Hi everyone :)

First I had a rented viola in summer, but nearly no time for practice... but I knew that I wanted to learn to play (at least a bit ;) ), so I bought a viola in september, deciding for this special instrument "by ear". Now I´m practicing for 2 and a half month, about 5 times a week for half an hour approxemately (no lessons so far besides VL)...

So here is my first video (wahh excited ;)  )... it is a little bit strange to see yourself playing, but you can see so many things you can´t see while playing...

I thought that I use my elbow pretty much... but I don´t,  a lot of movement comes from the upper arm

I slip off the sounding point so often and the sound suffers immediately :/

Practice straight bowing will be a good idea

aaand the intonation ;)  I´m trying to get from "in-tune-by-accident" to "only-sometimes-out-of-tune" ;)

A very good effect of VL is, that I can practice my school-english, too ;)

Greetings, Andreas :)

Ah and one thing I wanted to ask: do you have your video-replies put together somewhere so we can watch them again later without searching all the discussions? Or can I download it somehow? :)

Andreas

Thank you so much for making this video Beth  :D

After watching the video I tried to bring out the instrument more to the left, and it works perfect for me :) With the viola more in front of me I had the feeling of bowing up to my chin when I tried to bow up to the frog ;) I´ll practice on bowing in the same amount of speed.

Have to say that I have no musical background, no piano, guitar or anything else. The only thing I did is to put house and electro tracks together with fruity loops ;)

Thank you again and to the other members of VL... I´ll try to work on your suggestions and put a video online in one or two weeks, so you can see improvements or not  ;)

Andreas

Ah no I never wanted a left handed instrument... just imagine I play a big concert with the london symphony orchestra and my viola is broken, where do I get a new one 2 minutes before the concert begins?? ;)) Besides that really realistic scenario I think that it is a good training for the brain when you use your not-prefered hand... just try to brush your teeth with the other hand ;) It´s kind of challenging... perhaps I should do so to improve my control in the bow arm :)

Andreas

Haha Bob thats a good one :D

Q: Why can't you hear a viola on a digital recording?
A: Recording technology has reached such an advanced level of development that all extraneous noise is eliminated.  ;)

Thanks for your kind replies again.

I looked up the rosin you mentioned Bob, it costs around 8 € in germany, thats about 10.70$. And you are right, my rosin is a very dark one, nearly black.

My issues with bowing may be because I´m left-handed (and not enough practice of course), so I have much more control in my left hand. Well I startet to practice long bows this morning, and wow, my viola is so loud haha. I think my little camera won´t be able to manage the sound ;))

Andreas

Thanks for your replies so far :D

Does the rosin really make such difference? Any suggestions which kind of rosin is better perhaps? Mine is from "Hill&Sons". And when I get something better, can I just use it over the old rosin which is on the bowhair already? 

I really have to work on bowing... strange thing is, when I play, it feels as if I use much more bow (have to try the 10%-more thing :) )

Eileen I think you are right with the pressure. When I do long bowstrokes with a good amount of pressure the viola sounds rich and much louder, it´s not easy to keep that while I concentrate on the left hand ;) I think I remember something about pressure from the violin-viola comparison videos...

Thx again :)

Andreas