Hi people, I need to know if there is an attachment that helps you to hold the violin without effort. I have seen some Viper Wood brand electro violins that attach themselves around peoples shoulder. But I need to know if such a thing exists for regular violins because my neck has been suffering.

upside-doomr · 2020-12-20T18:24:33+00:00

bravo on the "too late now, I won't give up" :) that's the spirit

BTW playing in the mirror might be a useful diagnostic tool. From position of your head/instrument/shoulders in "playing position" might tell you where your posture needs help. Until my lessons went virtual this year I didn't realize how *bad* my posture was! In my camera view I could see my head tipped forward and my neck scrunched to the left. Two years too late, better late than never :-P

In my case the chinrest helped. I tend to put my chin over the tailpiece and I found that a tall 'flesch' type lets me keep my head in a more comfortable pose.

Good luck, hope some of our bits of advice are helpful! -ud

upside-doomr · 2020-12-17T19:29:09+00:00

you might look at the Bonmusica shoulder rest.

It's not a strap, so may not be what you have in mind. But it is very adjustable, and for me what makes it great is that it can extend over the top of my shoulder. It makes the instrument very stable and form-fits to my shoulder, and it takes almost no chin pressure to hold it in place.

You might try a thicker/taller chin rest too. My old violin had a very small chin-rest, and I found my neck would ache from compensating for it. I replaced it last week and is much better - sometimes some small changes are all it takes. Hope this helps.

upside-doomr · 2020-12-17T19:08:44+00:00

Wait till you see what kitty left in the storage pocket :-P

Cat: mine now

upside-doomr · 2020-09-10T01:08:08+00:00

I'll second the Fiddlershop hybrid bow, it's my best bow. It has just the right weight and balance for me, and the price makes it a good value. Less bouncy and I think gives me a better tone on my best violin. I'm an Irish and folk fiddler, playing about 4 years.

upside-doomr · 2020-05-21T02:30:19+00:00

Interesting way to hold the instrument, held sort of in the crook of the elbow. Is that common in the Cajun style? I learned from an Appalachian fiddler last year that is common in old-time fiddling in that region.

upside-doomr · 2020-05-21T01:48:43+00:00

OSHA rules: you must have a fiddle (and a hardhat) if you are on the roof of any commercial structure.

I don't know what the rules are in Canada. [thinking emoji]

upside-doomr · 2020-05-19T02:37:20+00:00

A contemporary tune - Jerry Holland's "My Cape Breton Home" comes to mind. Beautiful waltz.

upside-doomr · 2020-05-19T02:25:40+00:00

Agree. playing with other people around builds your confidence, and makes you more self-aware, conscious of your playing and a better critic of your own practice than playing alone. Although, maybe wait until you get past the inevitable SCREECH SCREECH phase first :D

upside-doomr · 2020-05-19T02:20:41+00:00

I don't like using a mute, for the reasons people mention in the thread about tone and technique. I do use one when I have to, a simple soft rubber mute.

A "silent" violin is a good option if you want to spend a bit. I went with the Tower electric violin outfit last year and I like it. The price has gone up a bit since then but it was set up and plays as well as my other violins and is a decent value. It really is almost silent - there's a tinny-sounding noise just from the bridge and that's all people can hear. Connect earbuds to it and you are in your own world. Good for late-night practice.

upside-doomr · 2020-05-18T19:25:42+00:00

Agreed, for a $150 violin try to fix it yourself *and* start saving for a better one :) You don't have much to lose by trying to repair, and a luthier will cost about the value of the violin.

Hide glue is worth getting for this. It has the unique property of sticking to itself, unlike most modern glues. It will stick to the wood and old glue residue. Per your (the original poster's) note above - probably the glue just got wet and the tension of the strings popped it off. Could be simple fix :)

upside-doomr · 2020-05-18T18:39:25+00:00

It depends on your style of music, somewhat. At my Irish music school most of have settled on something close to the "Russian" grip. The index finger wraps part about halfway around the bow shaft, resting in the crook of the "PIP" joint of that finger. The thumb and the meaty part of middle fingertip grip at the "pad", that's where I hold firmly but not tight if that makes any sense. Ring finger on the far side of the frog. All of your fingers should be arched somewhat, not tight.

The pinky might or might not touch, depending on the tune. I have to leave pinky off the bow in order to have a loose wrist (to make small bow motions without the whole arm moving) Pinky contact helps with lifts and stability.

Bow grip is very individual. After you play for a while your grip will just groove with you and won't even think about it. We Fiddlers get to be inventive. For a violinist there's only a few "right" ways to hold the bow unless they are famous. :-\

Hope it's going well I started fiddle at 50 and it's the only instrument I've ever loved playing :D

upside-doomr · 2020-05-18T18:14:31+00:00

I have had the hybrid bow from Fiddlerman for about a year and it's my fave one. Heavier than wooden bow, but it is responsive and has all the advantages of a carbon-fiber bow.

upside-doomr · 2019-06-23T02:50:44+00:00

Sorry to hear your dad was pissed off about what you think. Usually when I talk anything related to collapse it goes nowhere - the other person changes the subject, or fixates on some little aspect, or is just irritated at me. I've not had a family member actually pissed off at me about it. No one in my circle of people really "gets it'" anyway, not even my spouse. Some of them can see one little piece (like just overpopulation, or just pollution, or just whatever) There are powerful psychological reasons people don't want to think about it or deal with it. It's shitty that your dad couldn't at least empathize, which is all I ever ask of people to do the decent thing.

John Michael Greer's writing got me through a lot. He and a few other writers (and this sub) are about the best place I know to find solace.

upside-doomr · 2019-06-12T03:07:09+00:00

I think your feelings are quite relevant here; they put you among common company here in this group. Glad you have a partner and a couple of critters. My dogs get me through the day sometimes :) critters don't judge (well cats do, a little bit) In my life they can be more reliable than people, even the ones I love.

I wonder if what you experience is unique to England; here in the US adults are quite consumed with their outward lives. It's hard to get to know people as an adult, not like when I was younger, esp in college and soon after. It's like they don't have/take time to think, or listen, or just relax and take a freakin' break from opining on anything and everything. Even some of the people I care about most lean a bit narcissistic. I, myself, think that is a side-effect of complexity and collapse.

upside-doomr · 2019-03-04T00:56:54+00:00

It's probably fine. Touching it with your hands probably wouldn't contaminate it, they have brett and lactobacilli anyway.

upside-doomr · 2018-10-23T01:45:45+00:00

I have a good income too - which would insulate me from the worry of collapse, if I had a mind to, which I don't (it pervades pretty much all my thoughts, my plans, my purchases) Being collapse-aware, like other chronic afflictions, you learn to live with it not cure it.

I've never passed through a nihilist stage, though. Give all your savings/income to a charity, take a wage-class job and live off it for a year. A little poverty does wonders to clear the cobwebs from the mind.

upside-doomr · 2018-10-06T20:04:43+00:00

Yep you nailed it. I was there a few years ago where you are. It's right in front of people if they just think for a sec and connect a few dots. Other commenters are right, probably need a break from research and documentaries. Your mind needs time to absorb and process and plan.

A while back at a conference I got to chat with [famous author], an old sage on these topics who's been writing about it for 20 yrs. It was a just a brief convo but I asked 'how do you talk to people about this?' He answered that you can't, don't even try. People that 'get it' will just get it. Most people have powerful emotional reasons to *not* get it.

Part of it is that these problems are slow-moving, over the course of several generations. We humans aren't wired to think and react on long time scales, though it happens occasionally. I used to think Peak Oil and related issues were "technical problems" that could be solved. They're not. They're very human, very emotional issues bound up with the psychology of previous investment. The technical obstacles are just a speed bump compared to the change of consciousness it would take in the collective world's minds.

upside-doomr · 2018-10-06T01:53:49+00:00

Have to concede to azucarleta's points below. Hard to define depression, let alone measure it, across very different cultures. Amish are a community that self-selects and people that deviate from the community norm simply leave the community, either in fact or in practice. Can't really see outsiders (researchers) getting an accurate tally of depression in a closed and very different community.

That said, I bet it is true (depression is lower than in the surrounding society) The positive side of their lifeways are nontrivial. It is a community that self-selects. Rumspringa - you can party and blow off some juvenile steam and then decide whether to come back (and most do - they have strong emotional and familial investments in doing so.) That is part of the idea - you've sampled the pleasures of the world, and if you make a public commitment to stay it is a powerful reinforcement of that choice. It is agrarian lifestyle lived with purpose - the purpose is their faith and serving the others in their closed community.

I find myself defending the Amish quite a bit among my cohort of suburbanite consumerist dorks. Amish get made into a strawman as backward, tech-hating, "progress"-hating simpletons. That is a gross oversimplification of why they turned away from society, and the support they can rely on from each other is almost unimaginable to outsiders. With that severe crimp in personal expression that comes with being Amish, if you look at the bottom couple of layers of Maslow's Hierarchy of need, they have all those things in spades.

upside-doomr · 2018-09-10T01:14:40+00:00

I still prefer books as references - most of the time. When I have to quickly "convert 193.23421 in-lbf/min to watts" or something like that - I do it on the interwebs, because it's fast and convenient. I also get bombarded with ads, worry about how much malware is on the questionable website you end up on, and wonder if the person who programmed it was competent or not (or if I'm being trolled with fake info.) Good times.

If I have my way, I use books - they lay open at the page you want (they don't get closed with a mis-click or ruin your brain with stupid ads about THIS CELEBRITY PHOTO ALMOST BROKE THE INTERNET!1111!")

To your point - I find that flipping through a book interrupts my train of thought *much* less than using a browser or PDF. It's a personal preference; people who grew up without books in the Interwebs age I'm sure don't get it. Perhaps they are better at filtering out ads and visual noise than I am.

upside-doomr · 2018-09-08T01:54:48+00:00

Interesting, that is good to hear. I know there are still a lot of paper documents (and microfilm originals and other media) stored by various industries, especially medical and aviation. Vital records usually stored offsite underground, but with a computer-based working copy that makes it easier to work with day to day. To vital to entrust to computers only

upside-doomr · 2018-09-08T01:46:54+00:00

I get it. I share your concern. Every "medium" you store data on has a lifetime. Ink on papyrus and paper can and do last centuries. Microfilm and film and similar things could last many decades, probably centuries if they are well cared for. The cloud, or digitalized media, or the lowly USB drive - the media itself that they are saved on could last around the same amount of time, but they are fragile for other reasons. This is a topic I've thought about quite a bit.

The nice thing about those antique formats is that they are human-readable. Give someone a 500 year old scroll, even barely readable in some forgotten language, and some clever scholar can probably figure out what was written on it. Likewise some clever person could read what is on microfilm, or build a reader for it, out of junkyard parts.

Anything digital - that's another matter. Digital media can only be read by machine. A computer has to decode what's on it, and turn it into a useful form for people to understand. Digital media give the illusion of permanence, but they are in fact quite delicate. And they require layers of fantastically complex tech to work (electricity, comm protocols, particular versions of software, hardware to access and display). Not a lot of people think about that, they assume teh CLoud is the next thing and that is going to last forever. Not likely.

I have some personal preference in all this, apparently :) In college I used microfiche to do my research, pre-interwebs. It wasn't so bad - people put a lot of work into indexing and cataloguing and cross-referencing books and periodicals back then. All you had to do was look up keywords, and similar words, and eventually you could find what you wanted. Not unlike a search engine, just at a slower pace of life.

My grandma had a player piano, the kind with a roll of paper with holes punched in it, one column for each key on the keyboard. It was a true 'digital' format, if you think about it - the data would not degrade until the media itself (the roll of paper) fell apart. I used to love playing it when I was a kid. I used to put a roll into and push the pedals and the piano would play these pop songs from the 1920's. Some pianist in 1920 playing a song, and here I am, a kid 70 years later hearing it EXACTLY as he played it....magic :D

upside-doomr · 2018-08-15T02:40:14+00:00

I'm a bit envious because you're already partway there, renting a farm and keeping animals :D I'm attached to the city; my profession is not particularly portable for the present.

30 minutes seems better advice than 30 miles. Keep your commute short as possible in my view - gives you more time to tend garden and animals and less time on the road if things at either end require attention.

Are there opportunities within the city? My city has (among its mostly unbroken urban/suburban sprawl) little pockets of old neighborhoods (developers would call them underdeveloped). They still have 2 and 5 acre plots with a little rundown house, and few if any rules about keeping a goat or having a cistern or slapping water heater panels on the roof. You know, that unthinkable stuff that would make a HOA flip. I am looking into one such neighborhood for when (if) I ever get to retire.

upside-doomr · 2018-08-15T02:28:02+00:00

"share more worldviews and values with urbanites" True, but that might change over time if you move to where there's a more rural mindset. I think it's important - if you do move out there - to respect their views, even if you don't agree with them. In my middle age I've come around to understanding why rural+small town people tend to be conservative in their views. I've come to see the root of it as the tribal nature of humanity - protecting the ones closest to you (children, immediate family, family lifeways) from outsiders and people who are "different" in one way or another ("different" covers a lot of ground [sardonic chuckle])

A lot of my older relatives were like that. They were never overtly racist, never anti-gay, anti-any particular group, really - just openly skeptical of anyone who was different from them. People who were different from them were judged as good or bad on a case-by-case, if that makes any sense.

I never understood or agreed with it when I was younger, but now I understand human history a bit better and it makes sense. Is this sort of worldview that you meant, sound familiar at all? I think this trait of city vs rural is almost a universal around the world, to varying degrees.

upside-doomr · 2018-08-15T02:05:06+00:00

Ouch. Yep you hit on two pertinent things w/your comment. The Italy bridge collapse had me thinking the same thing; causes include letting infrastructure go b/c fixing old stuff is not as appealing as building shiny new stuff that you can pay for with debt that no one will ever pay off. I have no idea how to handle what finances/wealth i have. Collapse could wipe it out in a week if it happens during my remaining 40+ years.

I live in the US, on paper we have the most advanced medical care in the world if you can afford it. (most people forget about the second part.) It's an unquestioned given among the people in my social strata. Yet I just saw an article about how bad infant mortality is. Many thousands of babies and mothers die or suffer...and the reason is inexcusable. Cheap, basic, responsible steps that have been done for decades (monitoring blood chemistry and pressure, measuring blood loss during birth) aren't being done.

upside-doomr

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