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How many of the forum membership wear a wedding ring / band while playing?
I keep mine on my key-ring, mainly because my work often involves situations where a metal band around a finger would be a hazard. If / when I become desk-bound, I'll like put it back on my finger (if it still fits).
The question really relates to how a finger-band impacts our playing. Does anyone have any experiences to share? A quick spin around the YouTube thumbnails show that rung fingers are rare for fiddlers.
I wondered if this thread ought to be in the playing section, but I can foresee it drifting off-topic rapidly.
Peter
"It is vain to do with more that which can be done with less" - William of Ockham
"A crown is merely a hat that lets the rain in" - Frederick the Great
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I'm not married, so I've never had to make any decision about wearing it or not. But I can say this: in my orchestra, there are probably between 40 and 50 string players who are married, and a quick look through the last year's worth of concert and rehearsal photos on the social media pages shows that exactly two string players (one violinist and one cellist) wear rings of any kind when playing.
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@peter
First, that was so funny about the thread running amok quickly! I would like to,ask,about something else on the same lone as your ring, but I will wait until there has been a discussion about the wedding ring. It will be on the same lone, though.
I wear my wedding band and Mother’s ring. I gave my older daughter my solitaire diamond engagement ring. I wanted to see her wearing it while I was still around. I gave my other daughter my diamond anniversary band for the same reason. I am not sure if that solitaire might have gotten in the way. My rings do turn on my finger. My Mother’s ring is nothing fancy. The little gems are set into the ring between two strips that open up from the band on the top. That is the best I can explain it. My anniversary band was the same way as my Mother's ring, but with little diamonds and not birthstone gems,
My Mother’s ring and wedding band do not cause a problem. They do turn because I have a habit of turning them with the stones up and when I am done they that ring is not oriented the same way, i never notice it.
@AndrewH Did you notice how many women are wearing rings? Are they flat like wedding bands or do they have ornate stones on them that are not flush with the band holding them? Since I am not a professional, am not an advanced player, even if I had an ornate protruding stone, my experience would probably not be the same. It may be they just don’t notice.
Thanks in advance, Andrew H for your answer.
Peter, after you have received a number of answers, I will ask you my question that is along the same line as yours.
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The two members of my semi-pro orchestra who wear rings are both women, and both wear simple, flat wedding bands. Slightly more than half of the string players are women, so the vast majority of the women do not wear rings at all while playing.
(Before I looked through the orchestra's photos on social media last night, I didn't think there were any people wearing rings at all. I hadn't ever seen anyone wearing a ring in rehearsals or concerts, but there are about 60 string players and I don't know them all.)
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That was an interesting question Peter asked about the wedding bands. I will wait until there had been time for more responses about the wedding bands before I as my follow up question. It would fit here, but I will give Peter’s question a few more days for responses, first.
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I wore mine on our honeymoon, then took it off, I might have worn it a time or two since then when we went out some where, but with my line of work, I deal with medium AC voltages up to 480 3phase every day and high voltage DC up to 10000 volts along with different types of mechanical power transmission types, belts and pulleys, gears and sprockets and chains etc. I don't need to lose more fingers on that hand than I all ready have. I assured me new bride that as long as I had a warm bed to come home to she had nothing to worry about, and for 42+ years it's worked well.
Mark
Master the Frog and you have mastered the bow.
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Back in the day, although unlike you, and very much working in a SELV environment - which may have been "safe" to humans, but could be disastrous to various digital discrete TTL boards during development and testing. That was before the days of surface mounted devices - so the device pins protruded right through to the underside of the board. The number of times I blew up something on a board on the test bench by shorting pins with the ring.... well... after about 3 times in one week, it ended up on the chain... still there !
LOL @Peter -
I wondered if this thread ought to be in the playing section, but I can foresee it drifting off-topic rapidly.
Yeah, so now we're talking about high voltage engineering and TTL - very prescient of you !!!!!
I seriously recommend not copying my mistakes. D'oh - 
Please make your own, different mistakes, and help us all learn :-)
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It looks as though the wedding ring is avoided by string players, at least on the fretless side of the equation.
On the industrial safety side, I guess most of us with direct experience have tales to tell of potential electrical and mechanical hazards of rings of any sort. Even leisure has its problems; as a one-time dinghy sailor, I had to keep the ring off in case it caught on a cleat and de-gloved my finger when the action got busy.
Peter
"It is vain to do with more that which can be done with less" - William of Ockham
"A crown is merely a hat that lets the rain in" - Frederick the Great
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Ok, I will ask my other take on this thread. Do professional players, mostly women, where dangly earrings and noisy necklaces and bracelets for the most part when playing? Even non-professionals, actually. It seems they would cause issues, too. Is suspect they do not.
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cid said
Ok, I will ask my other take on this thread. Do professional players, mostly women, where dangly earrings and noisy necklaces and bracelets for the most part when playing? Even non-professionals, actually. It seems they would cause issues, too. Is suspect they do not.
I'm not going to look through orchestra photos again, but I'm pretty sure I haven't seen any ornate jewelry of any kind in my orchestra.
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Thank you Andrew. I figured it was something that would have popped out at you and remembered.
I was a bow hooking someone’s large hoop earring. Ouch!
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I try and remember to take mine off if working in mcc panels or climbing ladders and such. don't always remember but we tagout equipment and have to wear FR gear. still not wise to have rings in industrial settings. I play fiddle with it on. maybe I should try without a few times.. you think it interferes?
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GregW said
... I play fiddle with it on. maybe I should try without a few times.. you think it interferes?
I've not tried fiddling with it on; maybe I should, to help my understanding of the apparent tendency to play un-rung. I've put on weight recently, so perhaps it will no longer even fit!
There appear to be a lot of technical types on the forum, or at least we have a lot of engineers, technicians and craftspeople responding here. I'm now looking at fiddling in a different light (at the risk of false assumption through observation). Maybe a poll of 'primary occupation' of fiddlers could be enlightening.
Peter
"It is vain to do with more that which can be done with less" - William of Ockham
"A crown is merely a hat that lets the rain in" - Frederick the Great
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Peter said
GregW said
... I play fiddle with it on. maybe I should try without a few times.. you think it interferes?
I've not tried fiddling with it on; maybe I should, to help my understanding of the apparent tendency to play un-rung. I've put on weight recently, so perhaps it will no longer even fit!
There appear to be a lot of technical types on the forum, or at least we have a lot of engineers, technicians and craftspeople responding here. I'm now looking at fiddling in a different light (at the risk of false assumption through observation). Maybe a poll of 'primary occupation' of fiddlers could be enlightening.
To be honest, this forum seems to skew far more toward engineers and technicians than other string forums, possibly because it has a DIY board where most others discourage any kind of DIY beyond the basic maintenance that every string player should be able to do. Maybe not surprisingly at all, a fair number of luthiers are engineers by training.
For most of the orchestras I've played in, physicians are either the #1 or #2 most common non-music occupation, and (non-music) schoolteachers are also quite common. Unless the medical profession counts, I've encountered relatively few technical types in community orchestras. That said, amateur classical musicians may be very different from amateur fiddlers.
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I never take my wedding ring off to play. It doesn't seem to cause me any problems at all.
EDIT: You can see in this video that it doesn't even come close to interfering with my LH position or fingering.
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Wow; thanks for that Jim.
"Irish Washerwoman" is currently my nemesis! I can't get it up to tempo, and I think I've just discovered why: I'm playing in Gmaj, as printed in a tinwhistle book. Watching you play, it looks like you're playing in Cmaj, and you make it look so easy.
EDIT: I cannot find a version of the tune not in Gmaj. I'm probably mis-reading your fingering!
Back on the jewellery thread, watching you play is an affirmation that wedding bands don't hinder the left hand.
Peter
"It is vain to do with more that which can be done with less" - William of Ockham
"A crown is merely a hat that lets the rain in" - Frederick the Great
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I can definitely say that's the first time I've ever seen a ring on someone's left hand while playing. But it most likely gets to be a real problem when playing substantially more difficult music. A ring on the left hand could get in the way when playing chromatic runs, crawl-shifting, or playing higher up the fingerboard where notes are closer together. I play a lot of music that I think would be unplayable with a ring on my left hand because my 2nd, 3rd, and 4th fingers would have to move quickly in tight spaces. Even on the right hand I suspect it might limit flexibility a little.
Another possible issue, as @cid may have alluded to, is the possibility of accidentally catching or striking a violin or bow with a metal ring.
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AndrewH said
I can definitely say that's the first time I've ever seen a ring on someone's left hand while playing. But it most likely gets to be a real problem when playing substantially more difficult music. A ring on the left hand could get in the way when playing chromatic runs, crawl-shifting, or playing higher up the fingerboard where notes are closer together. I play a lot of music that I think would be unplayable with a ring on my left hand because my 2nd, 3rd, and 4th fingers would have to move quickly in tight spaces. Even on the right hand I suspect it might limit flexibility a little.Another possible issue, as @cid may have alluded to, is the possibility of accidentally catching or striking a violin or bow with a metal ring.
I refer you to our genial host, Fiddlerman. He's wearing a ring in all of his videos, this is just an example of something challenging.
Mind, I'm not saying it would work for everyone, but I'm pretty sure I've seen many, many violinists both at orchestras and on youtube wearing a simple gold band.
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Peter said
Wow; thanks for that Jim."Irish Washerwoman" is currently my nemesis! I can't get it up to tempo, and I think I've just discovered why: I'm playing in Gmaj, as printed in a tinwhistle book. Watching you play, it looks like you're playing in Cmaj, and you make it look so easy.
EDIT: I cannot find a version of the tune not in Gmaj. I'm probably mis-reading your fingering!
Back on the jewellery thread, watching you play is an affirmation that wedding bands don't hinder the left hand.
You're welcome. That version is in D, but I have no idea where I got it apart from somewhere on the web. I'll see if I can attach a pdf of it for you.
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Thanks, Jim; just looking at the PDF I feel it's more comfortable. I'll print it in the morning, and try fingering it out in the evening.
Peter
"It is vain to do with more that which can be done with less" - William of Ockham
"A crown is merely a hat that lets the rain in" - Frederick the Great
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