🦋 Taking it off
Lately I have been experimenting with taking stuff off my violin. Like for the past couple of months I have been playing without a shoulder rest. I kind of like the feel of the violin that way; and when I tried to figure out what it is I like about it, I came up with that my ear is in closer to the sound box -- that is, the natural position of my head when I don't have the shoulder rest is leaned in next to the fiddle, so my cheek is against the chin rest instead of my chin, and it feels like I'm closer to the sound. Well with that going on, I've been thinking the next logical step is to remove the chin rest, so my cheek and jaw will be against the actual sound box. I tried that tonight and I'm not sure yet -- it does sound really nice*, but it's a lot of work to keep the violin in the correct position. I will try it out for a while though and see how it goes, if I can adjust to this position it would be nice. The adjustment to no shoulder rest didn't take very long. Also, I took the pickup off -- time to learn how to play into a microphone. The pickup was throwing off the instrument's balance.  *Also I think I am getting a better sense of how well I am making contact with my bow -- the distinction in sound between full contact and partial contact is really sharp, I think moreso than it was with the chin rest on. Although another possible explanation is that when I was playing with the chin rest on, my bow hold was much more consistent.
posted evening of Monday, December 17th, 2007
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