Rachel said
Hi everybody!

I'm so glad I found this forum! I've wanted to learn the violin my entire life. I'm from a small town and there weren't any violin teachers within 30 miles, so I grew up playing the piano and clarinet. I haven't played either in over a decade. I do a lot of seasonal work and move around as a wildland firefighter, boat deckhand, or field biologist, and recently bought an RV and am living in it full time. I love having my own personal space, and it has given me the courage to try to teach myself the violin! My dog has stopped hiding in the bedroom when I play, so that is something!

I really struggle with doing things poorly in front of people. I am a perfectionist. For some reason recording myself struggling to learn violin and posting it to the internet gets me past that nervousness. I want to surprise my mom with her favorite Christmas carol at Christmas time, so working hard on my scales and using Twinkle Twinkle Little Star as my current progression song.

I love the portability of the violin, and hope to bring it with me when I travel so I can be a wandering gypsy fiddler!

Rachel  

Hi, Rachel,

Welcome to the forum.

I read "wildland firefighter" and "violin", and I got this image of you standing in front of a burning forest (at the stage where there's nothing more to do but let it burn itself out, of course) in a toga and laurel wreath, fiddling away...  You really should do that if the opportunity ever presents itself.

What violin have you got?  And which Christmas carol are you planning to do?

Rachel said

Maybe I can convince my mom to finally let me sell the nice clarinet I have that I haven't played in 15 years to fund a nicer violin!

I'm not sure what carol is her favorite, actually.

If you're 31, you can actually sell it without your mom's permission, you know.

I'm of a mixed mind about encouraging you to do that. Good instruments of any kind are not easy to come by, and clarinets are fairly portable, too.

If you've lost all interest in the clarinet, then it might be a good idea to sell it. On the other hand, you could play your own accompaniment to that Christmas carol, if you wanted (and the clarinet is with you, not in a closet at your mom's house. )  You'd have to figure out how to merge two videos, which I can't help you with, but there are several people on here who can, if you're interested.

I had a wild and crazy idea for how to find out her favorite Christmas carol - ask her. If you hardly ever talk, and that's the only topic of the conversation, it will kind of give things away, but if you talk more often, and about a variety of things, you could bring it up casually.  Mention that she hates such-and-such (talking about something she wasn't happy with) as badly as she hates "The Little Drummer Boy", and then casually ask "I know that's your least favorite Christmas carol, what's your favorite?"

Also, as long as you don't pick The Little Drummer Boy, she'll probably like anything you play. (Be warned, though. She'll ask for a live performance. Mothers are like that.)

Two that are fairly easy:

Silent Night, starting on A

O Holy Night, starting on D

(That's the singing part - I couldn't begin to tell you what any intros might start on.)

As to difficulty, for a beginner, I'd rate them like this (scale 1-10)

Twinkle: 2

Silent Night: 3-4

O Holy Night: 4-5

There's sheet music for Silent Night here on the website, but I don't recommend that for a beginner on a tight time schedule. It's in C, which is not a friendly key to violinists, especially beginning ones.  Here's a version on MuseScore in D (play the voice line) https://musescore.com/user/333.....s/50821.  I recommend getting MuseScore. It's free, and it's a very useful tool. You can do things like take music in one key and transpose it to another.

One of the handiest features I've found is that it will play the music for you. It's a horrible sounding synth for "violin", but you can at least hear what the song is supposed to sound like.  I have trouble turning sheet music for a song I've never heard into music. I can play a song I know well from sheet music 10 times better than I can play one I don't know at all. (I doubt that will be a problem with Christmas carols. )

A version of O Holy Night in D (it starts on F#, rather than D, but it's pretty playable for a beginner) https://musescore.com/user/766.....es/2815371. You want the top piano part.

Have you started reading music for violin yet? I assume if you used to play clarinet a lot you read music, but finding the fingering on the violin is a little trickier.  If not, you can just sound it out by ear. If you've got any candidates, let me know and I'll try to sound them out, and give you an estimate of difficulty. (Assuming I know the song.)