Reply To: fiddling blind

[smiley]

Hello,

I am totally blind and learning to fiddle. What helped me is that I started off playing in the orchestra in 5th grade. I had a lot of bad habits one of them was the direction of the bow you talk about here. I used to play with my bow going to the right and wonder why I couldn’t get a pretty sound. I played that way all the way through my years in school with not a single correction.

When I went to college I used a bit of that funding to find me a private violin teacher. It was not easy because no one wanted to take on the challenge of teaching a blind person. I finally found one that was willing to work with me. She helped me to break a lot of the habits I had. One of them was bow direction. I still have a long way to go in my training, but I am hoping with a lot of practice I can enjoy the instrument I dearly loved as a child. As a non-music reader, I love how Jason takes each tune a part step by step. I was about to put the violin down forever since classical music was to difficult for me to play without being able to read music. With no funding for training now, and no private violin teacher I figured I could maybe find some tunes I can possibly try to play and that is when I found Fiddlehead. Now most of my issue with learning to fiddle is relaxed bow hand and relax violin hold. I haven’t quite figured out how I am going to accomplish that one.

It’s difficult to describe without having someone to show you. Maybe Jason can describe this better than I can. If you start from the bottom of the bow pull it away from you as if you are pulling it in a downward direction. Your arm must drop down as well. Act like you are pulling something away from you. Maybe if you make a video of your bow use and send it to Jason or another student on the site they might be able to give you some suggestions. That is a thought that might work.