The Violist's Progress

written by Chase Loeb
08/21/2023

I have always wanted to play a string instrument. In 4th grade I attended a “music outreach” where musicians from local colleges came and performed for us. During this outreach, the string instruments were my favorite. The sound of the beautiful tone and vibrato was something that always caught my attention. Seeing orchestras perform and hearing the collective sound that can be achieved through rosin and horsehair was also inspiring to me, stirring up my passions to be a composer! I just never had the time, opportunity, or correct mentorship to begin pursuing another instrument. It’s hard enough learning one! So, I stumbled on through life, watching from the shadows as friends and students around me began to master the art of string playing. Someday, I told myself, I will learn to play! 

Fast forward to 2018. My wife and amazing educator, Carol Ann, began the foundational work to start a community orchestra in Lodi. This was my chance! It was hard enough finding opportunities when I was younger and as an adult, it is nearly impossible to be a part of an orchestra that is friendly to complete beginners. Due to the perpetual  lack of viola players, I decided that this should be my instrument! After preparing for the onslaught of jokes and laughter, I finally rented a viola! 

I quickly found that this wasn’t going to be easy. Even as a professional musician, learning a new instrument feels a bit like starting over. Starting a string instrument is especially challenging. Concepts like intonation and shifting were foreign to my pampered piano hands and ears, living in a world where intonation was a distant word mentioned only to the piano tuner twice a year. Alas! It has definitely been a humbling experience and an enjoyable challenge. Playing in an orchestra has been very rewarding and being involved with a group of musicians is refreshing after playing piano my entire life alone in a practice room. Through my experience, I learned some valuable lessons about learning a string instrument and thought it would be prudent to share my findings! 

Practice Everyday

The viola (and other string instruments) are not casual instruments. One cannot pick them up every couple of weeks and expect to see improvement. Concepts like tone and intonation take very advanced skills and self awareness, the kind that only comes with a zealous disposition to practicing every day. The moments that I would go 3-4 days without practicing felt like they set me back weeks of experience. Comparing this to an instrument such as piano and guitar, I believe the learning curve at the beginning is much steeper due to having to hear and create the correct intonation. This was definitely the hardest part. 

Listen to Your Teacher

I have picked up many instruments in the past. I have dabbled with guitar, harmonica, cajon, and saxophone, and I was able to learn them with relative ease on my own or with some guidance from a couple of lessons. With viola, there are so many sensitive things that have to happen to create the proper tone. I believe the practice I did before having a teacher only created long term habits that I had to get rid of. The concept of holding the bow and creating a relaxed tone is very foreign to most people, and the amount of awareness you need to have to keep the bow straight and moving correctly was definitely learned through close instruction over a couple of months, even years. Also, techniques such as shifting and vibrato have very specific approaches and practice exercises that would be impossible to learn without a mentor guiding me each week. Many of the things that I thought I should do were actually detrimental to my learning process and my teacher really helped me learn the correct ways to practice. 

Intonation

I believe this deserves its own category. Basically, the rest of your life is going to be realizing how you are not playing in tune and you have to be ok with that. Even professional players struggle with intonation, so it is not something that just goes away with practice once and for all. Because I am a piano player, my ears were not even trained to hear intonation to the degree required, and many late nights practicing with a drone were required for me to even hear the true pitch and recreate it. There are no frets on the viola, and the intonation “tendencies” will change depending on what key you are playing in, creating an infinite amount of spots on the fingerboard to place your fingers, rendering a “muscle memory” type of learning style very cumbersome. You truly have to use your ear to hear the correct intonation and understand what it sounds like almost on a subconscious level.  An interesting strategy I learned was to listen to the “sympathetic resonance,” where the other strings will be influenced by the harmonic series and ring if you play with the correct intonation.  I believe this is the hardest skill to master and one that can be very….unpleasant to listen to as a spectator. I have never practiced an instrument that hard and sounded that bad! Bless my teacher and her patience! 

I believe the emotions I felt while learning about intonation followed the exact same 5-stage pattern as the grieving process: 

Denial: I’m in tune. At least most of the time, right? I put my finger on the tape so that means I’m in tune. 

Anger: You mean….I’m not in tune at all? That’s impossible! I practice all the time and I should be able to do this without any issues! This is frustrating and it looks so easy. 

Bargaining: Ok…I am out of tune. If I practice really hard for a couple weeks, this will go away, correct? 

Depression: I….don’t…think I’ll ever truly play in tune. I don’t even know what intonation is. Does the world really need another out of tune viola player? Why do viola players even exist? Why do I exist?

Acceptance: Even if I cannot play with perfect intonation, I enjoy doing this and will keep practicing! The world needs more viola!