Meeting the real violin

January 2005
1 or 2 months after I got electric violin, I was getting impatient to have "real" violin which is made of wood. Because thinking about the system of making sound between electric and wooden violin is completely different. And to get good proper skill of playing needs absolutely wooden violin, I thought like this.
(Actuary, the difficulty of playing wooden violin can not be compared to one of electric violin. Wooden violin requires much more care and proper bowing)

Anyway, I really wanted to have real wooden violin. But as I mentioned before, there was no instrument shop in "my town".
So again I had to look for a violin on the inter-net auction.


And I found this. When I found this violin, its price was really low, 100$. So I placed a bid, and kept watching. Because look, this violin's beautiful tiger flames in the back side. It's like a flame of fire or something really beautiful thing I can't explain well.


Anyway its beauty completely caught me(who is completely beginner). Since I had no knowledge about wooden violin, I thought "Waoh, this is the one which I was looking for...". This guy is So easy.

At the last day of the auction, I was sticking in front of computer looking the same page for a long while.
1 hour before the ending, its price went up to 250$.
I placed bid more, and it became 350$. Yes! I'm the highest bidder now! 10 minutes before ending, it went up to 450$.
Oh, no! Who is bidding so much! I won't lose this one.
How about 500$! Yes!
Oh, no! Again?! Merde!
...
...
Finaly, I got this violin. The final price was... 670$!!
I had decided my budget should be about 400$, but the result was... It went up much higher than my budget. But I was not regretting at all. I was satisfied with the result which I got the real wooden violin.

Thinking about this now, I'm pretty sure about that I was completely fished by the seller. Because my auction competitor was new ID guy who has no auction feed back yet. (At that time, in Japanese net-auction people could get new ID and place a
bid so easily. Now it's impossible though.)

Anyway, this is the first meeting with real violin for me. This violin gave me a huge turning point in my life. And she went to even France with me later, I took her so many places where I went. This is big memory of mine.

Playing the cheap electric violin.

After I received electric violin, I became crazy about playing this. But, of course the sound was no so great! ^^;)
At first I bought really easy text book for a beginner.


It saids "This book will create your first sound of violin."
The book looked little bit ridicurous, because you know, beginner beginner stuff is always little bit too silly. But for playing violin, we can't ignore this kind of basic thing. Like how to hold your bow(this is pretty difficult for a beginner), how to hold your violin without putting much power...these kind of things.

The book was including many photos and drawings, so it really helped me. (Of course this is written in Japanese though.)

At first I started practice just playing on A string, and after I got used to this I started playing on E string. It was just two strings, but it was not very easy for a beginner. Plus, I had no teacher! Using A and E strings, I became able to play really easy tunes. Like "Butterfly", "Mary's sheep", etc.(You might not know them, sorry)

The electric violin was little bit heavy (compared to normal violins, it was much heavier, I think), it hurt my left sholder pretty often. But playing with amplifier was fun. I sometimes used distortor for electric guitar too. Then sound became like a hard rock!

But my apartment was not very comfprtable to play in the night, because especially my downstair neighbor was complainant middle age woman. (The othe day, when I got drunk and sang songs in the night, she came to complain next morning 7 o'clock!)
So, I was afraid of this happens again, I prefered to play at my company. Because I was living really near by the company just 30 seconds by walk. And I had sometimes night shift to take care of fermentation of Sake. At night shift time, there's nobody in the big factory. And the sake-factory has pretty good sound echoes. So, even though my playing was really cheap, the sound effect of the factory boosts up the sound and makes the player feel so comfortable! It was nice sound system!!

But the thing is, you know we make Japanese-sake in winter. And the factory is always pretty cold, it's about 5 degrees of celcius. So the limit is at most 5 minutes, because my finger got totaly frozen after that!!

I was crazy about playing this cheap electric violin for a while.

Beginning of the story

2004, a man who turned to 29 years old thought.
"I haven't done something special up to now... I think I should start something special. Like, something not everyone does. So, how about starting violin!"

At this time, I was living in north-east region of Japan, really rural area. I was working in a Japanese-sake making company. I used to make traditional Japanese-sake.
There was an episode which one sake-making company in Hokuriku(Japan-sea side region)
had classical music while they make sake. By letting yeasts(technically, it's not yeat, it's Saccaromyces cerevisie. Anyway it's micro-bacterias) listen the classical music, especially Mozart's tunes, the sake became incredibly mild and tasty.
So, I also tried to have this experiment. I put a CD player near by the fermentation tank, and put the many classical music endlessly.

The purpose was letting yeasts listen the music. But little by little,
the maker(I) inclind to the classical music more than yeasts...(^^;

I didn't know classical music so much before, but the more I listen it, the more I liked it! That was a magic of classical music.
Before that I really had no interests to classical music.
But I found there were so many reaally great tunes.
And especailly I was attracted by the beauty of the violin's sound.

"Waaoh, this violin thing sounds really beautiful. How could it be so beautiful. It's unbelievable. It must be so great, if I could play this instrument like this CD"
Well, why not start it!?

I decided it.
But I was living in really local area, and of course there was no instrument shop which sells violins! So I looked for a violin on internet auction. And I found this electric violin set.
It included e-violin, bow, pitch pipe, rosin, strings, mini amplifer, and headset.
I bought it about 170$. It was not expensive at all!(^^

Since I was living in pretty thin-wall apartment which you know, people can hear the neighbor's sound pretty often. I was little bit afraid of bothering other people at first.
That's why I chose electric violin, because in the nigh time, I just plug out then sound is really small.

2,3 days later, the man received the delivery of this violin with big excitement. 

He took it on his hands, and felt "Oh, it's pretty heavier than I imagined. Ok,let's try to play with this...Wao! Sound! This is the sound of violin?! Wooooh, greeeaaat.."
He got really excited and had much pleasure of getting a "violin",
without knowing what was waiting for him in the future...