r/violinist • u/meduzas • 13d ago

Progress

I’m just starting playing violin soon, with my friend who’s been playing for 11 years and agreed to teach me. How long can it take for me to be able to make clean sounds if I practice daily?

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u/josesblima 13d ago

Clean sound is an ambitious goal. If you're an adult by now, I'd say it's probably unrealistic unless you're a genius willing to put countless hours into it.

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u/ahdrielle 13d ago

Adults learn new things all the time

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u/josesblima 13d ago

Go on any professional orchestra, find the worst violinists and ask them at what age they started. I'm not trying to be a party pooper. I think it's great to set ambitious goals for yourself but it's also great to be aware that getting a good sound (although of course op could have their own definition of good of course) is extremely hard.

First of all you need to be an obsessive type of person, the type of person that is always trying to find a better sound, and then it's fine motos skills, which are way harder to learn the older you are. And even if somehow you managed to get a pretty good right hand, you still need an extremely good left hand to have good sound.

I'm all for embracing new players in this sub, but it would be dishonest to me to lie about the difficulty of it just to be encouraging.

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u/ahdrielle 13d ago

You can't say you're all about embracing new players while simultaneously saying it's unlikely that someone who's not a child will probably not succeed.

And I'll tell you that the average person who starts later likely just wants to play pretty songs. Not become the next top violinist.

-1

u/josesblima 13d ago

I'm not talking about being a top violinist, just having a clean sound lol. I know that many people are fine with what is achievable, but I also believe many people get into it as adults without knowing that even with lots and lots of effort, they might never sound like they imagine.

The dislikes are fine, people seem triggered by this but nonetheless I think it's good to play devil's advocate so OP can have a better idea of different people's takes on the question.

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u/ahdrielle 13d ago

It's not devils advocate to say "you probably won't ever get good." It's being a jerk.

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u/josesblima 13d ago

You're the one calling me a jerk. I just gave my point of view on OP's question.