So I started getting lessons again a couple months ago, and I think I really found the right teacher for me. I had a start playing violin a couple years ago, then a stop due to COVID then health and financial reasons, but recently I picked it up again.

I think I found the perfect teacher for me at this time.

Let's flashback to two months ago when I had my first lesson with him. He came in, we checked my tuning (Snuffles holds tuning very well) and I played a quick two octave G major scale and puled out my Suzuki 1 book. He immediately said hold on a minute, I am going to go out and pick up Suzuki 2 and 3. I asked him to hold on, I knew I was not where near there yet. I explained that I knew how to train my muscle memory, but I didn't necessarily own the techniques required for the remaining pieces in book 1.

And he listened. Not only did he listen, he has been pushing me on the techniques required to make each piece I am working on my own.

This is not to say that I have mastered each piece we have worked on, but we do move on to each new piece now after I have worked on each 'concept' for each piece. I think he gave me the best compliment I have ever had, where he said "I can immediately tell what you are going for"

The best part is he helps me explore and go for it from there. He helps me play the piece the way I feel it and hear it in my head, rather than "This is how it is supposed to be played"

I feel like I am being supported musically, and he is helping me go where I have somewhat of a direction in mind.

And this brings me to the first part of my topic: soft skills and hard skills

Violin is a tricky instrument, but I do not think it is all that much harder than piano or guitar in and of itself. I think it becomes a lot harder as a first instrument, if you are also trying to develop a sense of pitch and timing though. It makes me wonder, would an adult or later beginner, actually learn violin faster if they also learned something like piano at the same time?

While my technical skills are not where I would like them to be on guitar where fancy and shred leads come in to play, I have no trouble picking out songs and a close idea to the leads go (until it becomes really technical). That is due to years of learning songs by ear, so I already have a decent sense of pitch and timing. And even on keyboards which is a secondary instrument I can even if not perfect, get a similar inversion of chords for a song pretty quickly.

Having a sense of pitch and rhythm makes it so much easier. Add in the musicality of knowing the feeling of forte vs piano and legato vs potato makes a lot of difference. And I wonder, would an adult beginner make more progress by trying to learn something like piano at the same time speed up progress or not?

Just some curious thoughts there.

Well, at any rate, I am having a lot of fun, and currently not only working on Suzuki, he is helping me work on some pieces I have written, and should start to have some videos as well as critique videos come out soon. Though those are on slightly lower priority after doing all the cardio rehab I am working on as well.