learning by myself

I decided not to take lessons at first. I had taken piano lessons for many years, and taught myself to play guitar. I have a good ear and a fairly good understanding of theory. I looked at some info on the internet about where the notes were on the fingerboard and tried to read about how to play the violin in general.

I figured I'd be frustrated by starting at the very beginning, because I already knew how to read sheet music.

My parents are from Ireland and Newfoundland respectively, and my mom likes listening to ballads from the 60s and 70s, eg. Johnny McEvoy and Paddy Reilly and others like that, eg. songs like Fields of Athenry, but I'd been exposed to tunes here and there like Garryowen.

So before I bought the fiddle, I had been trying to memorize tunes from my dad's pennywhistle book, and I waded into the world of fiddle music on the internet. I found things that were not really fiddle music, but bluegrass, that I had been exposed to randomly, like Cripple Creek and Orange Blossom Special. I found out that the world of fiddle music was pretty varied: Metis fiddling, old time, Irish, Scottish, Ottawa Valley. It was pretty exciting. If it was sheet music only, I inputted it into my Cubase software and recorded the midi file as an MP3 and listened to them on my iPod.

I found Whiskey Before Breakfast that way, and proceeded to learn it on the fiddle. It took awhile, but I was still not sure whether I should use one bow per 4 beats in the bar, I would run out of bow and get into other trouble, but it was fun to get better playing it.