Customer Reviews

Step One: Teach Yourself Violin

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This book and accompanying CD is not for someone who knows absolutely nothing about a violin and reading music. The first pages of the book are good then it "jumps right into it" making you feel like something is missing. The CD is also advanced. I expected something more on the lines of fingering and wrist techniques, reading music, etc. If this is what you need and are looking for, it's not in this book.

I just recently took up the violin and bought this thinking it would give me a jump start before I started lessons. I was wrong. First of all, the teacher on the accompanying instructional video has zero personality, something that I find very unmotivating. Also, there is not much in the way of demonstration. She will tell you, for instance, to play the G scale, then she will proceed to play through the entire scale without actually showing you what to do. There is no way anybody could learn to play on their own using this method. At the very best, this is a music book - that's all. My advice is to save your money and spend it instead on a real violin lesson.

I would not reccommend this package for anyone with little or no music experience. This is not the instructional book that I had expected. Essentially, it's a collection of short pieces designed for a novice violinist, that start easy and gradually get more difficult. There is no useful information with regards to technical methods for playing these pieces, so you actually are expected to teach yourself, as the title implies.

I haven't seen the video (my VCR is broken), but the CD is good to play along to, although it's so-called slow tempo for each excercise is almost unnoticabley slower than the moderate version that follows it. It would be more useful (and less annoying) to simply have a single track for each excerise rather than two. The guitar accompaniment is a nice touch, though.

I've played piano for 11 years, and guitar for 4, so learning the violin has not been difficult for me. I would however, reccommend purchasing another book to go along with this. I bought this along with Mel Bay's Violin Primer, and found the two to complement each other very well. Don't buy this on its own if you expect to learn how to get started.

This book is pretty good. It teaches scales which is what you need. Instead of Mary had a little lamb(like most beginner books have), your actually learning something that is useful.