Although many of you are new violinists (meaning you've been playing for a year or much less) I want to caution you that having a long list of tunes you may have been able to "pick out" the notes for, it's a far cry from having them mastered.

What I find is being able to play a tune "well", seems to occur in several stages.

1- we get motivated and try to visualize what the rhythm would be

2- we listen to it over and over from a recording or youtube and keep thinking, hmmm. I can do that.

3- we get the music sheet for the tune or we download a youtube video or sound track of what we want to hear and play along with it over and over to develop the memorized part.

4- we play it so much we don't need the recording or sheet music to play along with, we now find our fingers just seem to 'know' where they need to go. We still have to look at the fingering though or we screw up.

5- at this stage, we now can concentrate on the remaining 50% of learning the tune... yes 50% left to go! Mastering the bow work to give the tune volume, accents, and dynamics to make it what we feel it should be.

     I've been practicing and playing now for just over 3 years  (2-1/2 on acoustic, part of the last 6 months on an acoustic/electric and just recently all electric) and I can play all of about 6-8 tunes with feeling, clarity and really good if not great intonation from the C string all the way up to the 3rd and 4th finger position on the E string. I don't think about a particular note being in a particular finger position, I just know it's easier to hit a certain sequence by using either a lower string and play the note higher up on it or use a higher string and play it lower.

     So, if you read where someone is a 'beginner' and they play like 20 songs or tunes, don't be disappointed that you can't seem to do it... I can't. It's no big deal, because I hear that there's a lot more to put into my tunes than just a few notes bowed and a few strings plucked. Some can master this crazy instrument faster than others and some devote hours per day to their practice, some only a few minutes per day... a lot of reasons.