Violin

My Violin Story

My first Multimike stereo violin recording.

The RCM Connection and my first classes.

One of my close school friends at St George’s School Hannover Square in London in about 1983-1986 was Ben. Ben played the violin rather amazingly to the end of Suzuki Book IV when we were 6 because his mum was busy encouraging him as an RCM piano graduate. They played for me together. I seem to remember her living alone with him in a single parent family and she asked me if I wanted to play as well and do what Ben did. That is how I got properly introduced and hooked on classical music in general. The made it seem so easy because they really were quite brilliant. He played the second violin part of Bach Double Concerto for violin in D.

Judy as her name was quickly arranged for me to have lessons with the London Suzuki Group which was quite prestigious. Based up at St John’s Wood Suzuki methodology was considered a marvel in the early 80s and the best pedagogy of its age. Basically, I was started off on the path to being a solo violinist professionally at 6. I had the same start. Apparently, getting the pupils to do more by ear at first helped them to be more expressive. So we memorised not simply by sight reading from the score but listening and imitating the teacher, memorising fingerings, and being intensely conscious of pitch. The head of the London Suzuki Group at the time was renowned soloist Yjzak Pearlman who swore by it. I got the teacher Gill Samuels of the Royal Academy of Music. We had famous people’s children in our group I learned violin with including member of the Barclay family who are still listed in my class attendance records we’ve kept.

We started off with Twinkling. Mozart was famous for writing a set of variations for piano on Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. The father of the method Sinchi Suzuki created some easier versions of them for baby violinists and they were the first things you played in the method. There were four variations and the tune itself to master on the E and A strings and you were not allowed to progress until you’d played them all perfectly. The class was often referred to as the Twinkle Dungeon because you aren’t allowed out of that group class to have individual lessons until you graduate from it. Some people were in it for years.

There are four variations; they had names in our group to help us remember the rhythms

  1. Everybody down up
  2. Mummies and Daddies
  3. Chopcherry, Chopcherry
  4. Caterpillar Caterpillar

Then you play the tune at the end. I had this drilled into me for England but I did graduate to individual class with Lightly Row which my mother generously paid for as well as my half sized fiddle from her father’s 100 pound inheritance for 10 lessons.

Gill tattooed the fingering of Lightly Row on the back of my eyeballs for life as you do. I can recite it in 2 seconds flat to this day.

E22 311 A123EEE E222 3111 A2EE222 1111123 222223E E2223111 A2EE222

I memorised that in 1985 and it’s still with me. Slightly less appealing is that she never really understood I wasn’t double wristed like her and she drew and acid man on the side of my hand in luminous green ink and told me to look into the face every time I played and I couldn’t because I wasn’t designed that way. I couldn’t because I was only single wristed and she failed to understand why. This caused me to lose interest for a while and beg to watch the Queen’s 60th birthday instead.

We had class concerts in St John’s Wood in a beautiful old crescent with private gardens at the back and a specialist music room, and the Holiday Inn Regent’s Park as the son of the owner played violin with us.

This did give me a foundation for liking classical music though. Despite not being entirely successful at first. I think this is when I’d first graduated to a full sized fiddle. Nice house!

Moving on

Mum divorced dad around the time this was happening because he hated me practising and thought it was a waste of time and it was too girly a pursuit for me basically and held the people concerned for a bunch of snootbags for trying to install the necessary discipline in me to compete. Whereas mum trusted Judy more and wanted to push me to play like she had done with her son.

As a consequence of this partly mum divorced my father because he kind of patronised her about it making out classical music was my snooty little dream crush with her. It was obvious to my father I was no violinist because otherwise it would a have been streaming out naturally like Nigel Kennedy or not at all. He liked him referring to the Four Seasons as ‘a bit of Viv’ and was really impressed with his villa shirt but had never held a fiddle himself.

Mum says righto I’ll prove I can play with him!

We moved to Witham in 1986 and by 1989 I was in a different class with London College Lisceniate Katherine Horlock who really liked my mum. Mum got us both violins. In some Suzuki schools they encouraged the pupils to play with parents to appreciate the enormity of the task so mum got herself one as well and I played in a class with mum and Anna and her Dad who was also divorcee and she was an only child. We had lessons at Red Lion Church in Red Lion Yard. The renown pianist, singing teacher and conductor Ian Ray played for us from time to time for our concerts in Easter and Christmas holidays. It’s when I first met Ian being the conductor of the church.

We played together until Grade 1 in 1989. Grade 1 ABRSM was the first external exam I ever took at Colchester Institute which was a conservatoire in all but name at that time. Mum was very good at it as well she was nearly 40 when she started and got 117 and a pass and I got 118. Anna got a distinction though and so pulled away from us so as not to be held back and Katherine begged the examiner to let me have a merit to keep the class together and they refused.

Here is my Grade 1 mark sheet.

and the cert

Other Graded Exams

Despite continuing with the fiddle until 1992 I only passed on other exam and that was Grade 4 on the nail with 100 pts which is the pass mark. I’ve figured out why though the fiddle was firewood not me. The thing is it had a peg tuning system which is not the best and makes all the notes a moving target. What you really needed was a guitar tuning system in the fiddle to stop it slipping out of tune every five minutes. At first you don’t even notice this is happening and because every scale has a slightly different positioning on the neck it makes the task of learning to play in tune virtually impossible. I learned that very quickly when I started again on my own years later having bought and electric fiddle with guess what a guitar tuning system built in. Grade 4 is everything in first position basically.

Katherine’s Christmas concerts and summer schools

I think it was one time I was warming up for a concert one day and Blur were there for a sound check for their concert that evening and Damon interrupted our rehearsal to do his business.

At first we had concerts at Colchester Arts Centre but then later on at St Botolph’s Church. We had them biannually at once at Christmas and once at Easter. Being before the internet era, Katherine copied out a number of Christmas Carols and common Scottish, and Irish Jigs for us to play from on for her concerts and summer schools and published them in 2 volumes for us.

I participated in two summer schools one at Essex University Creche and the other at a manor house in St Osyth about 14 miles from town.

Most of those who took part were girls and I was one of the only guys to enjoy playing.

The Orchestras

I played briefly for the SBMS St Botolphs Music Society Junior Orchestra with my friend Alex Turner who went on to be a computer programmer who lived on the St John’s Estate.

Then I played Schubert’s 6th Symphony and the Hary Janos Suite by the Hungarian composer Zoltan Kodaly in the Ipswich School Orchestra second violin 3rd desk.

I played Pomp and Circumstance march Nr. 1 by Elgar on the Eton Choral Courses as well.

Improving violinist.

Because I’m fed up with not playing very well I have decided to sort my violining problems out by going back and recording a few basic tunes well on my new electric fiddle. It’s got a guitar tuning system in it that rarely goes out of tune and I maintain my fiddle better now by having my bow re-haired with Moglolian horse hair and going for the more expensive dust free rosin. All that helps to maintain a better sound.