Thanks for the welcome, everyone!

Charles said
Hi, Andrew,

Welcome to the forum. You won't find many around here who buy into that nonsense about not being able to play decently because you're older.

People who start as young children do a have few advantages - they're more limber (which because violins and violas require a very contorted position to play, is helpful); they may (I'm not sure about this) soak up new information a bit more readily, and mostly, they don't have to support themselves at the same time they're trying to learn and practice.

I would say that most 16 year olds that were as strongly interested as you would have picked up just about as much in 10 years as a 6 year old would, if someone else supported you through all that time, gave you lots of lessons, etc.

I envy you the ability to largely teach yourself. I got a teacher for violin, and my progress has gone much further and faster than it has on any other instrument I've tried. I'm simply not one of those people who can teach themselves to play well, with no help.

You'll find there are a lot more violinists than violists on here, but we don't have the silly prejudices that some violinists do.  (And if there's anybody on the forum who I'm wrong about on that subject, shaddapa you mouth. )

We could definitely use an expert on viola around here, so we're glad to have you. You would have been quite welcome at Fiddlerfest (one of the players was a violist, in fact), and there's a thing called "Strings on Sunday" every week that anyone is welcome to join.  (BillyG or damfino can give you more details on that.)  

It's probably not quite accurate to say I was entirely self-taught even before I had my first lessons -- playing in orchestras with much better musicians helped a lot with both motivation and technique. There was always new music to learn, and always someone to give me pointers on how to play it. I think the thing that helped the most, for a lot of the time I've been playing, was always trying to play in the strongest orchestras I could keep up with. In any decent-sized city there's a range of community orchestras playing different levels of repertoire and with different levels of musicians, and if I wasn't in the back of the section, then I felt it was time to start thinking about moving up to a higher-level orchestra.

All that said: I probably could have progressed a lot faster than I did, if I'd had regular lessons. And I'm even aware of examples of people starting late and catching up. Kurt Atterberg, best known today as one of Scandinavia's leading 20th century composers, didn't start playing any instrument until he took up the cello at 15, and just six years later he was in the cello section of the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic!

I've met a few other people who started late (high school or older) and play regularly in orchestras, so I know it's more common than I was previously told. They're few and far between at the professional and semi-professional levels (I know only one other than myself), but there are more in community orchestras. For a year I even had someone in the viola section of my community orchestra who started at 24. (She moved away for a job, but found another orchestra in her new city.)

Still, once in a while there are still those little reminders that the people around me have mostly been playing in orchestras since they were 10 and have a completely different experience from me that they almost take for granted. When my semi-professional orchestra played Beethoven's 5th last year, I was literally the only one in the orchestra who had never played it before -- my stand partner for the concert (who before that day didn't know I was a late starter) expressed surprise that I'd never played it in a youth orchestra!

I'm really happy to see a so many late starters here, because we're all proving those comments about being "too old" wrong!

@coolpinkone Hi! Are you in the Sacramento area by any chance? Noticed from your blog you've run the Urban Cow before.

@Ripton Good to see another violist here. Welcome back to string playing!

@coolpinkone I don't do much of straight-up running, I mostly get my exercise playing soccer (pickup games in Land Park, and XOSO when they have a 11v11 season running). A bunch of my friends run the Urban Cow half marathon every year.

Have you seen Lady Bird? I literally just got home from seeing it, and I love all the Sacramento scenes and references in it. I'm from Texas originally, but Sacramento is the first city I've lived in that's actually felt like home to me.

Since you're in the area: If you ever want to attend a Camellia Symphony Orchestra concert, let me know -- I'd be happy to give you that concert's discount code for musicians' friends and family. We have concerts coming up in February, March, and April.