And best of luck back at you, JoeP.

I made it a point to not be too serious for the first year.  I felt it would take that long to get a basic idea what fiddle/violin should/could sound like, since I'd never been in a band with a fiddle/violin player, never had a close friend who played it, and never made an actual study of the sound and different ways it is used in music.  You listen to an instrument differently if it is one you are learning to play than if it is one you just hear in the mix sometimes or listen to an occasional piece featuring it. 

I also have a personal belief that too many people try to get serious way too fast, and there can be things they'd miss that a child would get.  Too much of a hurry to achieve,  at the cost of taking a bit of time to just explore the instrument and what sounds it can make like a little kid would. 

So I kept reminding myself during the first year that I was officially expecting nothing from myself for the first year of playing except gaining a basic familiarity with the instrument and some of the sounds it is capable of, and some idea of what I want to be able to do with it musically.  

So, back to the "second noobhood".   Intonation, notes and timing.  Possibly the most basic things one can attend to with learning any instrument.  

The next part of my routine is I play some scales.  Strictly ones used for pieces I am working on in practice.  I play against a drone pitch of the tonic note of the scale, correcting my intonation by hearing the familiar intervals.  5 min of that, and then turn off the drone, turn on the metronome and do another 5 min of playing them to an easy beat while listening and feeling for the resonance through the instrument when the fingered note excites the open strings.  You can feel that where you play an octave, like the G on the D string against the open G, of course, but the A on the G string also excites the open A when you are playing it right, and the E on the G string excites the open E.  The G on the E string also resonates the open G.  That gives me enough "checkpoints" for the scales or melodies to at least make sure I don't drift too far off, and since my hands and ear are already "warmed up" from having played against the drone note in the first part of the exercise, the other notes are easier to find than if I just went into it "cold".  About 10 min of that, and then 5 minutes of things like doing the scale all with one bow stroke, and then up and back with a single bow stroke.    

And then that section of practice is done, at least for it's "minimum" for the day.

Woohoo!  I'm coming up on "first burnout".   A complete burnout is when you've done an exercise or song so many times that you really don't want to do it anymore.  But before that happens, it just quits being as much fun and you start trying to think of excuses not to do it. 

Burnouts are a natural part of any sort of repetitive practice routine.  The trick, I feel, is to catch it right before you actually start disliking the practice routine and vary the routine to go into another stage rather than letting it make practice into something you aren't looking forward to doing.   You don't have to change the entire practice routine to make it feel fresh and interesting again, and you can always go back to some of the parts later, if you think you need a bit more work on them. 

I did modify my original schedule a little already.  5 min for the plain open string bowing was a little short, since I also use that exercise to practice crossing and skipping strings.  10 min felt better.  Then 5 min of open strings against the metronome to practice some sort of a beat.  That is a comfortable warm-up so I'm leaving it alone.

Major and minor scales for a limited number of "keys of interest" have gotten a bit boring though.  So that's a good place to change.  Having worked the scales for about a month against the drones, the fingers have some idea where to go, so I decided it's time for some arpeggio work.  Now, if you've ever learned piano, then the sound of major and minor chord arpeggios are probably pretty much burned permanently into your brain from basic piano exercises.  LOL  If not, then if you have practised scales, you'd still have a pretty good idea what the 3rd and 5th note sound like compared to the root.  That is a basic "chord triad" and an easy arpeggio to practice.  On piano, you can end up doing a lot of root, 3, 5, root, 3, 5, 3 repetition.  But a kind of curious thing about arpeggios is that most people who may hear it are more likely to think it sounds like you are "playing music" than "just an exercises". 

Now, how I decided to go about it is still "stupid simple", really.  But maybe a bit different than how most folks would.  Different, interesting or just plain wierd, you can tell me.  LOL

I made a drone track that was just a recording of one minute each of drone notes A, B, C, D, E, F, G.   I practice the major chord arpeggio up and back for one minute with each of those drone notes as "root" for that arpeggio.  Then I play the track again, and do the minor chord arpeggios.  So for A, I play A on the G string with first finger, C# on the G string with 3rd finger, E on the D string with the first finger, and then back down to the third and root and up and down that little pattern for that minute.

Where it might get a little odd/interesting, is for the B, I don't play it with the second finger, I slide the first finger up to the B note.  So I can do the arpeggio with the same fingering pattern by shifting to a higher "position".  For the C, I slide the first finger up to the C on the G string.  Then the D on the G string, and then shift back down to the E on the D string.  Back when I was learning to play bass guitar, many moons ago, we called such patterns "movable patterns".  They're a very quick way to learn how to play arpeggios for pretty much any chord, and to be able to play arpeggiated accompaniment for the chord patterns of a song in any key you need to with only having to memorize one set of patterns.  I don't know as that concept is applied much in the same way with violin/fiddle, but it seems logical it would work well enough for dressing things up a bit when playing accompaniment.  Maybe not a big thing in classical/symphony playing, but useful enough in other genres where improvisation is used more.

I would rank that exercise as "mildly challenging", since it takes knowing a few basics and having done at least a little ear work.  It also takes some shifting, but I think that is good.  I do not feel it is good to stay stuck in "first position" too long.  I don't think of "positions" on the violin much, personally, but I believe that the longer a person stays playing in just first position, the harder it will be to move out of it and use more of the instrument.  But with drone notes to work against for the roots of the chord arpeggios, it isn't really as hard as it sounds. 

At this point, about the first half hour of practice is "in the can".  The rest of the new practice routine also has some odd bits, so I'll call this post long enough for now, so folks can refill their coffee to stay awake. LOL

Ok, the rest of the current "practice schedule"..

Having just practised the arpeggios, I do the same notes again.  But this time as doublestops.  So through the 7 minute drone routine for major and then again for minor "chords".   I work on controlling which of the strings being bowed gets the most pressure to emphasize root, 3rd, and 5th on different beats.  Then pick a backing/jam track from whatever genre I feel like and play along with a combination of arpeggios and "chords". 

Then another weird bit, where I stumbled across it while messing around and liked the sound of it and it happens to work something I think useful.  While playing drone on the G string, I play part of the melody of "Amazing Grace" using only the D string.  Up through "how sweet the sound".  That takes a shift.  I end up shifting between the "first position" and the first finger being on the G note on the D string.  It's just a wider shift than I use earlier in arpeggio practice, and is against a drone being played on the violin instead of a pre-recorded drone.  Nothing astounding, but I think it sounds neat and it's kinda fun.  The trick is to get it to sound more like part of a song than just an exercise.  Not sure yet if I'll work on developing it further right now, but it is an entertaining way to practice a shift up that is a bit wider than the ones I did when doing arpeggios.

After that, I work on the current 3 practice tunes and then practice is officially done for the day and I'm back to playtime.

@OldCrow:  I put up a vid showing how I do a boogie pattern on violin.  https://fiddlerman.com/forum/p...../#p45308 

It is super easy, hope it was what you were looking for.

@Ginnyg:  Good point on being sharper in the AM, Ginny.  I tend to be better focused in the evening, so I do the part of my practice that I think of as exercises in the AM.  My focus is good enough then, but I save the best for evening/night playing. LOL

******

Changes to my routine..

I've gone from drone and metronome exercises to what I am calling "intermittent drone and metronome" exercises.  The drone sound, for example will be on for 5 seconds and off for 10 when I do drone work, so I am relying on it less and being able to check my intonation against the drone when it comes on for 5 seconds again.  Basically working at being able to keep my intonation that steady without the drones in that part of practice.  Same for metronome, to sharpen my sense of timing rather than just practising playing well against the metronome.

Playing more with backing tracks.  Backing tracks do have some qualities of both drone and metronome work to tighten up intonation and timing, but also move towards more of a performance oriented mindset.  One can focus more on making the song/piece sound good, rather than just not messing up, I think.