well, fiddle!

[Homegrown Tomatoes]

My big girls have been pestering me for over a year to learn to play fiddle.  So, I've been checking around for teachers and instruments.  I took them into a music store recently and had them fitted for instruments.  My oldest needed a 1/8 size and the second one needed a 1/16 size (it was so cute.)  Anyway, they were going to cost around $20 a month to rent.  I got on ebay and amazon and just bought the girls new instruments for less than I would have paid in rent for a few months each.  I figure, heck, if they decide later that they don't want to play anymore, we've got a really cute little fiddle to hang on the wall and call it "decor".  It would have cost almost $250 a year to rent one, and I just got two for less than $100, and they can pass them down to siblings and cousins.  Found a teacher nearby, and she's willing to teach the oldest one, but I've got to go to lessons with her.  That's great because I figure I'll learn as well, and then can teach the younger one.  The younger one actually wants to play mandolin, but nobody around here gives mandolin lessons to 4 year olds, but since violins and mandolins are tuned the same, it is easy for her to switch later.

[peternap]

I'm pretty sure Redover can give you some input. If you haven't seen the video's of his son, you should look. That boy has a lot of talent.

[Alasdair]

 
I hope you won't mind a little input from an amateur violin maker.
If the fiddles were as inexpensive as you say they are almost certainly Chinese factory violins. I would recommend taking them to a shop or ideally an independant luthier/violin maker and having then properly set up. (Pegs, sound posts and bridges fitted properly) and invest in some good strings (thomastik dominants are a good start.) This may be more expensive than the violins themselves were but too many children are put off playing because they cannot achieve a good tone and their instruments simply do not (can not!) work as they are intended to. Parents often do not want to pay the extra for this, worrying that the violin is a passing fad - but if you get them set up professionally and your child decides to stop learning the instruments will still be easily resaleable. (Ideed violins are rather like land and antiques - their value only ever seems to go up) Ask your teacher who works on her instuments or if she knows of any local repair men/makers.
If the teacher has asked you to learn with them it sounds as if you are using the suzuki method and this is a highly successful scheme for many kids starting violin but it is also worth mixing with other approaches too.
As to the mandolin it is a shame you can't find anyone to teach. Having taught children mandolin before I can tell you it is an ideal and under utilised instrument for young children which they can achieve success with very quickly.
Good luck to all of you - It's a long hard road but well worth travelling!
Al

[Homegrown Tomatoes]

Al, I agree about the good strings and having someone who knows what they're doing help set it up.  I tried to learn guitar on this piece of junk instrument with a slightly bowed neck that made pressing the strings down difficult, not to mention, painful.  When we finally got a decent one, it was amazing how much easier and more fun it was to play, and then we invested in good strings for it, and it was better yet.  Yes, the teacher is using the Suzuki method, and yes that is why I'm going to lessons with her.  There are some cheaper instruments out there with good tone quality, but you have to look pretty hard.  Anyway, I hope that these are decent... the return policy is a 30-day, no questions asked thing, so if they're too bad, I'll return them.  However, renting two instruments AND paying for lessons was going to be cost prohibitive, especially if/when the younger one gets to start.  I'd really like for her to play mandolin, too.  Have a cousin who plays really well, but he lives too far away to give her lessons.  Now, if I could just get those banjo rolls down, we  could start our own little bluegrass band, ha ha.

[Redoverfarm]

Hooray HT.  I think Dogneck plays a little fiddle. Starting out cheap is the way to go to see if they have talent and are going to stick with it. My son is on his 3rd banjo.  Don't know how much longer he is going to stay with it. He is at the age when the opposite sex are entering the picture as well as other intrest.  Well he has the good basics down and he will be able to pick it back up if he chooses. Sorry got to split wood talk later.

[Homegrown Tomatoes]

Red I wouldn't be surprised if he does pick it up again later.  I remember when my little cousin went through his 'Pearl Jam' phase (man were we all glad when he outgrew that!!)  He quit playing any acoustic instruments and instead banged on an electric guitar... sounded more like his guitar was getting caught in a shop fan than real music.  When he finally got out of that age/phase, he picked up his old guitar and first of all started playing old Beatles songs, and then he started "bluegrassifying" them (Blackbird makes a really neat bluegrass tune, believe it or not.)  Then he learned to play mandolin as well, and is the regular mandolin player for the Walker Mountain Boys now. 

I hope it'll be something that is fun for them, but will also teach them to settle down and focus on something for a little while.  My 5yo is great about doing her school lessons, which never ceases to amaze me because I thought she'd be harder to teach at home because she's so busy.  The younger one, however, has the attention span of a bartlett pear about anything that she doesn't want to do right now.  However, I think it might be a little different with music because ever since she was a baby, she's just been fascinated with it.  When she was barely 2, she saw some Scottish and Irish step dancers, and she watched them for over an hour without moving.  When they were done, she went up to the front and danced some of the same steps without messing up.  I've seen her do the same thing with drums... she'll play back the same rhythm that she just heard, or memorize the lyrics or melody of a song the first time she hears it. 

[glenn kangiser]

Keep her away from the Riverdance video. 

Those men in tights with the lumps in the front are near indecent.

[Sassy]

I have a friend whose oldest son was very hyperactive - she got him into the Suzuki method for the violin when he was 4 y/o - he's 28 now & has played at Bransom, Kansas & Nashville in the band he's in - he likes fiddling better & is really good.  I've seen videos of him playing. 

[Redoverfarm]

HT he hasn't quit playing entirely but has slowed up in the last year or so.  The nice thing about living here is one of the great masters of Applachian music or Old time music which is referred to as the "father of Applachian Music" was Sherman Hammons, Burl Hammons and Maggie Hammons which was raised in the county.  His music is in the Library of Congress.  My son's banjo teacher lived and learned from the Hammons. She is multi talented in Guitar, Fiddle or anything that has strings. In fact she is still living at the Hammons cabin on Woodrow Mountain with no electric, running water or inside plumbing.  That is her choice of lifestyle but doesn't affect the way she teaches.  So he is playing the same music that has been passed down from them and their heirs.  In the articles associated it mentions several other musicians who lived and learned from them.  Well he has played with most of them.  If your girls get interested there are wonderful songs which were made that they too can get a piece of history to carry with them.

Here is a few articles about the Hammons.  Far too many to list them all but they are there for the looking on Gogle link.

http://www.google.com/search?q=Sherman+Hammons&rls=com.microsoft:en-us:IE-SearchBox&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sourceid=ie7&rlz=1I7GGLF

http://pocahontascofare.blogspot.com/2005/10/signs-and-wonders-from-maggie-hammons.html

http://www.marshall.edu/speccoll/cass/html/sherman_hammons.htm

http://www.amazon.com/Traditions-West-Virginia-Family-Friends/dp/B000005YVS