The Steel Guitar Forum

Playing the steel is breeze compared to making sense on a fiddle.... My goodness..... Borrowed a friend's fiddle, got some teaching material and started the learning journey.... Should have known better.... The final straw was when my cats run out of the room as if their tails were on fire. I reckon they could not understand why I'm torturing the living daylight out of some unseen cat!
Nahhh.....hats off to all you good fiddlers!!
I'll stick to the steel, thank you.

I can relate to the fiddle as well Nic, I was taking lessons when I was a kid (looooonnng ago) and my teacher became that frustrated with me for playing out of tune that she put tiny little pieces of tape on the neck to mimic frets.....lol

Wasn't long after that I gave it up - funny thing is she didn't try to convince me not to quit......lol

Nic, I've always done pretty fair in learning most string instruments but one time during the late seventies I thought I'd really get after the fiddle and really learn to play it to increase my "worth" in a band.

I was practicing one day and my two daughters (of grammer school age) ran to my wife in the kitchen andy yelled "Mom, dad's playing the fiddle again, make him stop!".... It really must've sounded bad so I just quit trying to learn the damn thing. I really admire a player who can play one of those things "in tune", ain't too many of 'em that I've found......JH in Va.

Good to hear I'm not alone in this!
It must take ages of practice to play a violin in tune.... it amazes me that a grown man can get his fingers placed so closely together and move around perfectly on that tiny slab of fretboard.
I still get the shivers when I think of my close escape!....

I suppose, as with any instrument, it takes many hours of dedicated practicing..... I console myself with the fact that at my age I just don't have the time, or inclination, to tackle such a daunting task. The steel is hard enough, as it is.

Keith Davidson wrote: my teacher ... put tiny little pieces of tape on the neck to mimic frets

She should have done it right off - it's standard procedure. The drawback is you have to look. My teacher and I've been reckoning on something tactile. (I have a 5-string now, with no tapes.) When he mentions how I bend some strange notes, I remind him it's Ewellian mode (yew-elian)
But yea, when she sings good, she's purdy! Taint easy.

Most violin students i have seen start out the wrong way. Like the masters taught back in the 1700s you learn how to use the bow first.

Keep your left hand in your pocket until you learn to use the bow and there is a way to do that which i won't go into here.Hope this helps. I ran an add offering to show how to do this and play any song in any key then you can play anything from blue grass to classical but only got responses from out of towners.Tracy

another failed fiddler here - and i actually gave it a good amount of effort of a few years.

i came to realize the violin was one of those instruments you almost had to start young - the first year is nothing but cats fighting and you have to slog thru that phase, which is tuff with an adult mindset...kids on the other hand, seem to love that phase

As a lefty, the fiddle is the one instument that has thwarted me. I just can't get there on time - the bow is behind the beat. I play steel, keyboards, bass and banjo right handed with no problem. Then, there's the sound I make - Seriously, the folks I know who are good fiddlers all immerse themselves in the instrument, playng fro dawn to dusk. After a year or two, they really sound good. My buddy, Paul Anastasio, a fabulous fiddler, told me that Merle Haggard drove everyone crazy when he was learning fiddle. He played on it all the time, and bugged Paul constantly for tips. Result - he plays pretty good fiddle. - Jack

The jazz violinist Joe Holly Who played for Bob Wills was left handed and played left handed on a fiddle tuned for a right handed person.

I have been playing fiddle since I was 9 or 10 years old, coming from that to steel I thought steel was harder but than again, I've been playing fiddle so long that I guess I forgot how hard it was to learn as a kid. Oh yeah, now I remember the old witch violin teacher threatening to hit me with a yard stick, NO QUENTIN TOO MUCH BOW, NO QUENTIN NOT ENOUGH BOW, NO QUENTIN STACCATOO, NO QUENTIN FORTE'.
Just kidding, but trust me guys. Steel guitar is much better. Thats why I am here