The short answer is yes, it’s difficult, but let’s see it in more detailed way.

  1. It depends on what level of playing you are now and what you want to achieve.

Have you ever played violin? Did you already take the lessons with a teacher? How much free time do you have for practicing? Do you want to become professional violinist or you just want to learn couple of nice melodies? This and many others things have a big influence on your progress. The very first thing you need is to find a teacher. I would highly recommend to start with live lessons, not online, especially if you just start learning you will definitely need a live teacher to set up your violin, show the right hand position, check your posture, sound and many other things. Now let’s check several settings and check which one fits you the best.

 

Light mode

In this mode you can practice 1-2 hours on the weekend, preferably 1 hour each day. You want achieve much in this setting, but if you try to use the time for practice maximally effective, you can achieve some result and maybe in some months you will be able to learn some pieces, while at the same time you will visit your violin teacher 1 time per week or every second week. Most likely you will achieve some basic level of playing, but I won’t be hoping for something more, than just learning some simple melodies and basic practices.

 

Hard mode

Now we are getting a bit more serious of practicing and what we want to achieve. In this mode I would recommend to practice at least 30 minutes per day, but better for a whole hour, 6-7 times per week and visit your teacher 1-2 times per week. When you are getting more acknowledged with a violin and already know basic technics you might combine 1 live lesson and 1 online lesson per week, but I personally prefer more live lessons, since many things as a teacher you can’t evaluate through the cameras, like hand positions, sound, posture, dynamics etc.

In this mode you can expect some serious result, you might achieve some pretty decent level, most likely you will be able to play some medium level pieces in few years and learn quite many different violin pieces and practices, as well play in amateur orchestra on ensemble and give some live concerts with them.

 

Hardcore mode

This is were all professional violinists should be. In this mode you practicing at least 3 hours per day, and almost every day. You can give yourself some free day, mostly after the tough concert, but as a general rule you will have to practice every day. I remember myself times, when I was practicing for 6-7 hours daily and didn’t have any free day in year and half, and if you our student or in school, that should be your goal too.

The professional violinist competition is huge nowadays and if you want to build decent career and be it your worklife you should do as much as possible. In this mode you have to take lessons at least 2 times per week, before some important concert, competition or audition it should be 3 times per week. The choice of the teacher also becomes of utmost importance.

Any small details, even like chinrest makes a huge difference, so you must be enourmously concetrated on your musician’s and violinist life, then you would might get some gigs, someone might hire you as a violinist and you will be able to play at the very high level. This one isn’t for everyone, since you should understand, that there will be a lot of days, when you won’t feel like practicing or you might want to give up, but that exactly when you shouldn’t give up at push it harder.

I know, many people think that the life of musicians is very rosy and artists just enjoying what they’re doing, but you should be prepared for things like mental burnouts, back pain, hands pain and many other not so nice things. But this is the price for becoming a professional violinist.

 

Some more thoughts

In general first thing which you have to look out, when you just starting playing violin is three most important things: intonation, rhytm and tone of the sound. Also it’s very important to find a good teacher, since it’s very difficult to overrun some wrong advices from bad teacher, which already are in your muscle memory. But before starting to get your violin and bow into your hands and call the teacher you would like to study with you should decide for yourself, what is your goal? What do you want to achieve? How serious you are about learning it? These questions are very important to decide for yourslef before you started.

 

If you would like me to be youor teacher, get advice or hire me for a gig you can contact me here:

email@maksymfilatov.com

Bio

 

You might want to check also my recordings on Spotify:

 

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