Music Software

“A poet is a man who puts up a ladder to a star 

and climbs it while playing a violin.” 

― Edmond De Goncourt

When I bought my violin I had no illusions about my musical abilities. I knew I'd need lessons of some kind, someone to show me the basic chords and how to hold the bow. I hoped, of course, that I could learn the basics and then teach myself from there (I'm pretty cheap, after all), but the lesson thing turned out to be tougher then expected. I checked everywhere in town. Teachers are in high demand and they charge, on average, about $30 for a half hour lesson. That's 2 1/2 hours of my work day! On top of the price tag I also found they don't need to work around my schedule. If I wanted to take lessons I needed to get in line and take whatever slot they had open, even on a lunch break.

So I went shopping. I figured that if there were violin lessons on youtube then there must be some software out there. What I found was My Violin, a program designed for kids that costs less than $40 on Amazon and boasts all sorts of cool interactive features, like a tuner and the ability to listen to my playing and tell me if my fingers are in the wrong place. Because I spoil myself on Christmas I bought it (no point having a nice violin if I can't play it) and it came today!

I unwrapped it, installed it (It does work on Windows 8, even though the description doesn't mention it) and have been playing all afternoon. It goes through all the basics, like how to tighten the bow and the different parts of the violin, then it goes into playing. It's awesome, I love it (even though it's for kids) and in two hours it saved me almost $80 in lesson fees! 

The world didn't end on Friday and the New Year is coming up fast. If one of your resolutions is to learn an instrument then check out this software. They also have My Guitar (acoustic or electric) and My Piano (which are all much cheaper then the violin edition. Go figure).