Day Six - The Day of Tweaking

Today I took my new friend to see someone that I had been previously acquianted with. It came to my attention that perhaps it was worth checking with a more experienced musician to ensure that I had infact setup my violin correctly. This mainly came to mind as it became rather hard to keep my strings in tune for more than just a few minutes. And so, I visited the wise woman and, after entering not quite naked and offering goods of strange origins, I had my instrument overlooked and tweaked.

First of all, it seems that my bridge was infact placed correctly. Score one for the amateur! I did a little happy dance and continued to watch as the woman of wisdom played with the more intricate parts of the violin.

Chalking Slipping Pegs: One of the reasons why I couldn't keep the instrument in tune for more than 10 minutes was simply because the pegs were prone to slipping with the tension of the strings. To overcome this, the obvious solution was to push the pegs in with a reaonsable amount of force. However, I also learnt that it's a good plan to "paint" the pegs with white chalk, which adds extra friction between the pegs and the violin. The only danger of a beginner doing this is breaking / having problems with the strings. Luckily, I had an experienced player to help out.

Growing Strings: The other problem that I have with keeping the instrument in tune is one that this hero can do nothing about - other than waiting patiently. New strings have a tendency to stretch over time, and so I'm gracefully informed that I will just have to put up with the problem until it goes away. Slightly annoying, but now that I'm aware - I can proceed to the next stage of my mission.

Day Three - The Violin Arrives & the bridge is set.

Lo and behold, Parcelforce did not let me down with their speedy delivery policy. By the time I had returned from campus this morning my Violin had already been delivered and signed for. Without further ago, I eagerly tore open the packaging to spy my beautiful instrument inside!

I spent the evening slightly bewildered. This was the first time that I had ever seen a violin up-close - infact, it was probably the first time that I'd ever touched a stringed instrument other than the odd guitar. Even so, I set about trying to figure out this rather strange piece of wood, which I believe they call... The Bridge.


After reassuring myself that this wasn't part of a ship from Star Trek, I set about putting it into place. Following a bit of logic, and a tiny bit of help from some data at Wikipedia, I matched the bridge up quite nicely; the lower part of the bridge by the tiny string (and the higher part by the fat string), as well as making it stand perpendicular to the body, in line with the little notches that cut up the inside of the "f" holes in the body.

Fantastic - that's definitely enough for today. Tomorrow, I endeavour to figure out these strings, get them in tune, and try to figure out just what I'm supposed to do with the block of resin type material (cunningly called... rosin).