So I got my hands on a violin. I’ve been thinking about this for a while because I haven’t been satisfied with any orchestral samplers. In some instances they can sound really good, but what gets me the most is the articulations are just not quite right to my ear. So I’m just going to take the dive and learn how to play them myself. I got on Amazon and ordered beginner violin. This is my first week and these are my findings!
So step one was to map out the fingerboard. this isn’t too fancy, just using google docs, mapped out all 7 modes with 4 notes per string. The first thing I noticed is that there are way less combinations to memorize than learning guitar because all the intervals are always fifths from string to string. So if I choose Ionian, and bump it over 1 string higher, I only have to relearn the lowest string starting on note number 4 to learn lydian.
So I’ve almost got them all memorized, but still having a little bit of a hard time judging the distances between the notes. Even small distances off, translate to notes being out of tune. The other tricky part is getting good tone. It’s actually not terribly hard while staying on the same string and bowing, but moving string to string can be tricky. One second it sounds really good, and the next second it sounds like screaming cats.
All and all, for simple whole notes I think it already sounds way, way better than any of my Kontakt libraries. I think so far what I like the best is the articulations sound much much better. I still have a long way to go on improving the tone but I think within a few weeks I should be able to do some of my own basic violin lines. I’ll post some samples next week!