other things? I would like to shelter it, among remote lost objects, in some dark and silent place that doesn’t resonate when your depths resound. Yet everything that touches us, me and you, takes us together like a violin’s bow, which draws one voice out of two separate strings. Upon what instrument are we two spanned? And what musician holds us in his hand? Oh sweetest song. - Love Song

A violinist had a violin, a painter his palette. All I had was myself. I was the instrument that I must care for.

All music is what awakes within us when we are reminded by the instruments; It is not the violins or the clarinets - It is not the beating of the drums - Nor the score of the baritone singing his sweet romanza; not that of the men's chorus, Nor that of the women's chorus - It is nearer and farther than they

The oak trees seemed as though they were playing instruments; here a gentle violin, over there two harps in harmony, flutes and other woodwinds joined the tree orchestra.

Who needs to be a Phoenix for rebirth? One simply requires themselves and an instrument to clean the slate and start over, perhaps create their own world where everything is better..

The Violins waltzed. The Cellos and Basses provided accompaniment. The Violas mourned their fate, while the Concertmaster showed off. The Flutes did bird imitations…repeatedly, and the reed instruments had the good taste to admire my jacket. The Trumpets held a parade in honor of our great nation, while the French Horns waxed nostalgic about something or other. The Trombones had too much to drink. The Percussion beat the band, and the Tuba stayed home playing cards with his landlady, the Harp, taking sips of warm milk a blue little cup. “But the Composer is still dead.

Magnus didn’t look at her; he was looking down at the tent, where Clary sat talking with Tessa, where Alec stood side by side with Maia and Bat, laughing, where Isabelle and Simon were dancing to the music Jace was playing on the piano, the haunting sweet notes of Chopin reminding him of another time, and the sound of a violin at Christmas.

The girl doesn’t need a violin,” he added. “She needs to have her hands bound so she can never touch an instrument again.

Life, said Samuel Butler, is like giving a concert on the violin while learning to play the instrument—that, friends, is real wisdom.

Violinists wear the imprint on their necks with pride For they are the players of harmony. Pilgrims, too, wear the imprint on their foreheads with pride For they are the conductors of unity. And Lovers? Why, they are made humble by the imprint on their hearts For they are merely the instruments of rhapsody.

To take up the violin or any instrument was an act of hope, it implied a future.

Maybe trees do have souls. Which makes wood a kind of flesh. And perhaps instruments of wooden construction sound so pleasing to our ears for this reason: the choral shimmer of a guitar; the heartbeat thump of drums; the mournful wail of violins--we love them because they sound like us.

From the first note I knew it was different from anything I had ever heard.... It began simply, but with an arresting phrase, so simple, but eloquent as a human voice. It spoke, beckoning gently as it unwound, rising and tensing. It spiraled upward, the tension growing with each repeat of the phrasing, and yet somehow it grew more abandoned, wilder with each note. His eyes remained closed as his fingers flew over the strings, spilling forth surely more notes than were possible from a single violin. For one mad moment I actually thought there were more of them, an entire orchestra of violins spilling out of this one instrument. I had never heard anything like it--it was poetry and seduction and light and shadow and every other contradiction I could think of. It seemed impossible to breathe while listening to that music, and yet all I was doing was breathing, quite heavily. The music itself had become as palpable a presence in that room as another person would have been--and its presence was something out of myth.

In the hands of someone who does not appreciate or understand music, the instrument is just a lump of wood, but in the hands of a skilled musician who knows how to coax the sweetest notes, that violin becomes something capable of the most beautiful music, the most moving sounds, the most uplifting melody.

More so than with any other instrument, the violin becomes part of the body. Good musicians are physically dissolved when playing, and for violinists, who cannot see where to place their fingers and have nothing to guide them through touch, music must be more than ever about memory than fingertips and breath; the ventage is deeper, more of the self, closer to singing.

Music, I regret to say, affects me merely as an arbitrary succession of more or less irritating sounds. Under certain emotional circumstances I can stand the spasms of a rich violin, but the concert piano and all wind instruments bore me in small doses and flay me in larger ones.

The human voice vibrates naturally - but in such a way - to such a degree that it all sounds beautiful - it is the nature of the voice. We imitate such effects not only on wind instruments, but also with violins - even on clavier - but as soon as you go beyond the natural limits, it no longer sounds beautiful - because it is contrary to nature.

By the age of eleven it was . . . too late for the piano and the violin.

I stared at him, baffled. But at that moment Gideon began to play, and I entirely forgot what I had been going to ask the count. Oh, my god! Maybe it was the punch—but wow! That violin was really sexy! Even the way Gideon raised it and tucked it under his chin! He didn’t have to do more than that to carry me away with him. His long lashes cast shadows on his cheeks, and a lock of hair fell over his face as he began passing the bow over the strings. The first notes filling the room almost took my breath away, they made such tender, melting music, and suddenly I was close to tears. Until now, violins had been way down on my list of favorite instruments, and I really liked them only for accompanying certain moments in films. But this was just incredibly wonderful—well, all of it was: the bittersweet melody and boy enticing it out of the instrument. All the people in the room listened with bated breath, and Gideon played on, immersed in the music as if there were no one else there. I didn’t notice that I was crying until the count touched my cheek and caught a tear gently with his finger. Then I jumped in alarm. He was smiling down at me, and I saw a warm glow in his dark brown eyes. “Nothing to be ashamed of,” he said quietly. “If it were otherwise, I’d have been very disappointed.

Our poor human heart is flawed: it is like a cake without the frosting: the first two acts of the theatre without the climax. Even its design is marred for a small piece is missing out of the side. That is why it remains so unsatisfied: it wants life and it gets death: it wants Truth and it has to settle for an education; it craves love and gets only intermittent euphoria’s with satieties. Samples, reflections and fractions are only tastes, not mouthfuls. A divine trick has been played on the human heart as if a violin teacher gave his pupil an instrument with one string missing. God kept a part of man's heart in Heaven, so that discontent would drive him back again to Him Who is Eternal Life, All-Knowing Truth and the Abiding Ecstasy of Love.

It’s all right for you, you and Danton. I have to go and stutter for two hours at the Jacobins and probably be knocked down again by maddened violin makers and trampled by all sorts of tradesmen. Whilst Danton spends his evenings feeling up his new girlfriend and you lie around here in a nice fever, not too high. If you’re an instrument of destiny, and anyone would do instead, why don’t you take a holiday?

Jutta drags herself closer; she watches her brother with outsize eyes. A piano chases the violins. Then woodwinds. The strings sprint, woodwinds fluttering behind. More instruments join in. Flutes? Harps? The song races, seems to loop back over itself. “Werner?” Jutta whispers. He blinks;

Violator: Noun, one who breaks rules, invades, insults, rapes Violence: Noun, a disturbance, disruption, destruction Violet: Noun, a plant, a swallow flower... purple, the color, also used to describe… an oversensitive person, a shy person ("shrinking violet") Violin: Noun, a musical instrument... a player of, a violinist

Someone said that living life is like playing a violin solo in public and learning to play the instrument as we go along. This saying describes the experience very well, but no one should worry about that. We are in this world for exactly that purpose—to learn. While we are learning we do not expect to produce a perfect work. On this plane we are all students, and what matters is that each year we shall find the quality of our workmanship definitely better. People are sometimes depressed because their lives do not present a simple, logical, harmonious unfoldment, because their histories seem to be full of inconsistencies, repetitions, dead ends. This, however, is only to be expected during the learning period. Your life has not been rehearsed. It is an adventure, and a discovery, and a training, and it is the final goal that matters.

The true violin did not appear until about the year 1550. It did not reach its eminent position in the musical world until the late seventeenth century.

Life’ wrote a friend of mine, ‘is a public performance on the violin, in which you must learn the instrument as you go along.

Life,’ wrote a friend of mine, ‘is a public performance on the violin, in which you must learn the instrument as you go along.

My soul is a hidden orchestra; I do not know what instruments, what violins and harps, drums and tambours, sound and clash inside me. I know myself only as a symphony.

Iris was interrupted by a resounding crash. Or not exactly a crash. More like a splintering sound. With a few pops. And twangs. “What was that?” Iris asked. “I don’t know.” Honoria craned her neck. “It sounded like—” “Oh, Honoria!” they heard Daisy shriek. “Your violin!” “What?” Honoria walked slowly toward the commotion, not quite able to put two and two together. “Oh, my heavens,” Iris said abruptly, her hand coming to her mouth. She lay a restraining hand on Honoria, as if to say—It’s better if you don’t look. “What is going on? I—” Honoria’s jaw went slack. “Lady Honoria!” Lady Danbury barked. “So sorry about your violin.” Honoria only blinked, staring down at the mangled remains of her instrument. “What? How . . . ?” Lady Danbury shook her head with what Honoria suspected was exaggerated regret. “I have no idea. The cane, you know. I must have knocked it off the table.” Honoria felt her mouth opening and closing, but no sound was emerging. Her violin didn’t look as if it had been knocked off a table. Honestly, Honoria was at a loss as to how it could have got into such a state. It was absolutely wrecked. Every string had snapped, pieces of wood were completely detached, and the chin rest was nowhere to be seen. Clearly, it had been trampled by an elephant.

At first he had appreciated only the material quality of the sounds which those instruments secreted. And it had been a source of keen pleasure when, below the narrow ribbon the violin part, delicate, unyielding, substantial and governing the whole, he had suddenly perceived, where it was trying to surge upwards in a flowing tide of sound, the mass of the piano-part, multiform, coherent, level, and breaking everywhere in melody like the deep blue tumult of the sea, silvered and charmed into a minor key by the moonlight. But at a given moment, without being able to distinguish any clear outline, or to give a name to what was pleasing him, suddenly enraptured, he had tried to collect, to treasure in his memory the phrase or harmony—he knew not which—that had just been played, and had opened and expanded his soul, just as the fragrance of certain roses, wafted upon the moist air of evening, has the power of dilating our nostrils.

So as not to see anything any more, I turned towards the wall, but alas, what was now facing me was that partition which used to serve us as a morning messenger, that partition which, as responsive as a violin in rendering every nuance of a feeling, reported so exactly to my grandmother my fear at once of waking her and, if she were already awake, of not being heard by her and so of her not coming, then immediately, like a second instrument taking up the melody, informing me of her coming and bidding me be calm. I dared not put out my hand to that wall, any more than to a piano on which my grandmother had been playing and which still vibrated from her touch. I knew that I might knock now, even louder, that nothing would wake her any more, that I should hear no response, that my grandmother would never come again. And I asked nothing more of God, if a paradise exists, than to be able, there, to knock on that wall with the three little raps which my grandmother would recognize among a thousand, and to which she would give those answering knocks which meant: "Don't fuss, little mouse, I know you're impatient, but I'm coming," and that he would let me stay with her throughout eternity, which would not be too long for the two of us.

Your violin has only two strings,” I say. “You’re missing the other two.” Yes, he says. He’s well aware. “All I want to do is play music, and the crisis I’m having is right here. This one’s gone,” he says of the missing top string, “that one’s gone, and this little guy’s almost out of commission.” His goal in life, Nathaniel tells me, is to figure out how to replace the strings. But he got used to playing imperfect instruments while taking music classes in Cleveland’s public schools, and there’s a lot you can do, he assures me, with just two strings

I'm through with frost, ice, and snow To the human world, I must go! I'll form a cool, Gobolicious Band. Magical instruments will lend a hand. With these Instruments, I'll go far. Frosty jack, is a superstar I'll steal music's harmony and fun Watch out world, I'll be number one!

Jennifer now understood the meaning of the cadence: the black and white drawing, the watercolor painting,and the notes. The cadence had at last developed into a concerto for violin, the instrument of gypsies, with a prevailing rhapsodic "leitmotif". The final movement had revealed itself when they were at the gypsy camp. And now it was complete.

The eighties are a sorely underrated decade in terms of musical composition. They don’t get nearly the respect they deserve. I try to use my platform in the world to bring attention to this travesty by singing eighties ballads whenever I get the chance. Like right now, as I sing “What About Me” by Moving Pictures on the karaoke stage. It was their one-hit wonder and a soul-stirring exercise in self-pity. My eyes are closed as I belt out the lyrics and sway behind he microphone. Not in time to the music—I’m so pissed, I’m lucky to still be standing at all. Usually I play the guitar too, but my fine-motor functions fell by the wayside hours ago. I’m a fantastic musician—not that anyone really notices. That talent gets lost in the shadow of the titles, the same way the talented offspring of two accomplished stars get discounted by the weight of their household name. My mother gave me my love of music—she played several instruments. I had tutors, first for the piano, then the violin—but it was the guitar that really stuck with me. The karaoke stage at The Goat used to be my second home and in the last few hours, I’ve given serious consideration to moving in beneath it. If Harry Potter was the Boy Under the Stairs, I could be the Prince Under the Stage. Why the fuck not?

There is a tendency to romanticize the abilities of the ancient Egyptians because they produced structures that were miraculous for their time and certainly would pose a serious challenge to ours. They were somehow immensely more talented with sticks and stones than modern researchers have been able to demonstrate using the same implements. When pondering the theories proffered by Egyptologists, one gets the impression that an ancient Egyptian quarry worker was like a maestro playing a complete symphony on a violin made of a cigar box and a stick and producing the quality of a Stradivarius. The argument is pleasing and poetic, but the trouble is that, metaphorically speaking, when modern scholars make a violin from a cigar box and a stick, its results are precisely what you would expect from a cigar box and a stick. So the question persists: From what instruments did the symphonic architecture of Egypt materialize?

A gifted violin player in danger of becoming a virtuoso and thus too attached to his instrument handed it over to the Oneida authorities and never played again. When a visiting Canadian teacher complained that the community did not foster “genius or special talent,” Noyes was delighted, replying, “We never expected or desired to produce a Byron, a Napoleon, or a Michelangelo.” You know you've reached a new plateau of group mediocrity when even a Canadian is alarmed by your lack of individuality.

He is about to hand the earphone to Jutta when—clear and unblemished, about halfway down the coil—he hears the quick, drastic strikes of a bow dashing across the strings of a violin. He tries to hold the pin perfectly still. A second violin joins the first. Jutta drags herself closer; she watches her brother with outsize eyes. A piano chases the violins. Then woodwinds. The strings sprint, woodwinds fluttering behind. More instruments join in. Flutes? Harps? The song races, seems to loop back over itself.

For the first time, I saw the human body as a musical instrument; it was designed to experience things in the moment of occurrence, to vibrate with the resonance of each experience, whether positive or negative, and then to move on to the next one afresh, unsullied, free to feel every note in the next melody. Our bodies were not meant to record and store experiences so that the accretion and weight of them makes us eventually unable to greet each new moment with innocence and joy. We were meant to be violins, not iPods.

He picked up a violin which lay on the table and drew the bow once or twice across the strings. Tuppence ground her teeth, and even the explorer blenched. The performer laid the instrument down again. ‘A few chords from Mosgovskensky,’ he murmured. As the visitor left the office, Tuppence grabbed the violin, and putting it in the cupboard turned the key in the lock. ‘If you must be Sherlock Holmes,’ she observed, ‘I’ll get you a nice little syringe and a bottle labelled cocaine, but for God’s sake leave that violin alone.

And then as the knives and forks began to clank softly above the white tablecloths, the violins would rise alone, now suddenly mature although tentative and unsure just a short while before; slim and narrow-waisted, they eloquently proceeded with their task, took up again the lost human cause, and pleaded before the indifferent tribunal of stars, now set in a sky on which the shapes of the instruments floated like water signs or fragments of keys, unfinished lyres or swans, an imitatory, thoughtless starry commentary on the margin of music.

I admire the crap out of Carl now, because he was doing something he loved more than anything. And he was determined to do it, regardless of how successful he was. Carl played the violin because he had a PASSION for it, and screw the rest of the world. Even if he had to get a day job that wasn’t musical after college, and was only able to pick the instrument up at night before bed, to play ONLY for himself, it made him complete to have that in his life. And I think every minute he spent playing that violin was a moment he was spending his time right.

It is unlikely you will truly get the feeling of the violin until you have been studying for at least a year -- perhaps even two. Then one day the sheer pleasure of playing the instrument will suddenly flow over you. Perhaps it will be when you hear a fine string quartet. Maybe the revelation will come at the concert of an outstanding string orchestra, or better yet, when you are asked to sit in one made of boys and girls your own age. In any case, you will hear the singing strings clearly -- perhaps for the first time -- as the pure, jubilant spirit of music.

Surely an instrument is neither male nor female—they’re just things that make sound—strings and bows, brass and wood, mallets and cymbals and drumskins and little metal triangles. And yet all you have to do is look around at these musicians to see the way that even sound is gendered. In the middle of the orchestra is the brass section—tubas, trombones, trumpets, French horn, every last one of them played by boys. It’s not all that different in the woodwinds—where the boys play bassoons and clarinets, but all the flutes are played by girls. The strings are even more ridiculous—the deeper the instrument, the more likely it is to be played by a boy. So all the basses? Boys. Most of the cellos? Boys. The violas split half and half. All but one of the violins? Girls. Then there’s the harp, which I guess federal law requires be played by a girl. And the percussion and kettle drums, which are usually played by boys. How weird is this? Most of us decided to play our instruments in third grade, a bunch of little kids who made our choices without even thinking about them. But even at eight years old, we were already running the gender maze that the world had set for us, without even realizing it.

There are in the music of the violin— if one does not see the instrument itself, and so cannot relate what one hears to its form, which modifies the tone— accents so closely akin to those of certain contralto voices that one has the illusion that a singer has taken her place amid the orchestra. One raises one's eyes, and sees only the wooden case, delicate as a Chinese box, but, at moments, one is still tricked by the siren's deceiving call; at times, too, one thinks one is listening to a captive genie, struggling in the darkness of the sapient, quivering and enchanted box, like a devil immersed in a stoup of holy water; sometimes, again, it is in the air, at large, like a pure and supernatural being that unfolds its invisible message as it goes by.

I know you can feel it. But that’s just a small part of it. You see, music is . . . ( Incredible subject to communicate.) Music has a . . . ( But he’s going to try.) Music starts with pitches. [P-i-t-c-h-e-s.] Sounds! High and low. A whole, huge range of sounds. And each one has its own emotional life. And then when you combine them and play them together — these two and these two — it has a whole new life. And then you can play them on different instruments — trombones, violins, flutes and drums — The combinations are infinite! And then when you put it all together, with a beginning, a middle, and an end, it grows into a ... It transcends mere sound and speaks directly to your heart — because you hear it! I don’t have the signs that can ... I can’t explain it, I’m sorry.

I used to think I could teach young people the whole of life, but I know better now, and all my teaching of George has come down to this: beware of muddle. Do you remember in that church, when you pretended to be annoyed with me and weren't? Do you remember before, when you refused the room with the view? Those were muddles--little, but ominous--and I am fearing that you are in one now." She was silent. "Don't trust me, Miss Honeychurch. Though life is very glorious, it is difficult." She was still silent. "'Life' wrote a friend of mine, 'is a public performance on the violin, in which you must learn the instrument as you go along.' I think he puts it well. Man has to pick up the use of his functions as he goes along--especially the function of Love." Then he burst out excitedly; "That's it; that's what I mean. You love George!" And after his long preamble, the three words burst against Lucy like waves from the open sea.

Kestrel came often. One day, when she knew from Sarsine that Arin had returned home but she had not yet seen him, she went to the suite. She touched one of his violins, reaching furtively to pluck the highest string of the largest instrument. The sound was sour. The violin was ruined--no doubt all of them were. That is what happens when an instrument is left strung and uncased for ten years. A floorboard creaked somewhere in one of the outer chambers. Arin. He entered the room, and she realized that she had expected him. Why else had she come here so frequently, almost every day, if she hadn’t hoped that someone would notice and tell him to find her there? But even though she admitted to wanting to be here with him in his old rooms, she hadn’t imagined it would be like this. With her caught touching his things. Her gaze dropped. “I’m sorry,” she murmured. “It’s all right,” he said. “I don’t mind.” He lifted the violin off its nails and set it in her hands. It was light, but Kestrel’s arms lowered as if the violin’s hollowness were terribly heavy. She cleared her throat. “Do you still play?” He shook his head. “I’ve mostly forgotten how. I wasn’t good at it anyway. I loved to sing. Before the war, I worried that gift would leave me, the way it often does with boys. We grow, we change, our voices break. It doesn’t matter how well you sing when you’re nine years old, you know. Not when you’re a boy. When the change comes you just have to hope for the best…that your voice settles into something you can love again. My voice broke two years after the invasion. Gods, how I squeaked. And when my voice finally settled, it seemed like a cruel joke. It was too good. I hardly knew what to do with it. I felt so grateful to have this gift…and so angry, for it to mean so little. And now…” He shrugged, a self-deprecating gesture. “Well, I know I’m rusty.” “No,” Kestrel said. “You’re not. Your voice is beautiful.” The silence after that was soft.

It has been noted in various quarters that the half-illiterate Italian violin maker Antonio Stradivari never recorded the exact plans or dimensions for how to make one of his famous instruments. This might have been a commercial decision (during the earliest years of the 1700s, Stradivari’s violins were in high demand and open to being copied by other luthiers). But it might also have been because, well, Stradivari didn’t know exactly how to record its dimensions, its weight, and its balance. I mean, he knew how to create a violin with his hands and his fingers but maybe not in figures he kept in his head. Today, those violins, named after the Latinized form of his name, Stradivarius, are considered priceless. It is believed there are only around five hundred of them still in existence, some of which have been submitted to the most intense scientific examination in an attempt to reproduce their extraordinary sound quality. But no one has been able to replicate Stradivari’s craftsmanship. They’ve worked out that he used spruce for the top, willow for the internal blocks and linings, and maple for the back, ribs, and neck. They’ve figured out that he also treated the wood with several types of minerals, including potassium borate, sodium and potassium silicate, as well as a handmade varnish that appears to have been composed of gum arabic, honey, and egg white. But they still can’t replicate a Stradivarius. The genius craftsman never once recorded his technique for posterity. Instead, he passed on his knowledge to a number of his apprentices through what the philosopher Michael Polyani called “elbow learning.” This is the process where a protégé is trained in a new art or skill by sitting at the elbow of a master and by learning the craft through doing it, copying it, not simply by reading about it. The apprentices of the great Stradivari didn’t learn their craft from books or manuals but by sitting at his elbow and feeling the wood as he felt it to assess its length, its balance, and its timbre right there in their fingertips. All the learning happened at his elbow, and all the knowledge was contained in his fingers. In his book Personal Knowledge, Polyani wrote, “Practical wisdom is more truly embodied in action than expressed in rules of action.”1 By that he meant that we learn as Stradivari’s protégés did, by feeling the weight of a piece of wood, not by reading the prescribed measurements in a manual. Polyani continues, To learn by example is to submit to authority. You follow your master because you trust his manner of doing things even when you cannot analyze and account in detail for its effectiveness. By watching the master and emulating his efforts in the presence of his example, the apprentice unconsciously picks up the rules of the art, including those which are not explicitly known to the master himself. These hidden rules can be assimilated only by a person who surrenders himself to that extent uncritically to the imitation of another.

The man raised the violin under his chin, placed the bow across the strings, and closed his eyes. For a moment his lips moved, silently, as if in prayer. Then, with sure, steady movements, he began to play. The song was like nothing Abbey had heard anywhere else. The notes were clear, sweet and perfect, with a purity of tone that not one violin in ten thousand could produce. But the song was more than that. The song was pain, and loss, and sorrow, an anthem of unrelenting grief for which no words could be sufficient. In its strains Abbey heard the cry of the mother clutching her lifeless child; of the young woman whose husband never returned from war; of the father watching his son die of cancer; of the old man weeping at his wife's grave. It was the wordless cry of every man, woman and child who had ever shaken a fist at the uncaring universe, every stricken heart that had demanded an answer to the question, “Why?”, and was left unsatisfied. When the song finally, mercifully ended, not a dry eye remained in the darkened hall. The shades had moved in among the mortals, unseen by all but Abbey herself, and crowded close to the stage, heedless of all but the thing that called to them. Many of the mortals in the audience were sobbing openly. Those newcomers who still retained any sense of their surroundings were staring up at the man, their eyes wide with awe and a silent plea for understanding. The man gave it to them. “I am not the master of this instrument,” he said. “The lady is her own mistress. I am only the channel through which she speaks. What you have heard tonight — what you will continue to hear — is not a performance, but a séance. In my … unworthy hands … she will tell you her story: Sorrow, pain, loss, truth, and beauty. This is not the work of one man; it is the story of all men, of all people everywhere, throughout her long history. Which means, of course, that it is also your story, and mine.” He held up the violin once more. In the uncertain play of light and shadow, faces seemed to appear and vanish in the blood-red surface of the wood. “Her name is Threnody,” he said. “And she has come to make you free.

Jane and Mr. Nobley entered the great hall, the ceiling dazzling with thousands of real candles that put fire into the white dresses and cravats. Five musicians were seated on a dais--a cello and two violins (or maybe a viola?), a harpsichord, and some kind of wind instrument. From keys and strings, they coaxed a grand prelude to the minuet. Jane looked at everything, smiling at the amusement park novelty of it all. She looked at Mr. Nobley. He was beaming at her. At last. “You are stunning,” he said, and every inch of him seemed to swear that it was true. “Oh,” she said. He kissed her gloved fingers. He was still smiling. There was something different about him tonight, and she couldn’t place what it was. Some new plot twist, she presumed. She was eager to roll around in all the plot she could on her last night, though once or twice her eyes strayed to spot Martin. Mr. Nobley stood opposite her in a line of ten men. She watched Amelia and Captain East perform the figures. They held each other’s gazes, they smiled with the elation of new love. All very convincing. Poor Amelia, thought Jane. It was a bit cruel, now that she thought about it, all these actors who made women fall in love with them. Amelia seemed so tenderhearted, and Miss Charming and her heaving breasts so delighted with this world. Jane caught sight of a very striking Colonel Andrews who, now that she watched him dance, might just be gay. Jane felt a thrumming of foreboding. All the ladies were so happy and open-hearted and eager to love. What would happen to them in the dregs of tomorrow?

In my life I’ve only been good at one thing. The violin. Not as good as my father. Maybe I could have been. But I drank too much and lost my temper too often. I came to Italy because I failed in Vienna. I came to Italy because I was in love with a woman who wasn’t in love with me. And for the last thirteen years, I’ve taken it out on you. If you hadn’t been so strong, I might have broken you. I might have made you hate me. But you fought back. You shrugged me off. And now I listen to you and I am in awe.” “You are?” Eva asked in amazement. These were things she had never heard before. “When you play, Eva, I feel hopeful. They can take our homes, our possessions. Our families. Our lives. They can drive us out, like they’ve driven us out before. They can humiliate us and dehumanize us. But they cannot take our thoughts. They cannot take our talents. They cannot take our knowledge, or our memories, or our minds. In music, there is no bondage. Music is a door, and the soul escapes through the melody. Even if it’s only for a few minutes. And everyone who listens is freed. Everyone who listens is elevated. “When you play, I hear my life lifting off your strings. I hear the long notes and the scales, the tears and the hours. I hear you and me, together in this room. I hear my father and the things he taught me that I passed on to you. I hear it all, and my life plays on, his life plays on, over and over, when you play.” Eva set her instrument down and, with tears streaming down her face, knelt in front of her uncle and slid her arms around him, pressing her cheek to his thin chest. He embraced her gently, and they stayed in sorrowful silence, listening to the wind as it wailed a mournful strain not so different from the one Eva had composed, wondering if the wind would be the only witness, the only whisper, when the death in Austria came for them too.

Kestrel came often. One day, when she knew from Sarsine that Arin had returned home but she had not yet seen him, she went to the suite. She touched one of his violins, reaching furtively to pluck the highest string of the largest instrument. The sound was sour. The violin was ruined--no doubt all of them were. That is what happens when an instrument is left strung and uncased for ten years. A floorboard creaked somewhere in one of the outer chambers. Arin. He entered the room, and she realized that she had expected him. Why else had she come here so frequently, almost every day, if she hadn’t hoped that someone would notice and tell him to find her there? But even though she admitted to wanting to be here with him in his old rooms, she hadn’t imagined it would be like this. With her caught touching his things. Her gaze dropped. “I’m sorry,” she murmured. “It’s all right,” he said. “I don’t mind.” He lifted the violin off its nails and set it in her hands. It was light, but Kestrel’s arms lowered as if the violin’s hollowness were terribly heavy. She cleared her throat. “Do you still play?” He shook his head. “I’ve mostly forgotten how. I wasn’t good at it anyway. I loved to sing. Before the war, I worried that gift would leave me, the way it often does with boys. We grow, we change, our voices break. It doesn’t matter how well you sing when you’re nine years old, you know. Not when you’re a boy. When the change comes you just have to hope for the best…that your voice settles into something you can love again. My voice broke two years after the invasion. Gods, how I squeaked. And when my voice finally settled, it seemed like a cruel joke. It was too good. I hardly knew what to do with it. I felt so grateful to have this gift…and so angry, for it to mean so little. And now…” He shrugged, a self-deprecating gesture. “Well, I know I’m rusty.” “No,” Kestrel said. “You’re not. Your voice is beautiful.” The silence after that was soft. Her fingers curled around the violin. She wanted to ask Arin a question yet couldn’t bear to do it, couldn’t say that she didn’t understand what had happened to him the night of the invasion. It didn’t make sense. The death of his family was what her father would call a “waste of resources.” The Valorian force had had no pity for the Herrani military, but it had tried to minimize civilian casualties. You can’t make a dead body work. “What is it, Kestrel?” She shook her head. She set the violin back on the wall. “Ask me.” She remembered standing outside the governor’s palace and refusing to hear his story, and was ashamed once more. “You can ask me anything,” he said. Each question seemed the wrong one. Finally, she said, “How did you survive the invasion?” He didn’t speak at first. Then he said, “My parents and sister fought. I didn’t.” Words were useless, pitifully useless--criminal, even, in how they could not account for Arin’s grief, and could not excuse how her people had lived on the ruin of his. Yet again Kestrel said, “I’m sorry.” “It’s not your fault.” It felt as if it was. Arin led the way out of his old suite. When they came to the last room, the greeting room, he paused before the outermost door. It was the slightest of hesitations, no longer than if the second hand of a clock stayed a beat longer on its mark than it should. But in that fraction of time, Kestrel understood that the last door was not paler than the others because it had been made from a different wood. It was newer. Kestrel took Arin’s battered hand in hers, the rough heat of it, the fingernails still ringed with carbon from the smith’s coal fire. His skin was raw-looking: scrubbed clean and scrubbed often. But the black grime was too ingrained. She twined her fingers with his. Kestrel and Arin walked together through the passageway and the ghost of its old door, which her people had smashed through ten years before.

Closing her eyes, she fit the violin under her chin, and set the bow to the strings. Faith had never been as blind as this. The first thing that came to mind was the sound of her fingers breaking. Her life, as she knew it, dying. The shock and the pain of it, and the utter devastation. They’ve killed me, she thought. So she played it. Next came the memory of warm, strong hands reaching for hers in the darkness. The unknown clasping her fingers, healing her, lending her strength and reassurance. It was the only thing in the world when she had nothing. It had been her lifeline. And she played it. Then came trust, the tentative unfurling, when she believed against all evidence that the person who came to her in the darkness would help her in any way he could. The impossibly intense adventure of his arm, sliding around her shoulders. The miracle of warmth when she had known nothing but coldness. That first kiss, oh, the surprise of it! The agonizing uncertainty… was it all right to allow this? How could it feel so incredibly good? Could she possibly kiss him again? Oh, when could she kiss him again? The burning that took hold, the incandescent light that shone despite all the shadows stacked around them. The unbearable, delicious hunger that was the sweetest pain… that she would give anything, anything, if only she could feel it again… Always before, when she had played, she’d had the awareness of the violin and the bow as instruments in her craft. Her music had been self-conscious, aware. Now, as she played, she went somewhere she had never gone before. She lost awareness of the violin altogether. She became the music. She was the story, the vibration. She became the story of love, the notes written in kisses and caresses on her skin. She felt the symphony, the swelling highs in the lifts, and the terrible lows in the falls, and hope was the cruelest note of all, the devastation that came afterward, utterly intolerable. She poured it all out, all the emotion, the experience, the exquisite delight along with the terror. There was no hiding any of it from a god anyway. The only other being she had been so naked with was Morgan, and he was gone. Gone, while the love she felt for him had become the very breath of life to her. Give him back to me, she begged with her music. Give him back. When the last note speared through the air, she had nothing left to give.

During the season, they saw each other and played together almost every day. At the aunt's request, seconded by Professor Valérius, Daaé consented to give the young viscount some violin lessons. In this way, Raoul learned to love the same airs that had charmed Christine's childhood. They also both had the same calm and dreamy little cast of mind. They delighted in stories, in old Breton legends; and their favorite sport was to go and ask for them at the cottage-doors, like beggars: "Ma'am..." or, "Kind gentleman... have you a little story to tell us, please?" And it seldom happened that they did not have one "given" them; for nearly every old Breton grandame has, at least once in her life, seen the "korrigans" dance by moonlight on the heather. But their great treat was, in the twilight, in the great silence of the evening, after the sun had set in the sea, when Daaé came and sat down by them on the roadside and in a low voice, as though fearing lest he should frighten the ghosts whom he loved, told them the legends of the land of the North. And, the moment he stopped, the children would ask for more. There was one story that began: "A king sat in a little boat on one of those deep still lakes that open like a bright eye in the midst of the Norwegian mountains..." And another: "Little Lotte thought of everything and nothing. Her hair was golden as the sun's rays and her soul as clear and blue as her eyes. She wheedled her mother, was kind to her doll, took great care of her frock and her little red shoes and her fiddle, but most of all loved, when she went to sleep, to hear the Angel of Music." While the old man told this story, Raoul looked at Christine's blue eyes and golden hair; and Christine thought that Lotte was very lucky to hear the Angel of Music when she went to sleep. The Angel of Music played a part in all Daddy Daaé's tales; and he maintained that every great musician, every great artist received a visit from the Angel at least once in his life. Sometimes the Angel leans over their cradle, as happened to Lotte, and that is how their are little prodigies who play the fiddle at six better than fifty, which, you must admit, is very wonderful. Sometimes, the Angel comes much later, because the children are naughty and won't learn their lessons or practice their scales. And, sometimes, he does not come at all, because the children have a bad heart or a bad conscience. No one ever sees the Angel; but he is heard by those who are meant to hear him. He often comes when they least expect him, when they are sad or disheartened. Then their ears suddenly perceive celestial harmonies, a divine voice, which they remember all their lives. Persons who are visited by the Angel quiver with a thrill unknown to the rest of mankind. And they can not touch an instrument, or open their mouths to sing, without producing sounds that put all other human sounds to shame. Then people who do not know that the Angel has visited those persons say that they have genius. Little Christine asked her father if he had heard the Angel of Music. But Daddy Daaé shook his head sadly; and then his eyes lit up, as he said: "You will hear him one day, my child! When I am in Heaven, I will send him to you!" Daddy was beginning to cough at that time.

The audience, too, aware of his propensity, were quick to perceive the least deviation from the text; and if he wandered for a moment, which might also be detected by the eye as well as the ear, in some strange contortion of visage, and some ominous flourish of his bow, a gentle and admonitory murmur recalled the musician from his Elysium or his Tartarus to the sober regions of his desk. Then he would start as if from a dream, cast a hurried, frightened, apologetic glance around, and, with a crestfallen, humbled air, draw his rebellious instrument back to the beaten track of the glib monotony. But at home he would make himself amends for this reluctant drudgery. And there, grasping the unhappy violin with ferocious fingers, he would pour forth, often till the morning rose, strange, wild measures that would startle the early fisherman on the shore below with a superstitious awe, and make him cross himself as if mermaid or sprite had wailed no earthly music in his ear.

He was hired at WOR in March 1925 and a few months later was asked to fill in for Bernarr MacFadden, who had a calisthentics program. Gambling’s smooth baritone voice contrasted well with MacFadden’s gravelly, authoritarian approach, and he got the job permanently when MacFadden left the station a few months later. The original show was 90 minutes long, beginning at 6:30 A.M. Colgate Toothpaste became a sponsor soon after Gambling took over, and in 1927 he interspersed some husband-wife chatter. He missed being the first such breakfast show only by the fact that he was not married to the actress who played his opposite. The skits were scripted, thus fictitious. In the late 1920s he was joined by Vincent Sorey’s three-piece band. Later his permanent musicians were Sorey on violin, Michael Rosco (“Rudolph” on the air) on piano, Pietra “Froz” Frosini on accordion, and Louis Biamonte on saxophone and other instruments. The physical fitness craze ended in the mid-1930s; Gambling then concentrated on talk.

But why should a flute make a sound which is smoother and less complex than that of a violin or oboe? To answer this question we have to think about musical instruments as machines which produce notes. All these machines are designed to produce repeating ripple patterns of pressure in the air and they all do this in different ways. For example, playing a flute involves a straightforward method of setting up vibrations in a column of air. There are no moving parts inside a flute, just this simple vibrating body of air. Playing a violin, on the other hand, involves a rather complicated

Love Song How shall I hold my soul to not intrude upon yours? How shall I lift it beyond you to other things? I would gladly lodge it with lost objects in the dark, in some far still place that does not tremble when you tremble. But all that touches us, you and me, plays us together, like the bow of a violin that from two strings draws forth one voice. On what instrument are we strung? What musician is playing us? Oh sweet song.

The viola and the clarinet made for an interesting pairing: we had to imagine the accompaniment of other instruments, ideally a violin and a cello.

But the instrument she picked up and insisted on playing was this beautiful little quarter-size violin, setup for the left hand. They tried to move her to a right-hand instrument, and she absolutely refused. So Jill and her mother reached a compromise of sorts. Jill would play the violin, which her mother desperately wanted her to do, but she would play on the left-hand instrument.

It was like music, the kind her parents listened to, with violins and other old instruments starting almost silently then growing before you noticed it into a huge noise.

Tomorrow shall be my dancing day; I would my true love did so chance To see the legend of my play, To call my true love to my dance; Sing, oh! my love, oh! my love, my love, my love, This have I done for my true love.

They had to ring a bell to be buzzed in to the main showroom, where a faded violet couch sat against one wall, a beat-up coffee table covered with magazines in front of it. Instruments hung from everywhere, including the ceiling: violins, violas, and cellos shone with a gorgeous luster like nothing he’d ever seen. These were the instruments of princes and kings, the violins for the best violinists in the world. On the counter rested an old-fashioned cash register. No electronics, no card reader. Behind the counter, a staircase carpeted in red damask led up into darkness. On one side of the steps hung an

Secretly, Ray was a rotten celebrity. He never got used to it, never learned to take it for granted. The photos and adulation and program signing always made him uncomfortable, and after the theft he never ordered room service again. Every day, no matter where he was, he’d find a busker or someone on the street and leave money or help otherwise when he could. He was making a great deal of money and giving a lot of it away as quickly as he got it. He played charity concerts for several different organizations. He loved Kelly Hall-Tompkins’s Music Kitchen, a charity that organized musicians to serve food and play in soup kitchens, and he often volunteered—both to play and to serve the guests. Another charity bought instruments for students who couldn’t afford to buy their own: at the inaugural fundraising gala, he played for free, enlisted several musicians—Wynton Marsalis and Trombone Shorty—and donated a hundred thousand dollars to the cause.

And their voices had a keenly musical quality. It wasn't that the animal people barked out literal instrumental notes or sand when they spoke. Rather, their words ignited emotional responses Nina had previously only experienced through music. When they were worried, she experienced the squeals of violins, the quick-heartbeat thrum of a thriller soundtrack. Risk and Reign's bickering had the impact of a rattling gourd and snare drum. Oli's hopeful questions were reminiscent of the lo-fi hip-hop Nina played when she studied.

Timbre is the emblematic tone, or voice, generated by each type of instrument or biological sound source. Not only do musical instruments have singular voice characteristics but so does every living organism and most man-made machines. The difference between the sound of a violin and that of a trumpet is as distinctive as that between a cicada and an American robin, or a cat and a dog—or between a Rolls-Royce and a Formula 1 automobile. When Paul Beaver and I first began

By the 1860s more and more banjo makers followed in Ashborn's footsteps, for, as we shall see, most often inventive banjo design, that which might indeed lead to true innovation, originated with those makers who wholeheartedly embraced the possibilities of mechanized production. Most violin makers, for example, as well as guitar makers such as Martin, continued to build instruments by traditional methods, patiently training apprentices in the various steps necessary to produce an entire instrument by themselves. But by the 1860s the banjo had become anything but traditional, with a score of patents filed in which its design was changed, often quite radically, as various banjo makers capitalized on the nation's growing infatuation with the instrument. Its basic form - a five-string neck and a circular sounding chamber - established, the banjo began to appear in a bewildering number of variations as makers sought to adapt the instrument to the new kinds of music people wished to play on it. In 1840 the banjo had been a symbol of the American South in general and the slave plantation in particular. But after its initial popularization on the minstrel stage led to its wholesale embrace by Victorian America, it came to represent the aspirations of a burgeoning mechanic class who brought to its design and manufacture the same invention through which they had transformed other areas of American industry. It truly was becoming America's instrument.

But the ensemble’s greatest legacy can be found in the lives it saved during the Holocaust. By helping the musicians as well as their family members immigrate to Palestine, Huberman saved an estimated one thousand lives between 1935 and 1939. The

Be patient and persevere and you will attain your goals.

Always ask yourself the golden question: If I could master one skill today, which skill would make the biggest difference in my playing?

The violin’s oldest European ancestors date from the tenth century. They were called “fitheles”, a word derived from vitula, the Latin for heifer, the source of the gut for the strings. (The Latin word also eventually gave rise to “violin”; “fitheles”, meanwhile, became “fiddle” in a process of linguistic speciation also akin to the biological sort.) The instrument arrived at its modern form between the 16th and the 18th centuries, in the workshops of Cremona, a city in northern Italy that produced the Amati, Guarneri and Stradivari dynasties of luthiers.

I have no musical talent. My clarinet sounded like an apoplectic yak. For the brief days I blew the trumpet, a hostile-sounding pig snorted along in jerky fits and starts with the rest of the irritated band. I never knew when a sound was actually going to come out of the horn and it always startled me when it did. My violin unleashed a trio of enraged, tone-deaf banshees, and I couldn’t blow the flute well enough to make any more sound than with my lower lip on a soda bottle. Something about the pucker eluded me. The drums turned my arms into a pretzel-prison from which there was no escape. I would have given the tambourine a try—I really think I might have excelled at the hip-bump—but sadly the instrument wasn’t offered at my school. I think that’s why I love my iPod so much. I have music in my soul and can’t get it out.

The characteristic sounds of a trumpet, oboe, banjo, piano, or violin are due to the distinct cocktail of harmonic frequencies that each instrument produces. I love the image of an invisible cosmic bartender, expert in creating hundreds of different harmonic cocktails, who can serve up a banjo to this customer, a kettledrum to the next, and an erhu or a trombone to the one after that

I slide my hands down her sides to the curve of her waist. Her body reminds me of a violin—perfectly shaped, perfectly balanced. I want to play her like an instrument. I want to tease the most outrageous sounds out of her.

1973 was the year when the United Kingdom entered the European Economic Union, the year when Watergate helped us with a name for all future scandals, Carly Simon began the year at number one with ‘You’re So Vain’, John Tavener premiered his Variations on ‘Three Blind Mice’ for orchestra, the year when The Godfather won Best Picture Oscar, when the Bond film was Live and Let Die, when Perry Henzell’s film The Harder They Come, starring Jimmy Cliff, opened, when Sofia Gubaidulina’s Roses for piano and soprano premiered in Moscow, when David Bowie was Aladdin Sane, Lou Reed walked on the wild side and made up a ‘Berlin’, Slade were feeling the noize, Dobie Gray was drifting away, Bruce Springsteen was ‘Blinded by the Light’, Tom Waits was calling ‘Closing Time’, Bob Dylan was ‘Knocking on Heaven’s Door’, Sly and the Family Stone were ‘Fresh’, Queen recorded their first radio session for John Peel, when Marvin Gaye sang ‘What’s Going On’ and Ann Peebles’s ‘I Can’t Stand the Rain’, when Morton Feldman’s Voices and Instruments II for three female voices, flute, two cellos and bass, Alfred Schnittke’s Suite in the Old Style for violin and piano and Iannis Xenakis’s Eridanos for brass and strings premiered, when Ian Carr’s Nucleus released two albums refining their tangy English survey of the current jazz-rock mind of Miles Davis, when Ornette Coleman started recording again after a five-year pause, making a field recording in Morocco with the Master Musicians of Joujouka, when Stevie Wonder reached No. 1 with ‘Superstition’ and ‘You Are the Sunshine of My Life’, when Free, Family and the Byrds played their last show, 10cc played their first, the Everly Brothers split up, Gram Parsons died, and DJ Kool Herc DJed his first block party for his sister’s birthday in the Bronx, New York, where he mixed instrumental sections of two copies of the same record using two turntables.

Figure 2.2 Number of connections over 25 years across brain areas. This process — neural exuberance followed by pruning of connections — makes the human brain highly adaptable to any environment. Is the infant born in an urban or an agricultural society? Is it the year 2012 or 1012? It doesn’t really matter. The brain of a child born in New York City or in Nome, Alaska, is similar at birth. During the next two decades of life, the process of neural exuberance followed by pruning sculpts a brain that can meet the demands, and thrive in its environment. Brain differences at the “tails” of the distribution As with any natural process there is a range of functioning, with most individuals in the middle and a small percentage of individuals being far above and far below the mean. While the general pattern of increasing and decreasing brain connections is seen in all children, important differences are reported in children whose abilities are above or below those of the average population. To investigate children above the normal range, Shaw used Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) to follow brain structure in 307 children over 17 years. Children with average IQs reached a peak of cortical thickness (and therefore number of neural connections) around age 10, and then pruning began and continued to age 18. Children with above-average IQs had a different pattern: a brief pruning period around age 7 followed by increasing connections again to age 13. Then pruning ensued more vigorously and finished around age 18. There were also differences in brain structure. At age 18, those with above-average IQs had higher levels of neural connections in the frontal areas, which are responsible for short-term memory, attention, sense of self, planning, and decision-making — the higher brain functions. At the other end of the spectrum, individuals diagnosed with schizophrenia, compared to normal children, lose 3% more connections each year from age 10 to 18. Symptoms of schizophrenia emerge in the late teens, when the cortical layer becomes too thin to support coherent functioning. A thinner cortical layer as a young adult — about 20% less than the average — could account for the fragmented mental world of people diagnosed with schizophrenia. Who is in control? Neural exuberance — increasing and decreasing connections — is genetically controlled, but the child’s experiences affect which connections are pruned and which remain. Circuits that a child uses are strengthened. So a youngster who learns to play the piano or to speak Italian is setting up brain circuits that support those activities — she will find it easier to learn another instrument or language. ​Warning to parents: This doesn’t mean you should inundate your toddler with Italian, violin, martial arts, and tennis lessons. Young children learn best when following their natural tendencies and curiosity. Children learn through play. Undue stress and pressure inhibits the brain’s natural ability to learn.

Christophe fancied that on the day of the Creation the Great Sculptor did not take very much trouble to put in order the scattered members of his rough-hewn creatures, and that He had adjusted them anyhow without bothering to find out whether they were suited to each other, and so every one was made up of all sorts of pieces; and one man was scattered among five or six different men; his brain was with one, his heart with another, and the body belonging to his soul with yet another; the instrument was on one side, the performer on the other. Certain creatures remained like wonderful violins, forever shut up in their cases, for want of anyone with the art to play them.

Transposing your music into different keys can be challenging and may also seem like a waste of time because you have to relearn all the notes, but it can work wonders. Practicing transposing your music into different keys will help you hear the relationship between notes so that no matter the key or your instrument’s tendencies, you know the distance between the intervals. You will be able to play the correct intervals in any key, in addition to improving transposing skills.

a-note approach: This approach is exactly as the name suggests. Start with only one note. Play this one note in time and repeat it until you are comfortable with it. Then, add a note. Play only these two notes. Repeat them over and over. When you are comfortable and it becomes easier to play, add a note. Repeat. You could learn an entire piece using only this method and never even have to do slow practice!

Turn on the metronome against your recording and see how well you play in time.

Varied rhythms are useful for fast runs and passages. Diversifying the rhythms will help you keep your practicing engaged and focused while also enabling you to play evenly. There are many ways to vary rhythms. You can play dotted rhythms such as in Figure 1. You can also experiment playing the run in groups of three notes such as in Figure 2. For more diversification, play the run in groups of four notes, five notes, as well as in triplets as shown in Figure 3. Come up with new ways of varying the rhythms for your fast passages. Note that when you play a varied rhythm, you should also play the opposite varied rhythm immediately after. See A vs. B in the figures below.

Chunk your music to simplify it. Break it down by phrases and sub-phrases. Do whatever you need to do to keep it simple! Don’t waste your time playing passages you already know well and can play. Focus on the practicing what you can’t play. That is where improvement lies.

The most effective way I have learned to internalize rhythm and pulse is to halve the length of the beats per minute on the metronome. For example, if the piece of music is played at 60 bmp, then I will set the metronome to 30 bmp. This way I have to play two beats of music within one click of the metronome. This forces you to feel and know exactly where the two beats sit. Once you are very comfortable with the tips mentioned above, try challenging yourself further by playing with one click per measure. This will help you develop your inner pulse. For example, playing in a 4/4 time signature: 1. Play the passage so that the metronome click is on the downbeat (beat 1). 2. Play the passage so that the metronome click is on the 2nd beat (beat 2). 3. Play the passage so that the metronome click is half-way through the measure (beat 3). 4. Play the passage so that the metronome click is on the upbeat of the measure (beat 4). I know and I have heard many teachers say that you should practice as much with the metronome as without it. In my experience, the closer I got to being confident playing 1 measure in 1 click, the better I played without the metronome. I would strongly recommend playing a lot with the metronome at 1 click per measure and challenging yourself beyond that. Play 1 click for every 2 measures, even for 3 or 4 measures depending on the speed of the piece. This is what will help you play in time without a metronome.

Always remember that your goals are the most important. It is the first step to turning any dream or thought into reality. Without goals, you are inevitably going nowhere. Have goals and make them real by writing them down.

The Austrio-Hungarian composer Franz Liszt (1811-1886) was a pianistic miracle. He could play anything on site and composed over 400 works centered around "his" instrument. Among his key works are his Hungarian Rhapsodies, his Transcendental Etudes, his Concert Etudes, his Etudes based on variations of Paganinini's Violin Caprices and his Sonata, one of the most important of the nineteenth century.

As I was heeding gravity’s pull down the hill, I also heard music coming from upstairs. Three instruments, a violin, a flute, and a cello, were playing in a second-floor apartment. They were murdering a piece by Bach, I think. The murder was not in question, I just wasn’t sure if it was Bach or Haydn or someone else being killed upstairs. I stopped dead in my tracks to listen to them. They played with such a confident erring. On they stumbled and they never stopped to correct themselves. They pushed forward through their mistakes to the end. I applauded. I had to. I’m not sure they noticed me, but what luck for me to witness their attempt that morning. I looked out at the bay. What fine luck. Moments like the soloist practicing scales in Portland and the trio murdering Bach in Iceland give me such energy and such hope. These musicians were playing loud for all to hear and tough luck to the world if it was not perfect and the world judged them harshly. There is only one way to the proficiency of the master, and the budding violinist knew it as did the trio. Practice. Keep practicing until the notes have the precision they require. Keep practicing until the work is transformed, until the work transforms you, until study becomes Mastery.

 “How do you tune an instrument? You take a guitar or a violin— or any stringed instrument—for example. You have to tighten the strings, plucking and strumming until the right music comes through. Some strings are more stubborn than others and take a bit longer, but every one needs tuning. More often the more you use them.  “Isn’t that like our own hearts?  “We get tired, we get weary, we get out of tune with God’s music. The praise we attempt to sing, the speaking of His grace… it falls flat, like an old, weary guitar string. That’s why we have to do our best to let Christ tune our hearts daily—with tension, with gentle rebukes and loving comforts, strumming and tightening until a pure note sings from our soul.  “And then we can honestly sing of His grace once again.” 

Plunkett gave Pitt a dry look. "Even death would be a treat if I didn't have to hear that blasted tune again." "You don't care for 'Minnie the Mermaid'?" Pitt asked in mock surprise. "After hearing the chorus for the twentieth time, no." "With the telephone housing smashed, our only contact with the surface is the acoustic radio transmitter. Not nearly enough range for conversation, but it's all we've got. I can offer you Strauss waltzes or the big band sounds of the forties, but they wouldn't be appropriate." "I don't think much of your musical inventory," Plunkett grunted. Then he looked at Pitt. "What's wrong with Strauss?" "Instrumental," Pitt answered. "Distorted violin music can sound like whales or several other aquatic mammals through water. Minnie is a vocal. If anyone on the surface is listening, they'll know someone down here is still sucking air. No matter how garbled, there's no mistaking good old human babble." "For all the good that will do," said Plunkett. "If a rescue mission is launched, there's no way we can transfer from this vehicle to a submersible without a pressure lock. A commodity totally lacking on your otherwise remarkable tractor. If I may speak realistically, I fail to see anything in the near future but our inevitable demise." "I wish you wouldn't use the word 'demise.

...perhaps his mother had been right: maybe trees do have souls. Which makes wood a kind of flesh. And perhaps instruments of wooden construction sound so pleasing to our ears for this reason: the choral shimmer of a guitar; the heartbeat thump of drums; the mournful wail of violins—we love them because they sound like us.

Katz contends that before the advent of recording, vibrato added to a note was considered kitschy, tacky, and was universally frowned upon, unless one absolutely had to use it when playing in the uppermost registers. Vibrato as a technique, whether employed in a vocal performance or with a violin, helps mask pitch discrepancies, which might explain why it was considered “cheating.” As recording became more commonplace in the early part of the twentieth century, it was found that by using a bit more vibrato, not only could the volume of the instrument be increased (very important when there was only one mic or a single huge horn to capture an orchestra or ensemble), but the pitch—now painfully and permanently apparent—could be smudged by adding the wobble. The perceptibly imprecise pitch of a string instrument with no frets could be compensated for with this little wobble. The mind of the listener “wants” to hear the correct pitch, so the brain “hears” the right pitch among the myriad vaguenesses of pitch created by players using vibrato. The mind fills in the blanks, as it does with the visual gaps between movie and video frames, in which a series of stills creates the impression of seamless movement. Soon enough, conventional wisdom reversed itself, and now people find listening to classical string playing without vibrato to be painful and weird.

The cello is cousin to the violin, with a deeper voice and larger size. The musician holds the violin. The cello, with its foot firmly planted on the ground, holds the musician. In the still, Jessica has her arms wrapped around the body, her shoulders draped against the neck in an intimate embrace. Her head bends toward the instrument, as if it’s whispering a secret only she can hear.

Without a word I tuck my violin case beneath the risers near the house. It’s always strange to walk around carrying something worth a quarter of a million dollars. Some people say the violin is like a limb, but it’s more than that. It’s my heart. My soul. And it’s sitting in a velvet-lined case on the grass. No one would dare steal from Liam North, and technically the instrument belongs to him. How vulnerable it makes me to have something vital to my existence belong to another human being.

You’ve got two violin sections, violas, cellos, basses, woodwinds, brass, percussion—but it operates as a whole. It has rhythms.” You need space in your life for the spotlight of focus—but alone, it would be like a solo oboe player on a bare stage, trying to play Beethoven. You need mind-wandering to activate the other instruments and to make the sweetest music. I thought I had come to Provincetown to learn to focus. I realized that, in fact, I was learning to think—and that required much more than the spotlight of focus.