Humbucker Telecaster (Blacktop) Turned Baritone Guitar

I had gotten the Blacktop Telecaster because the humbucker pickups, particularly the neck pickup, gave it a good clean round ‘O’ sound, much like the thin single pole pickups in the Jazzmaster. Well, I already have a Jazzmaster, but the problem with the Jazzmaster is that, with a shade too much enthusiasm, you can whip the strings off the tailed bridge (the trade off for the inconvenience of a trailed bridge, is that at certain intervals the strings have a nice swelling flare, although steals a bit from sustain).

Anyway, the Humbucker Telecaster seems like a kind of best of both worlds kind of instrument – nice clean round sound from the pickups and strings that you can get rough with without scaring them off the bridge.


Anyway, I bought it and as I was leaving the Shop, the owner of the place asked me if I thought of ‘baritoning’ it. You see, he was familiar with me going from Violin to Viola (a viola is a violin that goes lower than a normal violin by one string interval), and tuning up a step on my Fender Jazz Bass, to keep the D’addario Light Flats tight (The D’addario strings were designed for 36” Scale but the Fender Bass is a tad shorter and so taking the strings up a notch would simply keep all things more or less even). Oh, and with guitar he knew I was going from the traditional E, A, D, G, B, E tuning to E, A, D, G, C, F, that is, to keep the strings at Perfect Fourth (5 step) intervals (they only tune up the B and E strings to make chording easier for short fingers… no other reason). Anyway, the shop owner had every reason to suspect that I might try some tuning change with this new telecaster, and was simply curious about it. Well, actually, I hadn’t thought ahead that far, but it gave me the idea.

Yes, they do have ‘Real’ baritone guitars – acoustics that are built on a longer scale, because, well, with acoustic guitars it is the actual physical dimensions that resonate with and support the sound of the strings. But with electric guitars and their pickups, physical dimensions are no longer so essential.

But converting the Telecaster to Baritone would require an extra big fat string that I could tune down to B. I looked around and found that D’addario makes a set of strings for 7 String guitars – “Jazz Light/ 7-String”, ECG24-7. They were all a bit fatter than what I am used to (D’addario super light Flats), but, checking with D’addario’s String Tension Chart, they would be usable, even with me tuning up the last two skinny strings, to preserve the perfect fourth (five step) intervals. So I ordered some strings. I actually ordered two sets, from different suppliers, Wiener Music, through Amazon, and Just Strings, hoping that one would come before the other. Wiener Music won. I’m still waiting for the Just Strings set to come through, but they did email me with an apology, as there had been some kind of delay.

Oh, with using a much fatter string in the old Fat E position, and using larger strings in every position, really, I would need to enlarge the groves in the Nut up at the top of the neck. So I bought one of those Nail Files with crushed industrial diamonds… which look a lot like sand.

Meanwhile, I played the ordinary tuning, for me (E A D G C F) for a week. I even had an All Nighter Practice to get acquainted with the new instrument and its new sound.

When the strings came in, I got out my Jewelers Loupe and worked the Nut with the fingernail file until the notch sizes seemed suitable for the new fits. The new strings went on without event. The strings were a bit stretchy and required a lot of retuning between songs, but only for the first evening. They settled in after a day.

Oh, the intonation was effected. But Intonation adjusts on this Telecaster are easy – just detune the strings until you can push back the bridge block with your finger, and then just take up the slack by tightening up the screw that goes through the spring. It took a lot of adjustment… more than a quarter of an inch… the Fat B String going back almost to the ‘wall’, but alls well that ends well. I suppose the intonation adjustment was necessary because I went to higher tension strings, and not so much because they were simply fatter strings.

The ‘Bulldog’ Telecaster sounds great. Sacrificing the high E string for the low B seems like a wonderful trade-off. Just like going from violin to viola, or from a 4 String Bass to a 5 String. One loves going lower but, in the case of the Viola and Bulldog Baritone Guitar, doesn’t miss the shorted higher reach at all… to go high you can just work down the neck a bit further than usual.

Its funny, the strange phenomena whereby one gets used to an instrument’s range. When I was still playing an old 4 String Precision Bass, I wondered why anybody would ever need a 5 String, as it seemed every song could be done without going up past the nut of the 4 String’s E String. I thought the same about my violin’s G string. I play by ear, and so apparently the first thing my brain does is organize riffs and arrangements according to available range. But after five minutes with the new Range, one wonders what one ever used to do without it.

When I first got my 5 String Jazz Bass, I read on line some guy that was saying that the “common mistake” new 5 String owners make is that they play their new Fat String too much. Well, that’s not really a mistake, is it? For instance, if you have an old dog who has been kept in the back yard its whole life, and then you decide to add the side yard to his enclosure, well, where do you suppose the dog will go at its first opportunity? Of course it will sniff out its new territory. So spending a lot of time, at first, in one’s new Range is not such an odd thing for an old musical dog.

Music Practice, a Poem

At first you are thinking about the Instrument, and you are listening closely, but after about 20 minutes or so you are warmed up, and you trust your playing, and instead of standing over your playing like a slave-master, you let go and just listen to what the Angels of your Higher Mind and Right Hand and Left Hand are playing for you.

The competent playing is reassuring. And so you let yourself think, you let yourself go. Your Mind drifts. You think about memories. You might even come back a little bit to think about left hand and right hand stuff, and your hands seem to take the suggestions…and then your mind wanders again. A wandering mind is like a dream.

Or it’s like being High. When you are High you think the thoughts you think are the most important thoughts that have ever been ‘thunk’, but a moment later you forget what you had been thinking about – you only remember that you had seen the Face of God, but forget what He looked like.

Music Practice is much the same. Hands flying free playing the songs of Angels, one thinks the highest possible thoughts, and you even think that you will remember to call friends, write to friends, and share these Divine Revelations that you had received during Music Practice…

But Music Practice ends. You have to cook dinner, or whatever, and all you remember was, well, it was one heck of a great music practice… it is like you know you had one heck of a wonderful dream, but just don’t remember the details. You know you had seen the Face of God, but just forget what He looks like.

Fender Needs a Premium Electric Violin

The FV1, an old thing which they still sell I believe, looks terrible. The FV3 is a gorgeous Violin, apparently made in a Chinese Furniture Factory which accounts for why it looks so much like a lacquer coffee table, but apparently the design calls for the bridge crushing down on top of the piezoelectric-pickup that lays under it in the bridge well. My FV3 had to go in for repair after less than a month. And the wood of the head and the pegs are incompatible – the hard wood of the head squeezes down and polishes the pegs smooth so that they begin to slip. Every few weeks one has to unstring the violin and sand paper the pegs so that they will grip again. I suppose one would have to experiment with light glues or bee honey, or whatever would keep the peg tuners from slipping.

And the tone of the FV3, while superior to most entry level electric violins, doesn’t come close to the pretty sound that such violins as the NS Design CR4 can make. Oh, don’t confuse the CR4 premium series with the NS Design WAV Series, which don’t sound any better themselves than the FV3, but at least they stay in tune and their pickups don’t drop dead or die out.

Anyway, the FV3 has now been around for years. I suppose it once made sense for Fender to test the Electric Violin Market, but what sense does it make to test that Market with a noticeably inferior product? … Well, inferior when compared to the Quality and Value end of the market, when price point goes much above the ‘entry level’ level.

And we are talking about Fender!? Why is Fender, of all companies, splashing around at the shallow end of the Pool, so to speak?

Fender, while not being the priciest vendor in the Guitar Market, they have always been known for a certain basic quality… and the FV3, if it wasn’t before, in a less developed Market, it is now not up to those same quality standards that we would expect of them. Such a product line, left unimproved, could only hurt them.

And who is their competition? NS Design is selling their CR4 and CR5 Series Violins and Violas at $2000+. Well, Fender is able to put out almost their finest quality guitars and basses for that price… signature editions going for only a little a bit more. We’re talking about extremely high quality product! So certainly, violins and violas are well within their engineering parameters for producing a BETTER violin than NS Design, and which they could sell for $1800, cutting the market out from under NS Design (or forcing NS Design to a more realistic price points for their relatively simple ‘blocks of wood’).

What would a New Fender Electric Violin look like? Well, it would look like a Fender. Forget the traditional Violin Head with its slipping Pegs. Use a Fender Style Head, with all the geared metal guitar style tuners on the same side and with that distinctive tilt. They could use the tuners from any Telecaster Guitar… I measured… they would work just fine. It is difficult to beat the NS Design string setup and tuners… strings on an NS Design can be whipped in and out in mere seconds, and tuning stays rock solid for just about forever… as long as one is using stable steel and chrome steel strings. But tuning holes and guitar style tuners are easy enough to deal with, and everybody is already used to them. The NS Design string setup might be inherently better, but not $500 better. And the guitar style tuners have a ‘look’… a penache… where the NS Design strings system, is, well, invisible.

Now, violin shape. Remember that traditional violins have a particular shape in order to develop a pleasing audible tone. But whatever the shape of the violin, in whatever ways it sticks out on the sides, it gets in the way of the bow… that is why they dig those indents into the sides of the traditional violins, so that the bow can come down to the sides unobstructed. But the traditional violin only offered a few inches of freedom, when really, in a perfectly free Electronic World, the violin should remain narrow all the way up its neck, so that the bow can be used, well, anywhere up and down the neck. But that would basically be a head with tuners on a neck that would go down to the bridge… basically a stick with strings. It would be fairly ugly, just as many of the better electric violins today are monstrously ugly. Again the NS Design has hit a fairly good compromise between bow friendly narrowness of body and aesthetic good looks… using some old European lute shape to give the violin some hint of character and a moderately pleasing line. Fender could try the about same thing, fleshing out a narrow body, but with a more contemporary line, using round and rolling lines where NS Design used primarily straight lines and flat edges.

Next we get to the Chin Rest and Shoulder Rest problems, and this is where Tradition haunts us with so much that is simply inconvenient nowadays. Traditionally one held a violin steady by clamping it down with ones chin against one’s shoulder. Chin rests were invented to conform comfortably to the chin, and shoulder rests were invented to conform comfortably to the shoulder. And it all works well with feather-light traditional acoustical violins… they don’t weigh anything and they are therefore easy to support in this bazaar but traditional manner. But Electric Violins are heavier, which makes the old chin and shoulder rest solutions problematic but which suggest newer and better means of stabilizing the violin for playing. Why not just collar the violin closely around the neck and play it a bit more in front instead of exactly over the shoulder, which I always felt to be uncomfortable anyway.

I played the FV3 without its stupid shoulder rest (designed to fall off anytime it was not planted firmly on a shoulder) using a choker collar tied to the tailpiece strap to keep it close to my throat and never needed to bring my chin down on the chin rest.

The NS Design has its Shoulder Rest, with its awkward bend made to go over the shoulder, but if one swings it down to be used to support the violin on one’s chest, then the shoulder curve has a bit of an unpleasant stab behind it. But as a general principle, a violin supported by a neck choker would benefit by some under-support on the chest to keep it at a flat angle or at whatever a player’s preferred angle happens to be. The FV3 was broad enough in its base so that it held itself flat almost automatically and so no under-support was really needed. So maybe if the violin is designed to have something of a broad base, no under-support is necessary at all. Also, a broad base would add to stability weight, but since the center of gravity is so close to the point of support on the choke collar around the neck, any extra weight would not be noticed by the left hand which could remain busy with the business of playing the strings and not having to hold the violin in proper position.

I’d like to be able to simply do away with Chin Rests. While the Shoulder Rest of the NS Designs can be useful, the Chin Rest simply gets in the way and starts stabbing me in the neck and throat. I had to use the Chin Rest just to keep it in one safe place where it wasn’t always trying to kill me. I finally ended up wrapping it in some ugly foam padding so I could go back to ignoring it altogether.

I thought of the Violin Choke Collar and therefore I have it patent pending, but I am so found of Fender Company, having a few of their guitar and bass models, that I would sell them license rights to the Violin Choker for a virtual song. Oh, another advantage of the Violin Choker, is that when the violin is not being played, one can simply let it drop down on one’s chest. Violins and even Violas are relatively small, and one can go about one’s business with hands free. The NS Design is a but more cumbersome, with its large shoulder rest contraption, but even all of that is not much when it is lying flat on one’s chest. I do sound studio work, and even go to the kitchen to make a sandwich, all with a violin hanging around my neck. While performing, one can break off from playing and sing a verse or two into a microphone, hands free (well, except for the bow), but immediately begin playing violin again, because one never really put the violin down.

Oh, and there is a more basic thing about Electric Violins. Everybody is using Piezoelectric Pickups or little microphones as the heart and soul of the Electric Violin electronics. Ostensively they don’t use the same kind of coil pickups that electric guitars use because some violinists still want to use ancient style cat gut or the more modern synthetic strings wrapped in aluminum, neither of which have enough feral magnetic content that they would be ‘picked up’ by a coil pickup. But nowadays most Electric Violin Players use steel strings, because of their superior tune stability and durability. And durability is no small thing. The Aluminum Windings on synthetic core strings is delicate, brittle… I heard it compared to butterfly wings in regards to its fragility. I’ve had sets of strings that did not last a week of even mellow Rock and Roll practice. Barry Manilow is too rough for an aluminum wrapped core string! Also, aluminum, even with flat windings, is NOT smooth… the molecular structure of aluminum is coarse and grabby and prevents a good finger slide, even when oiled! Whereas steel strings and chrome steel wound strings are slippery smooth and durable.

So, if steel strings are so good for electric violins, why aren’t we using coil pickups for violin. Remember, with a narrow body design, the bowing can be accomplished either over the pickups after the fingerboard runs out, or the bowing can be done over the fingerboard itself. There can be two sets of pickups… just like on the guitars – a neck pickup and a bridge pickup.

Oh, and sooner or later somebody has to figure out how to make an affordable laser pickup for strings. If they can shine a laser on a window pane of glass and use it as a spy microphone, then certainly laser reflections off a string a fraction of an inch away can be detected for audio tones. But electronic coils might be the least expensive way to go for still some time, although with technology getting cheaper and cheaper, soon it might be less expensive to produce a cheap little LED laser pickup and it logic chip than to wind an expensive magnet with expensive copper wires.

Anyway, I suppose we are all looking forward to seeing a good Fender Electric Violin in the foreseeable future… even fans of the NS Design Violins and the other brands out there who have their price point up above $2000.

Wood Brand Viper Electric Violins

Firstly, since these strange things use guitar tuning, 5 steps between strings instead of the violin families traditional 7 steps between strings, are they really to be considered as being in the violin family at all or are they simply exotic guitars, meant to be bowed instead of picked it?

And these Vipers have frets. With violins, which are fretless of course, the violin player warms up for a few minutes and then knows where all the strings are and can land his notes with absolute precision. Besides, the strings don’t change from day to day, and the Notes are always in the same place as they were before. There should be no trouble finding them again after one has done just a little bit of violin practice. So why would anybody need frets? Well, frets are for guitar players who have never learned to listen to what they are doing. They play the chords that they have learned – chords they find in books, or chords their friends teach them. So without frets – designated places to preposition their fingers – well, they’re completely lost on the violin.

So the Vipers are NOT violins at all – they are guitars sold with bows instead of picks. The Guitar Players who buy them can hope to simply do their usual chording and try to get away with it, along with co-opting the credit for having learned to play the violin, which they haven’t done at all… they’re still just memorizing chords and applying the same old fingering charts. These transplanted Guitar Players don’t deserve to use a Bow. A bow is for Violin Players… that is, musicians who hear what they play and can play what they hear… without having to consult some chart or other.

Oh, and the practical problem arises of what the heck do you do when you break a string on one of these Vipers. These Exotic ‘Violins’ have no support and infrastructure behind them. Even on the Websites that sell these monstrosities, there is no a mention at all of Strings – brand names, types, costs, venders… nothing. I guess if you ever break a sting you need to buy a whole new Viper.

Oh, and there is the Number of Strings thing. You know, more strings is not necessarily better. On the traditional violins, violas, cellos, etc. with their four strings, there is plenty of arc on the bridge between strings, meaning that with just a bit of bow control, the violinist, can easily play on just a single string at a time… to feel out a new song and work out a melody. But if you add strings to the limited curve of the bridge, then the degree of arc between the strings is greatly reduced – flattened – meaning that it is extremely difficult for the bow not to scrub more than one string at a time. In real world playing sometimes single notes need to be struck and held, or used in melodic transitions and riffs. But with the overcrowded bridge of the Viper, with six and seven strings, instead of the optimum four, well, with any pressure on the bow, no single string between any two others can be rung without accidentally buzzing the one or the other on either side. These Vipers must sound sloppy as hell, when they are played like real violins.

Three Changes for Civilization

(forgive me until I have time to edit this raw essay)

Actually the Modern World, that is, the World we know today, is not Civilized. Yes, there are laws and armies, jails and schools, roads and utilities; but the truth of the matter is that the Barbarians who run everything have just implemented enough quasi-civilized institutions and policies to suit their own needs, but that nothing about it is planned or sustainable when the entire World is taken into account. And if a Civilization is not sustainable, well, then its not really a Civilization, is it?

Our biggest clue is the barbaric economic policies. Globalization is mostly about competition between Growth Based Business Plans, on all of the continental, national and corporate scales. As I have pointed out in previous essays, the Capitalists, according to their most core principals, do not pay out to their workers nearly enough Money to buy what they produce, so every Capitalist Economy is necessarily Export Driven -- if you do not pay your own people enough to buy your Product, then you need to raid other Economies for its Customers and Consumers. Now, consider, if the World becomes One Global Economy, then there is nowhere left to export… unless one discovers Consumers on Mars or on the Moon. Therefore the least competitive economies are going to wither and die, one by one. This would serve them right, but I doubt that the weakest economies, also being the Strongest in regards to Military Power and Nuclear Armament, will go off and die quietly and peacefully.

Another problem with Growth Based Capitalism is that growth, in any venue, will eventually hit a saturation point. We live on a finite planet with finite resources. We can grow until we hit the Ceiling, but then what?

Look at the most resent Recession that still grips the World. The Propagandists all claim that it began with the Real Estate Mortgage Crisis in America, and this line of argument insulates from criticism the basic cause which was Growth Based Economics. You see, the first Cause of the mortgage crisis was that people could not pay their mortgages, and they could not pay their mortgages because Food and Fuel prices had skyrocketed – it was a Commodities Shortage Crisis! How soon everyone forgets, but remember the news stories about grain prices doubling and tripling because Grain Alcohol, which they called ‘Bio-Fuel’, was the New Oil and therefore locked in Price to the rising price of Petroleum.

The high price of premium Real Estate, that is, properties conveniently located where people actually work, forced most people to buy homes at great distances from where they worked, and shopped. And still these homes out in the middle of nowhere were still just barely affordable for Working Class People. So when the price of Gas and Food went up, people had to chose between driving to work, eating food, or paying their mortgages. A Crisis was inevitable.

Nowadays, we hear even President Obama talking of “Growing our Economy out of the Recession”. Really!? But if we were to recover from the Recession, well, wouldn’t we be exactly were we were before? We would fall immediately back into the Commodities Crisis – a severe Inflation which would pinch the Working Class back into either not paying for their homes, or buying Consumer Goods.

In short, the only thing keeping us out of Recession is the Recession we are already in.

And the Commodities Shortage Crisis will only get worse. India and China with their huge populations, dwarfing the American and European demographic numbers, are growing at a rate of almost 10% a year. Workers in India and China who were riding a bicycle 20 years ago, who rode a scooter 10 years ago, are now driving cars. They eat meat. They are beginning to buy consumer goods.

America’s answer is to have these Growing Economies appreciate their currencies, so that their money will be worth more. Duh!? If their money is worth more, they will be able to buy more of the stuff that is available on the Global Markets, and the Declining Economies will have to go through severe inflations in order to try to keep up. In plain terms this means that if the Chinese and Indian Currencies double in value, Gas in America will go up to $20 a gallon, Bread will be $20 a loaf, and the Economy will collapse and Law and Order will be a nostalgic memory from the past.

The Argument for devalued currency, which America wants for itself, is that if the American Worker could be paid Less Value for his productivity, then there would be more Export Customers. It’s a fine theory, but everybody forgets that America had effectively De-Industrialized. The Engineers and Skilled Workers of the Great Post-War Era are all in retirement. And the Universities aren’t turning out new Engineers. Everybody had gone into Business and Finance… the easy money where one didn’t actually have to learn anything or really study very hard. The Roads and Rails have fallen apart. America needs to face the fact that it is no longer an Industrial Nation, or even capable of being one any longer.

The problem of Skilled Labor is indeed a real problem, and one that can not be fixed by any Modern Democracy. You see, something of a Privately Confidential Report was issued by one of the Right Wing Think Tanks, and it correlated Low Education with Right Wing Voting Patterns, and likewise correlated Moderate and Liberal Voting Patterns with Higher Education. Therefore, one can immediately discern that in all of the World’s Democratic Nation, Every Right Wing Politician will be busy sabotaging Education. It is obvious in America. And without an Educated Workforce, their can be no serious Industrialization, or indeed anything of an intelligent and productive Economy.

So America’s devaluing their Currency will only give the Chinese more for what they produce without really furnishing any means for the Americans to jump in and fill in the capacity gap created by higher Chinese prices.

Maybe the American Working Class needs to promise the Right Wing that in exchange for adequate Educational Resources, that they will vote like absolute Fascists and Nazis. Sarah Palin will beam with delight. But as long as College Educated and Skilled Labor vote Democratic, Education will be under a blight in America. If you are smart enough to vote Right Wing, which is pretty basically stupid, then that’s as smart as you need to be… according to our present set of Policy Makers.

Another thing we need to consider is Global Warming. The Wild Cancer of Growth Capitalism has created this situation where the Planet is now obviously burning out and going into a phase of instability. More Growth is clearly not the answer.

What needs to happen is that we slow down Growth and concentrate only on the Essentials. So much could be saved. Capitalist Competition duplicates almost every effort a hundred times. We do not need the duplication of hundreds of Corporate Staffs, hundreds of Factories working at a fraction of their capacity. Concentrate Production.

What about all the Workers who will be fired. Well, simply give them Free Money for Obeying the Walls and keeping up with their Education so that they will be useful when and if they are called back to Employment.

Really, if Modern Technology and Automation does not NEED everybody to work, then why is everybody still expected to scratch and claw out a Job?

And we have to consider that the most costly and wasteful aspect of this Growth Capitalist Model for Social Economy is that forcing Everybody to get jobs also forced Everybody to drive back and forth to work, everyday.

Look at what saved us from the last Commodities Crisis. Just 10% Unemployment, that is with just 10% of the people staying home from Work, relaxed the extreme demand on Gas Prices (and Bio-Fuel prices that linked directly to Food Prices).

So the answer is not More Work, but Less Work… but to still provide a rewarding income for those who obey the rules and do what they had been taught to do.

Another aspect in this category of Unnecessary Work is the Criminal Justice System. The Lawyers and Judges have learned to treat Repeat Offenders like Return Customers. The Lawyers and the Judges cannot remain in charge of their own Funding… they demand more each year and give back less and less for it. We can reduce much of the expense in the Criminal Justice System simply by executing criminals proven to have set up a career in Crime. And no costly appeals. Proof is proof. Hang them the next morning the way it used to be done.

Of course, in years to come, when Civilization again hits a comfortable patch of Stability, then one can look into Rehabilitation Programs for Professional Criminals. I would expect Good Peer Group Immersion Therapy to work the best. You see, ordinary stupid people are influenced more by their Group than by any other factor. Put these Followers in with good people and they will become Good People themselves. One only has to look at the Mix and Proportion. The Good People of the Group must be by far the greatest influence. Too many Bad People in the mix and one will only have Sub-Groups developing. Anyway, let the Psychologists work out the fine details. But in any case, while our Society is heavily burdened by Crime, it probably makes as much sense to summarily execute Criminals as it is to summarily execute the people we label as ‘Terrorists’… and perhaps even more, as when was the last time we had a car stolen, our house burgled, or were mugged by a ‘terrorist’?

Without Repeat Crime, and certainly less living Criminals, the requirements for so many Prisons and Jails will decline. You know, now, in America there are more Prison Guards than School Teachers, and because they have a more effective Union, they even make more money. A ‘Dumb Screw’ makes as much as a High School Science Teacher. These Guards are the first we would want to be put on Simple Pay. The Job of Guard is more than any other De-humanizing. Nice People do not stay Nice People and continue working as Prison Guards. The Mean Streak comes out more and more.

There is another Change that should be made, and this is perhaps the most profound. Organizing Society around the Nuclear Family – Mom and Dad and the Children – in isolation; well, its been a disaster. You know, it has never always been like that. What is more typical is the Extended Family, where Grandfather and Grandmother could oversee the less experienced parents, and show a more benevolent kind of Love, and where Aunts and Uncles could show a broader view of the World’s Opportunities than just Mom and Dad. And perhaps even better than the Extended Family is the Clan or even a Tribe-like Organization.

I’ve read that the optimum number in a close Social Organization of from about 100 to 150 people… after that you start seeing the Group break down into competing Sub-Groups. This would largely eliminate the occurrence of so many dysfunctional families. Yes, there could be dysfunctional Groups, but with careful administrative oversight, transfers in and out could keep a good enough balance of good people in every group.

Of course, no change is possible while we still live under the tyranny of Democracy, where Special Interest nominate nearly every candidate and sponsor their campaigns. Just because we get to Vote on the small offerings given us by the Israel, Gun and Banking Lobbies doesn’t mean that we have True Representative Government. And even with the Voting, in most modern Elections close to 49% of the Voters actually LOSE, that is, they are completely disenfranchised and the New Rulers become their sworn enemies. Democracy can be vicious.

It would be so much better if we threw over Democracy and adopted some form of Professional Government Bureaucratic Meritocracy. Kids go to school and if they want to serve in Government, they take the Test, which decides the Upper Limits of their Service Capacity. No Special Interest Influence at all. Indeed, one of the requirements for Government Service would have to be complete transparency of their finances and property.

Government would be helpful and honest because there would be no interest in being otherwise.

NS Design CR4 Violin and CR4 Viola

NS Design CR4 Violin and CR4 Viola

I had been reluctant to buy such an expensive electric violin… in a world where for the same money one could get a stellar first rate premium signature edition electric guitar. Yes, the Electric Violin market is a smaller market, but still the hesitation over price seemed entirely reasonable. When the WAV 4 Chinese NS Design models came out at bargain prices, I jumped and bought one and was largely happy with it (see my Amazon Reviews of the WAV 4 and the Fender FV3 vs the NS Design WAV4).

I heard of people stringing violins for viola tuning (CGDA instead of GDAE) and was fascinated with the idea. I ordered a C string and strung it on the end of my FV3 and ran the other strings over a slot, leaving the E string off when I got to the end. I loved the viola tuning, but couldn’t find a C string that sounded quite right with the other strings. Then it occurred to me that perhaps the best way to achieve viola tuning is with a real viola.

Now, if one thought that the market for Electric Violins was small, well, the market for Violas is even more constricted. I kept returning to the NS Design, and because the CR Series describes so well in their own promotional literature, and because the On Line Reviews were so favorable, I decided to order an NS Design CR4… after a few drinks, of course.

Amazon often resorts to The Electric Violin Shop for some of these items, and so I went directly to their site. I remembered that months ago I had inquired about ordering a Bridge Electric Violin from their store and was annoyed that my particular island out on the High Seas was not included on their address drop down list… making the order impossible to conduct as per usual. I complained in their Contact Us Box and then quickly forgot about getting the Bridge Violin anyway… the pretty colored ones were all sold out, leaving only the ugly colors available, and not at reduced pricing either… full price for the ugliest things you would ever not hope to see. Anyway, you wouldn’t believe what happened! These wonderful people took my harsh suggestions to heart and fixed the addressing problem. When I went to order the NS Design CR4 Viola, there it was, my Island was on the drop down list… which was when I remembered how hard I had been on them (remember I had had a few drinks). Of course, with my order, I included a heart felt apology as well as expressions of my deepest gratitude for appreciating my business and preparing for it.

With orders of that price, the ordinary mails of the United States can not be trusted… it seems that the Ordinary Mail Service can hire thieves to work at much lower rates than honest men and women, and at the end of the day the Ordinary Postal Service doesn’t need to worry about delivering quite so much as they would if their low wage employees didn’t pick through it all at first. So The Electric Violin Shop uses premium shippers, adding almost $200 to the Order, but my CR4 arrived almost the same day, except that Thanksgiving Day intervened. The Sales Lady had included a nice little hand written note thanking me for my business and wishing me luck. I think I will be a return customer to that particular Electric Violin Shop.

I had read a CR4 Review before which spoke of an NS Design Violin arriving in tune. Well, so did mine. Plugged into my existing Electric Violin settings and sound systems, I was playing in a manner of minutes.

Oh, if you read my older Reviews, you will find that I have had problems supporting the heavier electric violins, that is, just holding them up in a position to play, and they tend to slip slide around a lot. Its all rather distracting and takes a great deal away from the Music. So I did take about 20 minutes to fashion a Violin Choker, patent pending (see my other reviews on the WAV and the Fender FV3), out of a key ring, and key ring clip, and some cotton cloths line rope and cotton string. I clip it through the NS Design Shoulder Rest bracket and it holds the Viola very closely under my chin. The Viola remains so steady, I don’t even need to use the chin rest.

The volume knob on the CR4 works well… on some instruments the resistance of the volume potentiometer seems ill selected, as not much actual volume range is covered using the instruments volume knob, and one has to make all of the big volume changes at the amplifier and processor stages.

There are two tuner controls. The first should be labeled “BETTER” and the second one labeled “WORSE”… the first does away with that harsh electric sound, and the second one heaps more of it on. Anyway, the CR4 can probably be dialed in pretty close to whatever it is you are looking for, even before outputting to whatever processors and effects units are awaiting down-line.

Fit and finish is really superb. I knew that the NS Design CR4 had active electronics and so must have had a battery, but did not immediately see where the battery access panel was, or even how to get into the string bay, as I had done with the WAV 4. But eventually the little retainer bracket moveable tab attracted my attention, and when I moved the tab off to the side, the battery and string bay cover fell right off. You know, the entire back panel and battery string cover had fit so well together, I had thought it had been one entire piece. I had actually been set to take a screwdriver to the whole thing.

The wood, body and finger board are excellent and attractive. You know, I confess to using olive oil on my fingers to speed up my fingering and make modulating the strings easier, and this is the first time ever that a new violin has not turned my finger inky black. That means that after their last staining of the fingerboard they had actually taken the time to do a fine sandpapering of the fingerboard… it was so nice and smooth. Usually I have to do that kind of fine detailing myself, but they had done it for me. Thank God, for a change.

Oh, and the strings seem fine. Usually one has to toss that the strings that come with these things, But NS Design used what sound like premium steel chrome wound strings.

I had complained of the WAV4 being stiff and inflexible… not giving much of a sense for player ‘feel’, but the CR4, at least the Viola (I haven’t played the CR4 Violin but imagine it is quite similar in all regards), seemed to have flexibility… that when using some strength and force in modulating the strings, the violin actually bends in a bit… a great perception of playability and control… a rewarding ‘feel’ to the instrument. One has to wonder how they did it… apparently the CR4’s are not the same thick blocks of wood that the WAV models are.

Now a word on Violas in general. I had heard it said that Violas, being larger, are therefore slower. Well, my Fender FV3 Violin measures from the nut to the bridge for a string length of 12 7/8 inches, while my Viola measures 14 1/4. That is not much of a difference… just ten percent. But it does seem to give me more Tonal Resolution, that is, it’s easier to land on exactly the right note sweet spots, so to speak, even if one has to move a bit further to reach them. And when one rolls one’s fingers to modulate notes, one can get in a much more vigorous wiggle without worrying so much about over-modulating. Anyway, after having played both Viola and Violin, and not to sound condescending, but the Viola seems more fit for men, while the violin seems better suited for the smaller hands of boys and girls.

Oh, and as far as trading the Violin’s high E String for the Viola’s low C String ( violins are tuned to GDAE while violas are tuned down to CGDA ), while occasionally the lilting and ethereal E string has its valued uses, particularly when clustered together with other violins in concert, still in most cases that really piercing high string is used only because it is there, and the results are shrill and often clash with the other instrumentation. Bands are often afraid of including an Electric Violin, and only because they fear those wildly high E Strings stabbing into their brains by way of the ears. The Viola, however, with that C String on the low end, can reach some real bassy lows, and one can still finger far enough down on the high end A string to suggest the musical mood and intensity of Going High without actually going so high as to be positively annoying. My feeling is that if Violas became better known, they would certainly become more popular, and would largely replace the violin everywhere but in concert venue.

Electric Violins Fender FV3 vs NS Design WAV4

Electric Violins Fender FV3 vs NS Design WAV4

Both of these Electric Violins retail at closer to five hundred dollars than a thousand, which make them both great bargains compared to anything but the really cheap curlicue plastic things one sees for sale online which I’ve heard aren’t really worth the decent strings and bow it would take to really play them. I was shopping for an Electric Violin and liked the glossy photo images of the Fender FV3 but was almost worried about its so low price point when compared to the other Brands out there, notably NS Design Electric Violins which apparently thought that it would take closer to 3 thousand dollars to build an acceptable Electric Violin. But then there came the advent of the NS Design WAV4, also manufactured in China along with the Fender FV3, and priced to take on the Fender FV3 in an even up war where perceived quality would decide the outcome of the sales battle.

Of course, NS Design is a very reputable firm, relatively ancient in the somewhat new field of Electric Violins. Fender, on the other hand, perhaps the most glorious of the electric guitar makers, has had very little presence in the Electric Violin Market, accept for its kind of ugly FV1 which didn’t exactly take the Violin World by storm. So I decided to start out by ordering the NS Design WAV4. My first impressions of the NS Design WAV4 have been covered in previous Reviews. But the highlights of those reviews are… what!? No bow! Granted, a new bow, without a good week of being rosined up… seasoned… will simply make it seem that a new violin that comes with it sounds horrible, and so NS Design decided to dodge that bullet simply by not offering a bow. Oh, and the Shoulder Rest – I broke it by trying to make it comfortable… the flexible “Custom” Shoulder Rest I had read about needs to be special ordered, while the stiff hard as a rock shoulder rest is what you get standard with your order. The WAV4 is heavier than a regular violin, which makes it harder to keep in place and to control, and so I fashioned a ‘Dog Collar’ (patent pending) for it, to retain it close to one’s neck and throat. That was a great idea… I have subsequently made Dog Collars for even my real violins… one no longer even needs to use the chin rests… the violins stay right where they need to be to be played perfectly well. The Electric Sound of the NS Design WAV4 took a bit of dialing in. Really, Electric Violins can sound absolutely hideous if you just plug them into something and begin to play. What I found that works best, with the equipment I had on hand, was an Alesis Nanoverb Digital Effects Processor which I set on its Non-Linear Chorus setting, cranked up to where it only just begins to get thick and full of echo and then back it off a notch (I think that what the Non Linear Chorus does in effect is take the annoying High Frequency components on the low strings and blends them out while mixing in non-harmonic components from the primary fundamental note so that the final sound is fuller and smoother, while still being a recognizable single note. Using the regular chorus settings brings out what hints at distinct harmonically related notes and chord sounds which could actually conflict with the music one is playing). From Effects Processor I go into a Peavey 6 Mixer – one of the channels with pre-amp, and I dial up the Low and Medium equalizers to 75% of their gain while leaving the High Freq dial to zero. It’s doesn’t make for a Pure Acoustic Sound, but it is a very progressive sound that is attractive and not annoying. The important thing is that a violin not be annoying.

My Review of the NS Design WAV4 made me sort of famous, on a small scale. It was even picked up and posted on some Blog somewhere. So people started asking me how the NS Design compared to the Fender FV3.

Now, the FV3 has some splendid reviews online, albeit there are a few loud dissenters out there. Anyway, though a bit nervous about it, I ordered a Fender FV3.

Yes, the photos show it to be a lovely violin… perhaps the prettiest of all the electric violins on the market today. But those are just pictures. What I was afraid of was that in reality the actual look would be cheap, artificial and plastic. So I was quite relieved when the package came and I found that it was so very beautiful. The wood work looked like one of their premium signature guitars and it was bordered by this exquisite mother-of-pearl inlay. I had to catch my breath!

It transported me back in time to when I was a child… my mother inherited this antique coffee table. She summoned all the children together to lay down the new rules, which when taken altogether in sum meant that the beautiful coffee table was far more important than the transient goings on of mere children. After all, children would eventually grow up and leave home. But the beautiful coffee table was meant to stay… and to stay in its pristine condition of absolute perfection. In her ordinary life with so many ordinary things, the beautiful coffee table would be a central and special work of beauty… a piece of Heaven in the home place. And now, when I looked at my new FV3 Violin I saw something surely the equal of my mother’s precious coffee table. It was one of those eternal moments where the generations could come together, even beyond the grave, and find understanding. But, yes, the FV3 does look a bit like a coffee table… but a very beautiful coffee table.

Oh, and the Fender FV3 case was a hard case, of top quality, with even one of those humidity meter devices built into it… whatever they’re good for. And there was a bow. Not the best bow in the World. A few cranks on the bob to tighten it up a bit showed that it was going to curve a little to the right. But, who can’t use a spare bow from time to time… even one that wants to point east. But it’s much better than no bow at all, which is what NS Design offered for roughly the same price. Oh, and the NS Design case was little more than a cloth bag, with no place to put that Shoulder Rest contraption, unless you wanted to take the whole thing entirely apart… which, really, you don’t want to do. Practicing Violin should not be as difficult as assembling a hang glider. So I was putting the NS Design WAV4 in my sock drawer, shoulder rest still attached, and tossed the useless case up into the closet.

Oh, what was I to do with two electric violins? Well, first, I was going to have something of a ‘First Chair Shoot Out’… a competition. The Winner was to be my Violin, and the loser was to become an Electric Viola… throwing out the little E String and moving the G D and A strings down, with a new C string taking the low string position, that is, tuned to CGDA instead of GDAE.

Before I could start the competition, I made a new ‘Dog Collar’ for the FV3. Remember, one of the biggest complaints about the FV3 online was that it was heavy and would slip out of control. People needed to quit playing so they could put the violin back in position. The Dog Collar held the slightly lighter NS Design WAV4 in place and so it would also hold the Fender FV3 in place.

Then I started tuning up. I was startled to find that the G String was not even a real G String… I think it was another D String. It was simply too flabby at G. Anyway, the first rule for any ‘affordable’ violin that is not specifically set up by the Store’s Shop with specified quality strings, is to re-string it. Don’t keep a string unless you know what it is. I had re-strung the NS Design, though it was not nearly so bad. For the NS Design I had used Thomastik Superflexibles – steel braid in chrome-steel wrapping (reported to be the mellowest and least shrill of all the steel strings… and I am simply too rough on aluminum synthetic core strings to ever use them… so the best steel strings will have to be good enough for me). And the Superflexibles are great strings, though I found that it might take a day for the G string to mellow out to the same tone as the rest. For the FV3, The American Music Store gave me a set of Rotosound RS6000, steel core chrome-wounds, and I promised to try them out. They took about hour before they stabilized into tune… kind of longish for a steel string, but they ended up sounding perfectly lovely.

But here the Fender FV3 again surprised me. It was not staying in tune. One could see the pegs unwinding themselves like some ghost from the great beyong. The pegs were slipping. Well, it is a good thing I have something of a workshop. I removed the pegs and spun them in some medium grade sandpaper, about 220 grain. After that the pegs held solid… almost too solid. That reminds me to get some of that ‘peg stuff’ for sticky pegs. Anyway, with the pretty gold fine tuners mounted on the regular violin tailpiece of the FV3, the pegs only needed to get within a few notes of tune, and then the fine tuners could handle the rest.

Oh, and the finger board was a bit rough. I like my violin finger boards to be smooth as silk, and so I took some fine grade sandpaper and smoothed it down a bit. I had had to do the same for the NS Design. Also, I’ve found that most student violins can use a bit of sanding. You see, I use a bit of olive oil on my fingertips to help with my string slide action and have noticed that a lot of new violins will turn my fingers black. So, I guess that much of the perceived roughness on these new violin fingers boards may just be from the black stain finish they use. You see, liquid stain raises the grain of the wood. After any moist staining, every fine wood surface needs a final very fine grade sanding to re-smooth everything down. But one can’t expect such attention from these budget factory shops in China (although it only takes a minute) and so one has to do these little things for one’s self.

Oh, before we get to the actual playing, we need to remember that the FV3 too, also comes with its own special shoulder rest. You see the FV3 is smooth all around and doesn’t have the characteristic edge going all around which the typical violin shoulder rests are made to clip onto. The way the FV3 shoulder rest works is that it uses little male plugs that insert into little female jacks. The plugs are attached to little fittings made of spring steel which can be slightly bent so that when inserted into place a certain amount of spring preloading will keep the shoulder rest from simply dropping off. There is no clunk or indent or stop to hold it in place. The advantage is that it is very easy to remove when one is finished one’s practice. The disadvantage is that it will sometimes just simply fall off. Putting a good deal of bend into the spring fittings and even bending the shoulder rest itself to increase the tension of the spring preloading can minimize the problem. However, with my ‘Dog Collar’ holding the violin in position snug to my throat, the shoulder rest is also effectively secured. I didn’t have a problem, but if played like a regular violin – up and down up and down – I could see there being a problem with the shoulder rest occasionally hooking onto some article of clothing or whatever and being pulled off to drop on the floor or stage.

Anyway, finally to the actual playing. I was afraid I would need half the evening to find acceptable digital effects and equalization settings for the Fender FV3, just as it had taken a while to find settings that flattered the NS Design. But no, it was largely as easy as plug and play, that is, the settings that suited the NS Design WAV4 were equally flattering to the FV3. Yes, the low strings of the FV3 sounded a bit buzzy at first, but when I plugged in the NS Design WAV4 to hear a comparison, it was roughly the same thing, and after a few dial tweaks to the Peavey 6 and the Alesis Nanoverb all of the harshness was smoothed out. I had at first put a piece of old innertube over the bridge of the NS Design WAV4 to help cut the buzziness on the low strings, but found that a bit more patience with the electronic settings makes such mechanical interventions largely unnecessary.

It seems that the FV3 had an overall stronger gain coming from its sub-bridge pickup. Playability was good on the FV3 and I could instantly get nice action on the strings. With the NS Design WAV4 I had to use the screwdriver adjust to raise up the Bridge a bit because the strings were too close to the fingerboard, leaving next to no wiggle room for finger modulations. Now on a regular violin, so light and flexible, one can modulate the tone even by flexing the violin’s neck and body. But the NS Design is really something of a solid block of wood. No give at all. For any modulation to be possible at all one has to raise the bridge to allow for finger modulation and one has to really learn how to roll those fingertips. The Fender FV3, while not being quite as flexible as a good shop made acoustic, has some flex to it and one feels a bit more in control of the playing. The angle of the fingerboard must also be good as I noticed that the string tones stay good even when going very far down the neck, where with the NS Design, too far down the neck hits a dead zone where the strings muffle out and die… again, I suspect the bridge is too low. You know, one can only raise the bridge so far before one worries that one will simply break something off. The workmanship of the NS Design, while rugged enough in a back-woods rural Chinese factory kind of way, leaves one with the impression that one can only go so far screwing around with a simple block of wood before something snaps off. The bridge adjusted using these big coarse threaded wood screws… not adjustment screws, but the kind of screws you would use to hang a heavy picture frame into a support beam at the local tavern. I could screw them in to raise the bridge, but if I changed my mind and wanted to back out, it would probably have left everything loose and wobbly. It seems you might only have one chance to get it right. So when it seemed good enough, I stopped there. The Fender doesn’t have an adjustment, or none that I needed to look for, but fortunately no adjustment was necessary… the geometry, as factory set, is perfect.

The sound and playability of the Fender FV3 was better than the NS Design WAV4, but not by much. The Fender FV3 did have some particularities, which may account for the most horrible review I read concerning the FV3 – that it sounded terrible. You see, if the bridge piece of the FV3 wanders off too far to the side or leans a bit too forward or too backward, even by a little, then the pickup gain will drop to almost nothing. Unless you already have all your settings adjusted for a good normal gain, you will not know that something is wrong if the bridge had slipped into its dead-zone and you will simply assume that the FV3 is always like that … that it ‘sucks’. So, you need to be careful when stringing and tuning the FV3… tighten down to snug both a left and right string together at the same time to keep the bridge piece perfectly centered down the middle, and then double check that the bridge is perfectly straight up, forward and backward, after tuning. Oh, if you get a soft lead Carpenters Pencil which use a lot of graphite in the pencil lead, a good dry lubricant, then even with the strings fully tight in tune, one can still adjust the bridge’s verticality, slipping the bridge forward and aft under the strings. Even then, sometimes the sound connection between the bridge piece and the sub-bridge pickup will seem to ‘fall asleep’ between sessions… when the violin has been set aside for awhile. It seems that just trying to wiggle the verticality or flicking the bridge with finger kick is enough to ‘wake it up’… to bring it back to full gain again. Yes, the NS Design was never so fussy, but when the FV3 is working right, it works better.

And then there are the stunning good looks… of the Fender FV3. If the FV3 is an easy Nine on the famous 1 to 10 scale, then the NS Design WAV4 needs charity just to stretch it to a Six.

The NS Design also has the “what is it?” problem. It doesn’t look like a violin. It takes ordinary people a long time to figure out what it is supposed to be. And it seems small. Even experienced Violin players wonder whether it is the right size. Every violin player I know looks around the room for a violin to compare it to… thinking that the nut to bridge length must be shorter than ordinary… as though it is a children’s Electric Violin, size ½ or ¾.

So the First Chair Shootout went to the FV3. As I had said, the Loser would become a Viola, and this is where I found a problem with the NS Design I had not expected. You see, the strings go onto the NS Design somewhat backwards. The Ball End of the strings are up at the top of the neck. Now, this NS Design way of stringing had seemed so innovative – new strings are simply pushed into a slot and pinched down and tuned up. Easy as pie! But just try de-stringing! It turns out that out of 4 strings, 3 string balls were jammed solid into the little hole sockets… the varnish on the side of the sockets acting like a kind of glue. I had to get a paring knife from the kitchen and literally dig the old strings out. So why does there have to be a indented socket for the balls to get stuck in… would it have been some sacrilege against fine German Engineering for the balls to stick out somewhat from a metal fixture flush to the neck’s head? Anyway, when I re-strung the NS Design WAV4 to Viola Tune (C G D A instead of Violin G D A E) I made sure to tie a little string in front of each ball end, so that when the time came to restring, the balls could simply be pulled out… without resort to kitchen utensils.

Oh, some may wonder where I got a C String to fit a violin. Well, since NS Design builds 5 string violins, the 5th string being a C, I simply ordered one of them from Johnson Strings. Next time I might try a Jaguar Chrome String for 15 inch Viola which may be a fit more snuggly, but the NS Design C String works well enough to prove the principle… that an Electric Violin can be tuned to Viola.

This is how good the NS Design WAV4 actually is, despite loosing its competition. Even with a new Violin to play with… one I liked better… the Fender FV3… I ended up playing the NS Design WAV4, now an Electric Viola, for more than an hour. It was just so much fun! I couldn’t put it down. You know, I think it is something of a trend in the Music World… for instance, people ‘Bull Dogging’ old 4 string basses, that is, getting old traditional basses tuned to E A D G and then tossing out the light end G string and move all the other strings down one and putting in a heavier B string from a 5 string set at the low end, for a tuning of B E A D. Tuning a Violin to Viola is like ‘Bulldogging’ a violin… more rough and tumble bass at one end and less of those wussy shrill high notes at the other.

Anyway, the Viola tuning was so much fun in the NS Design WAV4 that I decided to ‘Bulldog’ the Fender FV3 too (luckily I had ordered two C Strings from Johnson Strings). And I played another six hours… forgetting about dinner… just to prove to myself that the E string was entirely unnecessary. Yes, a few times I went pretty far down the neck on the A string, but not once did I try for a high note I couldn’t reach. You know, I think the E String is a problem on Violins. The E String is there and one feels that one needs to use it, and so one contrives for reasons… thinking up musical phrases that pierce the sky and make dogs howl. But, really, all the Feeling and Intent of music can better be served without going to such extremes. Yes, yes, in orchestras the E Strings can set up high harmonic lilts that compliment the other instruments that for the most part do a good job of drowning out the E String’s inherent shrillness. But when the Violin is a stand alone instrument or a lead instrument, then that E String can simply be too much, particularly when it keeps one from sliding the other more pleasant strings down and putting in a much more useful C string on the other end.

So the Fender FV3 won and the NS Design WAV4 lost, but, remember, not by much.

Oh, but do keep in mind that the sound I was getting from these two splendid Electric Violins were a final product of the Alesis Nanoverb Effects Processor (set to Non Linear Chorus) and the Peavey 6 Mixer. My guess is that running either of these violins into a simple unfiltered amplifier would result in the most horrendous of infernal noises. The Alesis Nanoverb Digital Effects Processor is less than $150, as is also the Peavey Mixer. And I use the same equipment with my guitar and bass. Anyway, when budgeting for an Electric Violin, keep in mind that Effects and Equilization will necessarily be part of your package. Oh, and go to Johnson Strings and look into a half decent bow. I got a Jonpaul Bravo for about $250 and it really does make a difference… expressive down to slightest whisper or up to the most desperate howl. If you need to save money, then don’t eat lunch for a month, but buy a good bow…

..... Update, after a weeks playing.

It turns out that the most elegant solution to the Shoulder Rest Problem, of it inadvertently falling off, is just to let it lay... or to pick it up and put it back in the case and forget about it. If you use a 'dog collar' (or Violin Choker, as some prefer to call it) to support the violin just under your chin, while the violin may seem a bit wobbly at first, you will find that even without a shoulder rest it is quite under control, and without the shoulder rest, it may even help on occasions where you wish to roll the violin in to make the low strings more available to the bow. So if you tie the violin around your neck, you don't need a shoulder rest.

I was a bit worried about the 'sleeping pickup'. Over the week I had absolutely no problem at all... as long as I made only minor tuning changes. But when I decided to run out the Fine Tuners and re-snug up the Peg Tuners, then the Pickup came up 'sleeping' and I had to give the Bridge a little finger kick to wake it up. I wondered what was happening and decided to take off the Mother of Pearl access panel cover on the back and take a look. It turns out that the coax wire to the pickup goes up through the top, so the Pickup is actually just up on top under the bridge, secured by tape. Anyway, center the bridge exactly over that taped up pickup and you should be fine. When in doubt, just flick it a few times or thump down on the bridge. Really, when its working, it give a really full great gain.

Oh, after a full week ... and getting used to the transtion from violin to viola ( tuning from GDAE to CGDA) I really am confirmed in my love for the Fender FV3. There are more expensive violins out on the market, but they aren't nearly as good looking, and I can only wonder how they could possibly sound any better...

...................................
Update after 3 weeks:

Oh, I remembered one problem I had been having with the NS Design WAV4, that bringing the bow down on the strings would create a low bass tone ‘RUMMFF’ sound, and especially if you wanted to do a ‘tremolo’ – short quick bow strokes, or any kind of bow bouncing around action. It was very distracting and annoying. I just got into the habit of not doing anything fancy with the bow while working with the NS Design WAV4. I inadvertently took the same habit to the Fender FV3.

But suddenly I noticed that the Fender FV3 was entirely immune to the problem… probably because the Pickup is ‘floating’… just sitting there in between the bridge home pocket and the bridge. I’m not certain, but perhaps the pickup of the NS Design is structurally fixed to the violins rather solid body, and every little secondary vibration comes through loud and clear, whether it is desired or not.

Oh, I am beginning to think that the ‘Pickup Falling Asleep’ problem with the Fender FV3 is only temporary… that once the Pickup Package ages and settles in, it begins to be quite consistently good. Anyway, I have not had a problem with it this last week… and I play every day.

I’ve heard that NS Design is coming out with an entire Violin Support System… a yoke that holds the violin in front and which balances it around one’s back with support beams and counter weights. It all looks like it could all rather get in the way. As I mentioned before, the “Heavy Violin Support Problem” can be solved in a half an hour with several key ring circles and clips and a short length of cotton laundry line rope and medium heavy cotton string. I had been calling it a “Dog Collar”, because that is what it reminded me of, but the Lady in the local Musical Instrument Store prevailed upon me to start calling it a “Violin Choker”. You simply make a few loops of string around the violin tail piece loop, and use that string loop to secure a short length of cotton rope with key ring rings secured to the ends. The rope only has to be long enough so that the clip fasteners will attach around the side of your neck rather than just under the throat, which would probably be quite annoying… and, place the rings far enough back so that the clips do not line up with that artery which carries blood up into the brain. One can fit out the ‘Violin Choker’, patent pending, making loops with the rope secured by temporary knots of string, and then sliding the rope loops tighter or slacker until it is all quite the perfect size for you, and then finish the job by using multiple string windings on the ends of the rope loops. If done carefully, the job can even be fairly presentable. And as I have said before, this simple contraption provides an elegant and comprehensive solution to the whole Violin Stability problem. One doesn’t even have to use the Chin Rest anymore, and I have found that I no longer need the Fender Shoulder Rest, though I’ve kept my real Violin’s shoulder rest… out of concern for its very expensive finish, which isn’t an issue for the Fender. The advantage the Violin Choker would have over the NS Design Support System Yoke, is, well, its not so obtrusive. Between songs, one can simply let the violin hang down on one’s chest. One can have a drink of beer, and rosin one’s bow… even go out into the kitchen and make a sandwich. But the NS Design thing looks like it would only be useful only during playing, but otherwise would be entirely in the way of everything one would like to do between songs.

Fender FV3 Electric Violin One Month Update

I had bumped the FV3 while playing and the D string unwound itself out of tune. Then the peg wouldn’t hold tune upon retuning but would slip almost immediately. The FV3 must be made of a relatively hard wood which compresses the softer pegs to a bright slippery shine, and then the only thing to do is to unstring the violin and give the pegs a medium to light sandpapering, to rough them up enough so that they will again stay put and hold tune. Oh, remember to turn the pegs in the sandpaper evenly in order to keep them uniformly round and in about the same shape as they should be. Anyway, that wasn’t such a big problem. The big problem came when the FV3 Electric Violin came up completely dead after restringing. Not just low gain, but absolutely nothing. But then when I moved the bridge back and forth on its front to back angle, suddenly the piezo pickup snapped on loud and clear. But something was clearly wrong. A wire was severed or a solder joint was cracked or the piezo-elements were shorting together, but something was clearly wrong and it probably would not fix itself… as I had been hoping.

Coming up on 30 days from purchase I decided to inquire at the local Fender Store about my options. They emailed Fender and Fender came back with the reply that they would FEDEX out a complete Electronics Kit for the FV3 – not just the piezoelectric pickup but also the jack connector and control potentiometers. The local electric guitar smith would install the electronics kit and Fender would be billed for his trouble.

After all of this transpires I will get back and report whether the new set of electronics fixes the problems I have had with the FV3 being glitchy and temperamental. Oh, and I am so happy I did not give the FV3 a 5 Star Rating. One should not give an item 5 stars just because the Company provides great warranty support for when the thing craps out almost immediately… Anyway, keep in mind that the FV3 is still a rather nice violin for just $700, and for that price one might expect to run into some difficulties. This reminds me… I had sent off for a NS Design CR4 Viola, having liked the FV3 when I strung it to viola tuning. Now THAT is a great instrument… the active electronics can be set to a nice MELLOW, and it stays in tune from session to session, and though its shaped quite the same as the WAV Series, its final finish is SO much better, and the thing even seems to have some flex and feel… as though they had done a bit of a better job shaping the basic block of wood out of which it is hewn. But the NS Design CR Violins and Violas come in at a good deal more than $2000 (that is, more than 3 times what one would pay for the WAV or the FV3) where if one did not receive some fairly obvious quality, then accusations of robbery and reactions like rioting would not be quite too far out of line even for the most civilized and polite among us. But yes, the NS Design CR4 Viola is splendid and I love it… even while I might have to skip lunches for the next six months in order to pay for it…

...........Back From Repair with new electronics

Now the pickup isn't intermittent, and no longer just dies until I bring it back to life by wiggling the bridge. but I had gotten a NS Design CR4, which sounds so much better than both the WAV and the FV3, that it was a bit demoralizing trying to dial in a good sound for the FV3... and I tried for almost an hour. An edge of electric harshness can never entirely be eliminated... not without also killing the response on the high strings.

Then, I was spoiled by the NS Design String and Tune system. Changing out strings takes only a few minutes with the NS Design, and then, if you use steel strings, the violin stays in tune... solid, in tune, practice after practice. With peg tuning in general, maybe there is peg slippage, or the string coiled on the pegs pulls out or squeezes down, but, in any case, peg tuning doesn't stay put. In the case of the FV3, I think the hard wood used for neck and head, which holds the pegs, well, I think the wood is not any real kind of violin wood. The hard wood compresses in on the pegs and makes them smooth -- shiney smooth, and the pegs begin to unwind. It happened to me three times, and I owned the FV3 less than 2 months. One has to unstring the violin and then use sand paper to rough up the pegs... but it apparently just a temporary fix. Maybe one needs to put honey or a light glue on the pegs, and then tune them close enough so that the fine tuners, which don't seem to have the same range as ordinary violin fine tuners, can take over. But, as time went on, I found the FV3 tuning instability and chronic string problems to be very annoying.

The WAV sounded only a bit inferior to the FV3, but now that I have had to live with the FV3 for almost two full months, with all of its quirks and repairs, I certainly would now give the Win to the WAV. Ease of operation and reliability have to count for something, and it sounds 98% as good, when the FV3 decides to work right.

But if you find that you can afford to spend a lot more money, the NS Design CR4 Series does dial in to a very good sound, and has a much lovier physical presence... the WAV series looks like the CR Series in shape, but that is as far as it goes. The Finish of the CR4 is far superior and almost worth the added cost in itself.

Its a shame that a reputable company like Fender doesn't even offer a premium class Electrical Violin. Considering the fit and finish in their $1000 Guitars, if all they had to do was compete with NS Design's $2000+ Price Point, then one could expect Fender to be able to turn out THE BEST ELECTRIC VIOLIN IN THE WORLD for roughly $1800. They could call it the 'Arrowcaster' (you know like 'bow' and arrow... and the name would be reminiscent of their famous series of 'Telecasters' and 'Stratocasters').

Jay Haide Balestrieri Violin Review

What a superb violin!

I had never been able to get a decent violin before. First I had to suffer the poverty of youth, then the poverty of college, then the poverty of the Peace Corps and entry level jobs and the recessions brought on by Capitalism’s healthy corrections (thank God that Capitalism can remain healthy, even it it takes throwing half of us out of work for it to stay that way), then the poverty of marriage and the poverty of bringing up a little family, then the poverty of divorce. Poverty, poverty, poverty. The best I was able to do, from time to time was buy the most affordable entry level violins. Hey, a cheap violin is infinitely better than no violin at all … unless, of course, you ask the neighbors.

Anyway, as the years progressed, I had been doing a lot of keyboard work, and filling out my experience with guitars and bass guitars, and then remembered my original and ancient love for violins. I guess I had shied away from getting back to violins… it had practically broke my heart when decades ago a young and pretty wife had put it to a practical choice, her or my cheap violin. I told myself I didn’t need it… the violin, not the pretty wife… and must have rather convinced myself. Violins became too sad a subject for me to easily think about. But eventually Time heals such old wounds, and so one day while I was scanning the market for a feasible electric violin purchase, I got another cheapie acoustic entry level violin to tide me over for a spell – a Mathias Thoma Model 30.

As for the Electric, I eventually choose to get the NS Design WAV4 Electric Violin from Johnson Strings, and while I was tying up that purchase, and ordering little accessory knickknacks, I asked if they had any mid-level decent violins at an affordable price. And then I described the tone I wanted.

Now, they have a vocabulary for violin tones, and it takes a while to totally grasp it and I still don’t know whether I entirely have a hold on it, but “bright” and “brilliant” mean shrill or strident, that is carrying a lot of high frequency components even on the lower strings. “Dark” means the tones stay close to their fundamentals with low harmonic content. “Rich”… well, I’m confused about what that might mean.

Anyway, they had me speak to their Sales Manager, Mr. Mathew Fritz, and simply to alley any misunderstandings, I described how I set up my electric guitars, electric bass guitars, and now even my electric violin, and asked him if he had an acoustic violin that would come naturally that way. You see, what I do is turn the bass way up and the trebles way down – I hate buzzy high frequency components and like the tones to be round and clean, full of their own body and not borrowing from the higher registers of harmonic distortion. As my father used to say, “treble” is another word for “tinny”.

He told me that what I wanted was a “dark” violin, and the darkest violin he had in my price range was a Jay Haide a l'ancienne Balestrieri Model. I was told that I was not the only violin player in the world to express a desire for The Dark Side. While most the World flocks to some derivative or another of the Stradivarius violins, their particular ‘brightness’ puts off a sizeable minority. Now, I had been thinking in my ignorance that there was either the Stradivaris or the Guarneris, the Guarneri being purportedly “darker” than the Stradivari. But apparently a generation or two after Stradivar and Guarneri had their glory days there were violin makers who went into the business of adding extra emphasis to what the players of their own day considered the separate virtues of the two great rivals. Well, Belestreri stepped forward and proclaimed that if people wanted Dark, well, he could deliver Dark like nobody else ever before him. So it was that Mr. Fritz suggested, in so many words, that if I were not to go just half way, merely in the shadows of darkness, but wished to totally plunge into the most dismal gradations of somberness, then I should have to get a Belesteri Model.

Oh, and then I told him that there would be an important proviso – I would be using steel strings. I tried various brands of Synthetic Core Strings, but what they all have in common is aluminum windings. Well, aluminum is the most fragile substance on earth and it simply doesn’t last. Go online and search up ‘unraveling violin A strings’ and see how many hits you get. The Forum Discussions almost entirely blame the players. All these strings are failing but somehow it is not the fault of the string. The most cogent advice I found was that if one simply had to have the Synthetic Core String Sound and hope to have the strings last more than a few practice sessions (yes! I had synthetic strings that did not last even for a single week!), then one would have to play one’s violin “as though it were encrusted with butterfly wings”. Now, that’s wonderful advice for delicate little girls and too-soft little boys, but for a salty old man who sometimes likes to have a drink or two before playing along with The Who’s “Baba O’Reilly” (still the best violin solo ever in Rock and Roll history), such advice is useless, except for sending one off to find an alternative to Aluminum Wound Synthetic Core Violin Strings.

Well, online rumor had it that the mellowest of all the steel strings was the Thomastik Superflexibles, which are a braided steel core wound in chrome-steel. It was either that or D’Addario Helicores… so I flipped a coin. The Superflexibles are fine… although I’ve found that the G string will sound a bit buzzy on its first practice session, but the next day it will sing an “OOOO” for you just fine.

Anyway, Mr. Mathew Fritz allowed that given a naturally brighter string than most synthetics, the Jay Haide Balesteri was the best suited for dealing with it… that not all of the Balesteri’s natural darkness could possibly be washed out by a marginally brighter string, especially allowing that the Thomastik Superflexible was considered widely to be the mellowest of its steel string genre.

Oh, and Mr. Fritz pointed out that the Jay Haide Violins were wonderful values for the money; that young professionals were getting pit work and studio work in New York with them, ostensibly passing them off as much better healed instruments.

You know, after talking with Mr. Fritz of Johnson Strings, I wondered that he had not recommended one of the Chinese Shopmade Instruments , but a quick search online corrected me in that regards. The Jay Haide violins are made in China. This a good thing. A lot of nice things are said of the woods available in China. Now, it is also said that the Chinese have been a bit impatient with their curing and drying, but this is also one of the contributing factors for the affordability of Chinese Violins. The important thing to remember is that a Chinese Violin will get significantly better in just a few years… even a few months…, as it reaches an optimum dryness. But a European Violin, as good as it is, will be as good as it gets, unless one can wait a generation or two for some incremental improvement.

Anyway, it all came to the test when my Jay Haide Balesteri Violin arrived in the mail (international shipping… I couldn’t believe how quickly it arrived, and that Johnson Strings shipping department had wasted so little time). My first impression was that the antiquing is startlingly convincing. One opens the case and sees what looks like an actual museum relic. It is really beautiful once one adjusts to all the faux-scratches and faux-fades and faux-wear’n’tear. Really the skilled blend of the reds and browns in the antiqued varnish… well, the beauty of it is transfixing. Sometimes I don’t even play… I just stare at that beautiful violin in a state of aesthetically induced ecstatic rapture. .

Oh, but was Mr. Fritz right about the sound? Did the Darkness of the Balesteri survive the steel string setup. Oh, yes, by the way, Mr. Fritz will have their shop setup the violin any way you like. So I did not have to wait to change out the strings myself… he sent it prepared just as I asked.

Well, yes, but the violin did apparently need a few days to settle in – bringing full tension to the strings and allowing the bridge and sound post to settle in. And the new Thomastik Superflexible G string always takes a day to round itself out, tone wise. Anyway, after a few days it sounded lovely. The darkness resides best in the two lower strings, but if one is careful on the bow with the A and E strings, then even these naturally shrill strings are willing to sing nice round sounding “OOOOO”s.

Oh, I did have one problem. It seems that all quality violins are sold with just one fine tuner, for the E string which is always a wire and therefore hard to tune in with just the clunky old traditional peg. The problem is, though, if one uses steel strings, then they are all virtually like wire, and peg tuning to any consistent accuracy is practically impossible, and always more time consuming than it really needs to be. So if you are going to use steel strings with your fine violin, then order three more finetuners… only $2.50 a piece. Mr. Fritz will probably even offer to have them installed during his courtesy setup.

Yes, I’ve heard that they say that Fine Tuners will dampen some of the Violin’s tone. But remember, when they talk about structure dampening tone, primarily they are talking about muffling those bright and brilliant, shrill and strident, high frequency components. Remember, Structures attenuate high frequencies while allowing low frequencies to pass. In short, the fine tuners might actually make an instrument “Darker” and if darker is what one likes, then don’t hesitate to get the fine tuners! Also I heard it said on line that sometimes the fine tuners will buzz. Well, they are designed to be slipped into the tailpieces string holes and tightened down with these round knurled nuts, so just make sure they are tightened snuggly and that will preclude them buzzing because they are loose. But, admittedly, from the engineering standpoint, little components like that might also buzz if surrounding vibrations cause them to hit their own natural resonant frequency. Well, I played my scales really hard, up and down, hitting every good note and as many of the bad one’s as I could figure on, and was not able to elicit a single aberrant ‘buzz’ from my four fine tuners.

Incidentally, the case is really nice. There is enough room even for a conventional shoulder rest.

So, in brief, I am very happy with the Jay Haide Violin, and with the entire staff at Johnson Strings – Sales, Bills and Accounting, and Shipping. It makes one appreciate how wonderful it could be to live in a Perfect World and to hope with just a few more such encouragements, that Life is perhaps beginning to become ‘fair’. Or if life again proves to be miserable and disappointing, well, at least one has a good violin to play. If one must ‘fiddle while Rome burns’, one should at least do it on a nice fiddle like the Jay Haide Balesteri.

Violin Collar (patent pending) Vs Violin Shoulder Rest

I remember some poor Reviewer complaining that the Fender FV-3 Electric Violin was so heavy that he could not hold it in place. It would not keep still and it took so much Left Hand effort to steady it, that the Hand was seriously distracted from work of actually playing the violin.

So I didn’t get the Fender FV-3. I got the NS Design WAV 4 Violin in stead.

And I found it so heavy… Well, it was the same problem.

But you can’t just toss these things in the Dust Bin, can one? So I thought and thought and thought, and an inspiration came to me. Hang the darn thing from one’s neck from a kind of collar that connects up to either the Shoulder Rest mount, or from the Bridge Nut Mount, as on a standard acoustic Violin. You see, the Center of Gravity of an Electric Violin, and even a standard acoustic violin is very far down, close to the chin rest. If all that weight is hanging from one’s neck, on a short chocker collar, then there is little weight left to bother one’s left hand.

After a few weeks of trying various forms of collar and fasteners (cotton rope and key rings and spring loaded clips) I got it about right for both my electric and my ordinary violins. I really don’t even have to use the chin rests anymore. Keeping the shoulder rest does help orientate the violin correctly. And I can play and play and play and never have to worry about adjusting the violin’s position.

Oh, and the bonus of using a collar… one does not need to put the violin down all the time… to rosin one’s bow or select new music or whatever. One simply lets go and the relatively small violins simply drop down on the chest unobtrusively. If one is a Bar Room Musician, then one no longer has to worry about one of the clients grabbing your violin and racing out the door with it.

Oh, I was told to patent the thing, so, sure, I’ll patent it. But if anybody just wants to make one at home, or put together something of a dog collar to do the same thing, feel free. I just don’t want to see them for sale anywhere unless it is I doing the selling.

Learning Music The Easy… The Right Way

Years ago there was this thing called the Suzuki Method, it came out of Japan after the War … the whole idea of it was that it was supposed to be easier for little kids to learn music, because it’s easier for little kids to learn language. Hand a little kid a fiddle and tell him to play with it, while immersing him in an environment rife with music and other musicians, and pretty soon the little kid would be carrying a tune like other little kids carry the mumps or the measles.

Unfortunately the foundational premise of the Suzuki Method is so discouraging for anybody over the age of about 4 years old when that Language Advantage parallel levels off and disappears, and, besides, its wrong!

While adults and older children may have a tough enough time when it comes to learning the proper conjugation of French Verbs, when a catchy tune comes over the radio, nobody has any trouble remembering how to hum it exactly, hours or even days afterward. Mr. Suzuki might have been bright enough to know that Catchy Tunes cling to the mind a lot better than those devilish Foreign Languages. Maybe he was too dazed by the War, or just grateful he could come up with some reasonably credible justification for his Big Moneymaking Scheme. Well, we all have to eat, don’t we. But its left to other people to clean up after such Intellectual Sloppiness.

So, yes, Music is different. Having heard a song once, People, even those older than 4 years old, stroll down the street skipping to its beat and “la la la-ing” it. And everyone else who has heard it knows the song. People get music right… often the very first time they try. Yes, and as Suzuki might have predicted, often these adults and older children don’t get the language of the songs quite right. While they get the melody just fine, as, for instance, when they sing a new song in the shower shower, the words are almost always not quite correct… but the substitutes and faux-rhymes are often as good as the real words… or even sometimes better. As far as words and Modern Music are concerned, it is not as though the bar is set so very high.

You know, playing tunes on a musical instrument is almost just as easy as singing in the shower or humming while subtly skipping down the street. One only needs to get acquainted with the instrument one plans on playing. And that is not really as difficult as the Professional Musician Culture makes it out to be. After all, ‘They’ already know we think they are lazy, and they don’t wish us to find out that what they do for a living is easy as well. So they do what most professions do – they pretend that what they do is difficult so they don’t have to apologize for all the money they take away for doing it. Well… not that 99% of professional musicians don’t live in the most abject poverty… but its always the top 1% that controls the Public Relations, is it not? The Voice of One Madonna drowns out the lamentations of a million low paid songsters who crowd the slums like so many pathetic rats… rats who can whistle happy tunes and tap their little paws in time…

Here is an illustration of just how easily music comes to us, even as adults. In Germany there was this policeman who had been shot in the throat in the line of duty. It destroyed his vocal cords. Since it was not in America, it was decided that no public expense would be spared to rehabilitate the man and bring him back his speech somehow. So they got him this Sound Generator Box with a touch sensitive activation screen. It was programmed to operate like a kind of palate – consonants could be formed and then tones could be modulated like the various vowel sounds and then more consonants… you know, like real words and real language. At first they were going to make it monotonic, as a pitch control would have added another complication to an already complicated little piece of equipment. In other countries they may have thought that a common man would have trouble working through so many intricacies and variables, but remember that this was in Germany where they rather take high levels of common intelligence for granted, and so they heaped on the tonal pitch control, supposing it could be used to make the ‘voice’ more natural with just a dash of sing-songiness, once the man got used to the controls and didn’t overdo it. Well, long story short, after only a few months the man was not only able to form intelligible and surprisingly natural sounding speech… German even!... using the fingers of just one hand, but he was able to “sing” with it, and then just by using various vowels and tones on the little box he was able to “play” it, mimicking various musical instruments!

Now, violins, pianos, guitars… aren’t they about like the same thing, or even easier? Remember, we only have to get familiar with the things and how they work. And if we commit a little time everyday, its bound to become easy. Just think about it. Everyday, the same old strings. Everyday, the same old notes. It is not a moving target. Nothing moves. Nothing ever changes. Of course one would get the hang of it.
Nowadays I don’t even bother taking the dust cover off my keyboard… after you hit the first key… blind… you got your orientation and your hands know where all the other keys are. On guitar and violin, while I still watch the pick or bow to keep them on the straight and narrow… from inadvertently dinging the next string over, the finger board fingers are free to roam where they want… they know their landscape perfectly well.

So it is that the Relationship between the Keys or the Strings never Change. Learning it doesn’t take long and once you know it, you know it forever.

So what is stopping everybody? Well, the Music Teachers! Let me illustrate with a story. I remember when I was a kid. My parents got my older brother a guitar, and sent him to a music teacher for an official music lesson. He came home with a book. His first Music Book. Apparently Music was to be treated like some kind of an intellectual endeavor. In his first week he was supposed to learn the chords for the song “Red River Valley”. What this means in practical terms was that in his first week he was expected to master the coordination of all six strings of a guitar with one stroke of a pick. And when he learned “Red River Valley”, they would teach him a new song. Apparently the idea was to learn every song in the Universe, one at a time, a week at a time. Well, the practices must have been hateful! All he was doing was straining to put his fingers in the correct mechanically pre-determined positions to fill out these mysterious chords, which, if he did it correctly, would mechanically result in the sounds of the correct song coming out. Not the least bit of art in the entire thing. It was all rote memorization and finger bending races with a metronome.

But the Music Teacher could show mommy and daddy that after just one week Little Johnny was already playing a song. What a Success! Music done like its some kind of a trick. Shortcutting the process so badly that sometimes these ‘musicians never really learn the strings. They tend to fall back on their mechanics… the chords they know instead of the chords they are hearing.

But it’s not like that everywhere. In the South, in those Blue Hills of Kentucky and thereabouts, they would get a kid a Thing with a mop handle with one string running from the top on down to a fastening in the bottom of a bucket – the Ol’ One String Bass. They’d turn on the radio and tell Little Johnny to play along. “Boing, ka-boing, ka-boing boing boing”. No further instructions required… well, not until little Johnny mastered the One String and wanted to add a second string or even a third string, and then Mom and Dad or Cousin or Uncle Bob would sometimes get involved… “Johnny, do you want 2 full tune steps between strings, like a bass guitar, or 3 tune steps like a big ol’ fiddle bass?” Well, most ‘Johnnies’ try both ways. So we have thousands of these ‘Little Johnnies’ out in Them Hills that in their first few months of practice learn how to move comfortably between the World of Violins and Guitars. Hopefully the parents time it all correctly so that by the time their Little Johnny starts to rig his Ol’ One String into being a 4 or 5 or even 6 “stringer”… replacing the Mop handle with a shaved down 2X4, Christmas will arrive so that Johnny can be presented with his first ‘real’ guitar or fiddle… which, given a few minutes to adjust to the new feel, he would already be able to play half as well as Elvis, who probably learned the same way. Well, perhaps not the chords to “Red River Valley”, but he would be able to jump in and play the songs on the radio, just as he had with his Ol’ One String Bass.

At first he would move very quickly between strings, covering all the necessary harmonic blends and tones within the song, and then with time he will get lazy like everybody else and simply hold down all the appropriate strings at once in their necessary positions – making Chords… but he won’t have to ask anybody what they are or should be or what to call them. He will simply just know them by intimate acquaintance. Of course, out in the Hills people ‘know’ chords and teach each other chords, but they aren’t held back by them. They can all jump right into new songs, and the chords might be some very fast finger-picking at first, but by the end of the song the right chords will be strumming away. Its not so much that they know the chords as that they know the Neck of their Guitars.

And, really, adults in the Civilized World could learn Music in about much the same way, and just about as quickly… if they were willing to put in as much time as Little Johnny. It’s just embarrassing for adults to start off learning new things if it can be held up to public ridicule. So just find a room with a lockable door and a musical instrument that can play into headphones, and you’re set. People will simply think you’re in there looking at Porn, which by Today’s standards isn’t nearly as embarrassing as learning to play a musical instrument.

Well, technically, to do what Little Johnny does… to play along with the Radio or the Stereo or whatever, but secretly, you’ll need a two channel mixer… to hear both the Song and the instrument you are using to play along with it.

I really recommend the Violin as a first instrument. Pianos have discreet keys and guitars have those discreet frets. When given these discreet units, the Intellectual part of our Minds try to learn them intellectually. The Left Brain tries to co-opt a Right Brain activity. What keys are which notes? What frets are which notes? One is full of questions. But the violin, while having four discreet strings, which is perfectly obvious, has no frets. A beginning Musician will simply have to squirm around on the strings and find the note he is looking for. Yes, for a second or two it can be very discouraging, but then when one lands on the exact right note, and hears the perfect harmonization between target song and what one is playing on one’s own Instrument, then it is a virtual moment of bliss from heaven.

But don’t get ahead of yourself. Remember the Ol’ One String Bass … start with just one string. With a violin, start at the low end, or the high end, but pick an end, and just see what you can do with just that one string. You know, there are actually a lot of possible notes in each one of the violin strings, from the top of the neck at the nut to as far down the neck toward the bridge as one can reach on the fingerboard… at least the match of most people’s singing voice range. You see, the way Strings work is that from the Top to the exact middle of the String is one full octave, but then the next higher octave takes only half that same distance, the next octave just half of that half of a distance – the notes get closer together as you come down the neck, and it gives each string a heck of a lot of range. You know, Little Johnny really was able to play songs on that One String thing. One string was plenty at the beginning, but it was also enough.

No one will have to tell you when you can go to the next string. You will get lazy about moving all the way up or down on the string to get to a note you want and you will figure it’s just easier to reach across to the next string where the desired note is situated closer… more conveniently. You see, stringed instruments have more than one string not to make it harder to play, but to make it easier… once you know the relationship between strings.

One of the best exercises for after you have mastered One String Playing, is to never play a repeating note twice in a row on the same string. On guitars where the strings are only two full steps apart… 5 frets which include those Sharp and Flat half tones… it is actually quite easy to play the same note on three adjacent strings – boing, boing, boing… going diagonally across the fingerboard. Violins with their 3 full steps between strings, well, the same note is a bit more of a reach between strings, so there it is sufficient to play the same note from one string to the next… the third string might be a bit of a reach. Anyway, once your Hand knows this string to string relationship, all else quite easily follows, and moving between strings will come quite as naturally as just playing just one string… only easier.

Keyboards are in fact easier than string instruments in their own way… and harder. One can learn the Octave Spacing of a keyboard within minutes, but the very ease of being able to beat on so many keys at once, well, introduces the possibility for so much error. Easy to play, easy to get wrong. And then with the sharps and flats … those annoying Black Keys… arranged on a different plane and level from the Full Note White keys… it throws a non-linear relationship into the whole thing and makes it far more difficult than it really should be – than if they had simply put all the notes in the same row and on the same level. But, still, the keys never move, and are the same from day to day, and so after a while one eventually gets used to the arrangement.

Keyboards are not given to the “One String Bass” mode of learning, but one can start in a comparatively easy fashion by using far fewer than all ten fingers. I would have suggested starting with the Index Fingers of both hands, except that this will lead you to a preference for the White Keys, so start your first keyboard exercises using Thumbs and Index Fingers – the Thumbs covering the White Keys and the Index Fingers held in reserve for when your Hand senses that one of the Black Sharp or Flat Keys would seem to be more appropriate… at first hit both the White Key and the Black Keys close above, and sound them out for which is best. Start Practice with one hand, giving the Ear its full attention, then switching to the other hand, and then finishing your songs with both hands, letting your Ear get used to the blend of sounds. With enough practice, thumb and forefingers only, your hands will eventually sort through the whole full note, sharp note and flat note thing – the White and Black Keys and their different levels. And just like on guitar or violin where you tried to limit yourself to just one string, after a while it will become impossible to keep the other fingers from joining in on the keyboard. But try not to rush it. Let it happen naturally. As you stretch into larger chords and more dashing speeds and broader riffs, you might exceed your present capacities and get a jarring off-note or two, as is to be expected. Just remember, though, if it gets too bad, you may be adding too much at time. So go back and retrench with your basics. Listen to the left hand. Listen to the right hand. Use fewer fingers and make sure you are hitting the basic chord outlines. Once the basics are solid, then you can add all the pretty details and flesh out the songs.


The ultimate trick is to remember that Music is done with the Right Side of your brain, while the Left Side of your brain is busy thinking of method and rules and theory and all of that. Now, as you begin Practice, it is difficult to simply turn off the Left Side of the Brain, which, really, more often than not, interferes far more than it contributes. What you need to do is tire the Left Side of your brain out… practice until you notice that your Left Side Brain is no longer really paying attention… that you are consciously thinking about other things, all the while the Right Side of the Brain continues to play. This is when the real work is being done. Typically after an hour of practice even the most tenacious Left Side of the Brain is fatigued beyond caring, and the Right Side of the Brain is allowed to learn … and play… unmolested. So try not to cut your practices short. If your mind begins to wonder, CONTINUE, BECAUSE THAT IS A GOOD THING! This is when the magic of new skills develop, when you will see and hear your hands do things that you really didn’t have to teach them. Believe me, you will never have to just sit around and think up neat things to do you’re your musical instrument. All that stuff comes during the long practices. Manna from heaven. You just find yourself, tired, distracted, doing new and wonderful things. And they don’t go away. On the next nights practice, they will be their waiting like you had been doing it for the last 20 years.

Well, yes, I may need to clarify something… the Left Brain can sometimes be a little bit helpful. It’s the Left Side of the Brain that suggests volume changes, and adjustments to the knobs and petals. When a string falls seriously out of tune, it’s the Left Brain that yells “ouch!” (the Right Brain would just keep playing and find new frets or different violin ‘positions’ to compensate for how the string jumped out of tune… but the Left Brain notices and yells “Whew! That’s Bu Shi”. Oh, “Bu Shi” is Mandarin for Not Is and other approximate concepts. I think that is where the American’s got their colorful colloquialism from, which really has nothing to do with boy cows and feces). Or matters of Taste. The Left Brain is the Judge of all that. One will be jazzing along hard on what should be a Sentimental Ballad and the Left Brain will be drawn back to attention and remark that it would all sound much better with deeper Feeling and less effing around. So the Left Brain does have its place. But 99% of the work of learning to play a Musical Instrument is accomplished by the Right Brain – the seemingly effortless way one dances one’s fingers over the Keys or the Strings… that is no Intellectual Left Brain accomplishment. If it were, then Little Johnny, no intellectual giant by any stretch, would not be quite so good at it or enjoy it quite so much.

Oh and a final word about Level of Accomplishment, and Pleasure in Playing. You know, I’m pretty sure that there is no cap on the enjoyments one realizes while achieving the triumphs that are had at one’s present level of ability. Happiness is Happiness. The King conquering the World is really no happier than the Cat given its tuna dinner. Getting better and better does not make one happier with one’s playing. Indeed, the most bored musicians are those who have hit a plateau at the highest level of accomplishment. I remember a story about a German Composer and Piano Player who was so sad about leveling off at Perfection, that he designed a “Finger Spreader” to stretch the span of his grip so he could hit slightly wider chords. It gave him arthritis and destroyed his ability to play at all. So I guess the enjoyments of Music are a lot like enjoying the Trip and the Scenery along the way, as there will never be any Final Ecstasy at some Perfect Destination. The Beatles played the Metropolitan Opera, the Mecca of all Stage Musicians, symbolizing having arrived at the top of the Masters of their Craft. And what a poor pathetic lot of miserable dogs they turned out to be. And if that doesn’t convince you, we can talk about Michael Jackson…

Now, of course, where other people are concerned, it is far happier to be Accomplished. Especially in the sense that if one is not completely Accomplished, and according to every taste and preference, then there will be people out there screaming that ‘You Suck!’. But here we are moving away from Pleasure and entering the considerations of Work and Professionalism – how one is auctioning one’s self off to the Public. Actually, it is probably best to keep Music as a pure and private Pleasure, and where Work and Professionalism is involved, to simply keep one’s Day Job. Of course, with the intense Competition of Global Capitalism side-lining more and more of us, downsizing away thousands of ‘Day Jobs’ every day, we may have little choice but to dance for our dinners… or to play for those who do dance.

Oh, and I just had a thought while reading some criticisms of the Suzuki Method. People complained that the very young children were not being terribly creative… playing what they heard and not doing a heck of a lot of change-ups. Well, duh. People need to realize that the Conceptual Mind does not even turn on until we are about 8 years old. Indeed, one of the things that make Language Acquisition so difficult after that age is suddenly so much more is expected of a Language. Conceptualization, so difficult even while Thinking in one’s Mother Tongue, has to struggle with the nuance of unfamiliar words. So it is similarly with Musical Conceptualizations… making up new songs, or new riffs and arrangements for old songs.

I’ve heard of a great many autistic musicians who can play what they hear but can never think of anything new or different. That’s sad. Since so much in Today’s Music can stand improvement. After all, look at the Process for turning out Today’s Music. Everything is rushed post-haste through the Studios because to the Producers its just a Business and their Target Audience is really not very selective anyway. Everything hits the Market being barely good enough to please the Standards of an Industry where the standards fall ever lower each year. So of course one can play music like that and improve upon it. Just note the differences between the original Beatles “With a Little Help From Your Friends” and Joe Cocker’s version To Joe the song was familiar and he probably dabbled with it long enough to get some good ideas for it. He took longer than 5 minutes before rushing it through the studio which is how it sounds performed by the Beatles. Hmmm, Joe Cocker also did a good job with Randy Newman’s “I think it is Going to Rain”. Just listening to Randy Newman’s original, one would think that the song held no promise at all. Oh, and during the Sixties and Seventies there was practically an Industry all to itself dedicated to bringing out Laura Niro songs with more polish than the originals.

So, yes, playing along with Music is often more than just playing what one hears being played. It is also about one’s Imagination sometimes taking over and playing what SHOULD HAVE BEEN played. For instance, after 30 years of playing it, I think I have a better piano solo in “Home Again” than Carole King… or just more elaborate. That is one Album nobody has ever been able to improve upon… Carole King’s “Tapestry”. That girl came into the Studio with her guns loaded…

More later…