Violin Forum/Message Board

[nigusberries]

hi, i m new, one of my reasons for joining,
i wanted to ask, is it safe to place maybe some light sticking tape to the surface of violins, especially good ones, with ebony fretboards, so that beginners can find the notes in the 1st position easily?
i ask because, i am i an irish traditional folk music player, and i never came up the classical route of playing, and i just started teaching the "fiddle" and two of my students have good violins that i dont want to destroy with yellow sticky tape.
my instinct says that it will be ok, that the tape will come off and that you can wipe the glue off easily..

any advice??

many thanks and i also want to say i hope to look forward to enjoying this forum.
regards,
niall,
ireland

[techfiddle]

Sure, you can use tapes. See:

http://beststudentviolins.com/PedagogyTech.html#33
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[John Cadd]

When you first learn, the important thing is to listen to the sound rather than look at the fingers.It might sound daft to say this but thinking which finger is moving and how far takes a while to learn in itself.My teacher used to stick on the little edges of postage stamps.I don`t remember actually looking at them when I played though.For a good exercise (this may be too advanced) learning to play scales with one finger can teach a lot . It will get the hand used to measuring the distances .Yes, this would mean learning the third position straight away so pospone that for a bit.
How about first scales in a dark room?Good for concentration.

[caeman]

If you want to get them playing NOW and the right notes NOW, go for it. I did and I am happy that I did. Few new people want to struggle and having the notes marked can help re-enforce the fun factor of getting the notes right and making the violin sound like an instrument, and not a noise maker.