Violin Quotations

You know, if you really want to fiddle the old-time way, you've got to learn the dance. The contra-dances, hoedowns. It's all in the rhythm of the bow. The great North Carolina fiddle player Tommy Jarrell said, 'If a feller can't bow, he'll never make a fiddler. He might make a violin player, but he'll never make no fiddler.'

We can't do a modern Batman continually beating up thugs in zoot suits with tommy guns in violin cases. The game has to move on. It has to feel relevant.

The cello is a hero because of its register - its tenor voice. It is a masculine instrument, whereas the violin is feminine because of its soprano pitch. When the cello enters in the Dvorak Concerto, it is like a great orator.

I wasn't making it with the violin because I was playing all of the 'long hair' stuff.

The Third Quartet I made the instruments in pairs - Two different pairs - Violin and viola, and violin and cello. They played very different things from each other all through the whole piece.

I would also like to thank my father who discouraged me from playing the violin at an early age.

An hour of violin lessons in Berlin is an hour where you get the child interested in music. An hour in a violin lesson in Palestine is an hour away from violence, is an hour away from fundamentalism.

Some songs are just going to be acoustic with just maybe some light background stuff going on and maybe violin or something like that. Or sax - I mean, I'm definitely having some sax. That's just what I love. It's going to be jazz-rock stuff. That's what I'm aiming for.

I am playing the violin, that's all I know, nothing else, no education, no nothing. You just practice every day.

Violin playing is a physical art with great traditions behind it.

The bass line is the anchor for me. I started with the bass, and either doubled that and then added the harmonies, or sometimes added my own harmonies that I've always wanted to sing on the song. And then it just went on from there - singing violin parts and trumpet parts and just trying to emulate the sounds of the instruments.

If I'm playing a violin thing, for instance, I tend to respond to that sound with the way I finger.

I guess really what my goal is is just to enlarge the violin repertoire.

It was really amazing. I mean, he'd never mentioned that he played in the symphony, like serious violin playing, not fiddle playing. And he just blew us away.

I think when I was pretty young I got really into the tone of my instrument and I remember just playing one note for an hour to just kind of feel the resonance of the violin.

It is my aim, my destination in life to make the cello as beloved an instrument as the violin and piano.

Happiness is a thing to be practiced, like the violin.

If I can add, say, 10 great new violin concertos to the repertoire before I'm done, that will be truly exciting.

Even in classical music, the cello doesn't get a lot of respect because the piano and the violin get it all.

I took up violin because my best mate had taken it up, so I did likewise.

Playing the violin and singing and whistling are just three different ways of making sound.

I come from a very musical family. My dad taught me to play guitar. I play violin and drums as well. Violin, I started in elementary school. Drums actually came when I was in a program called 'Rock Star,' which was really awesome. We were doing a song by the Ramones, so I thought, 'Why not play the drums?'

Let me be very honest and just say that if any airline would let me take the violin and the laptop on board I would fly that airline all the time.

Acting is just playing the violin in an orchestra. Directing is being the conductor.

I started with the classical violin when I was 6, and I guess it went well.

As a young child, I played the violin. I think that that started the spark

I'm not changing to the point where suddenly I wear floor-length skirts and start playing the violin; I'm just growing up a little bit, I guess.

I first picked up a violin aged five - I just assumed everyone played.

At the age of nine, playing the violin at school, and then onto the mandolin.

The moral of the story is not to listen to those who tell you not to play the violin but stick to the tambourine.

I tried to learn the violin for a while.

Love is not love, without a violin playing goat.

I had studied the violin to a certain amount of success. At some point, I realized that I didnt really like the violin. I was only doing it because I could, and I was good at it, and everyone was encouraging me. But I didnt have a great love for it.

We are like violins. We can be used as doorstops, or we can make music.

Well, my main instrument is violin, but I think of myself as a songwriter who happens to play violin.

I had studied violin from age 7 to 14.

Working with a bunch of actors is like trying to tune each violin.

We have a lot of pressures on children very young. We have ambition. We over-schedule our children. We want them to have soccer lessons and violin lessons... I think children need to have at least an hour of fun a day.

Happiness isn't happiness unless there's a violin-playing goat.

There was one thing Beethoven didn't do. When one of his string quartets was played, you can believe the second violin wasn't improvising.

I'm a pretty good drummer. I'm pretty good at guitar, bass and piano. I can play accordion; I'm not virtuoso. I've played cello before. My sister played it, and I know how to play it, but I'm not the best. Violin is kind of the same thing.

Playing a violin is, after all, only scraping a cat's entrails with horsehair.

I used to play violin, but I wasn't very good! I'm starting to learn guitar.

I don't mind conducting the orchestra if I can play the violin.

Draw your chair up, and hand me my violin, for the only problem which we have still to solve is how to while away these bleak autumnal evenings.

To regard one's immortality as an exchange of matter is as strange as predicting the future of a violin case once the expensive violin it held has broken and lost its worth.

There is no worse sound in the world than someone who cannot play the violin but insists on doing so anyway.

If the Almighty himself played the violin, the credits would still read 'Rubinstein, God, and Piatigorsky', in that order.

Next to him lay his violin, trampled, an eerily poignant little corpse.

Unnatural to expect that learning to be happy should be any easier than, say, learning to play the violin or require any less practice.

Being content is perhaps no less easy than playing the violin well: and requires no less practice.

Love is not the dying moan of a distant violin .. it's the triumphant twang of a bedspring

She is one of the most sublime, profound artists in India as she brings years of playing on the violin with her expressive style. It's almost like she's singing on the violin.

No one should be allowed to play the violin until he has mastered it.

People will pay a lot for violin lessons, but a small investment with Epicenter can make kids faster and stronger, ... Stronger and faster might mean a college scholarship.

I would go on the bus by myself; I couldn't even read with my violin under my arm, but it was a learning experience and I ultimately persevered.

I grew up in a musical environment. My parents played music and had it playing on the radio. They brought me to a concert at the age of 5, the same age I started violin lessons.

I am sad, sad as a circus-lioness, sad as an eagle without wings, sad as a violin with only one string and one that is broken, sad as a woman who is growing old.

I love classical music and have been playing violin since I was seven. Music helps me to express feelings in a way words often cannot.

Jean-Luc is my violin jazz hero, ... So to have him come out and play that tune with us at Telluride was just a freakout.

I remember when I was little, my mom asked me, 'Would you like to play the violin or the piano?' I looked at that giant monster and said to myself - I am not going to lock myself on that bench the whole day. This is small and lightweight. I can play from standing, sitting or walking.

My mum was very good at making me take up musical instruments, so although there was no popular music she made me learn the recorder when I was three, the violin when I was five and the piano when I was seven. I took up the guitar myself when I was 14.

My violin is called Kylie as she sounds great and is perfectly formed.

We are dealing with a man who characteristically rises long before the sun comes up, ... He practices his violin for two hours. He goes to the gym and works out for two or three hours. Then, he starts his business day (which can last) late into the night.

The raw wood of a sawed off tree was turned, stripped, and varnished into a traveling violin that could only squeal in carnival colors.

We want to introduce something with excellence and intelligence to people that have never seen a violin before. Maybe even inspire one kid.

I do use an electric violin. Actually, my regular electric violin, which I sometimes use, is by Ned Steinburger.

Life is like a public performance on the violin, in which you must learn the intrument as you go along

Sometimes in films it's nice to have violins on either side, rather than on one side, so you've got more of a stereo picture with the violins. Sometimes it's good to have the basses in the middle.

Electric guitars are an abomination, whoever heard of an electric violin? An electric cello? Or for that matter an electric singer?

The instrumental record is a bit subtler. It's the kind of stuff on sound check, when I first pick up my violin and start to play, the kind of melodies that just pour out of me. Some of them sound very classical. Some of them sound experimental, polyrhythmic loops that I make.

Violin for me is a great instrument because you can use it as a rhythmical instrument and also as a melodic instrument. ... You can pretty much do everything with the violin. Sometimes I feel classical music limits the violin.

I can't stand being in Chicago anymore and hearing the Brahms Violin Concerto in the elevator. Because that shows me that when they come to the concert hall they listen to it in the same way.

CREMONA, n. A high-priced violin made in Connecticut.

The violin is very beautiful. Some people relate it as the shape of a lady, but, whether you like it or not, it's been so for more than 400 years, unlike modern stuff that easily looks dated. But I think it's very personal and unique that, although each violin looks pretty similar, that no two violins sound the same.

The violin came naturally, and it really fit me. When I picked it up (and placed it under the chin), it looked like it had grown there. It just fit.

I've seen both upbeat and slower music score really high. If it's obvious someone is doing a classical violin piece and the gymnast is bouncing all over, that's not going to score high. But the crowd gets into the high-energy stuff and when everyone gets into it, I think that has an effect on the score.

I usually listen to the same thing over and over again: Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto in D Major. And Leonard Cohen.

This is a piece where I thought that I really wanted to relinquish that first violin spot and have a really big-name violinist come in to help lead this quartet.

Cynthia's violin is beautiful. Her father is a trustee on the Cape Symphony Orchestra board, so we know her work very well and it's beautiful.

It was my idea to make my voice work in the same way as a trombone or violin - not sounding like them, but 'playing' the voice like those instruments

No, I'm not leaving the electric violin to Vanessa Mae. I'm still playing quite a lot of electric stuff. But only when there is a need for it. I like rocking out. And the electric violin is useful for many other things. It's useful for really good effects and it's also great for rocking out, with the drums and the bass, get into really heavy stuff. At the moment I'm not really doing any projects involving that thing.

I guess as a kid, I was always creative, and I was involved in music, like piano and violin and choir, so I always knew - I always knew that I wanted to do something that would allow me to be who I am. Generally, that was creatively, imaginatively.

I play trumpet. And I took all the music courses in college, so I can also play the string instruments, keyboard, the brass and woodwinds - but only well enough to teach them. If you put a violin in front of me, you wouldn't say, 'My God, that guy can play.' It'd probably sound more like Jack Benny.

I had different bands. I played with the Acoustic Warriors for the most part, without girl singers. It was the same kind of sound, acoustic guitar, bass, with violin and sometimes accordion, and the guys would sing, that kind of thing.

I began my show business career playing violin in San Francisco at the corner of Market and Taylor. I understand that there is a theater there now.

I practice three hours daily on my violin so I won't get worse.

We are so not breaking out the violins and pity partying.

He touched her as he usually touched his beloved violin, with a soft and urgent grace that left her breathless.

He was gazing at her, the way one did when one felt one was unobserved. He had that look on his face, the look he usually got only when he was playing the violin, as if he were completely caught up and entranced.

Learning to play golf is like learning to play the violin. It's not only difficult to do, it's very painful to everyone around you.

I come to these openings regularly. The stock photographs are just so uninteresting. We all know what a woman with a violin looks like. I would expect more from instructors.

I'm just a one-instrument player. I have been known to play a blender, but I basically play - just play the violin.

The celebrated painter Gainsborough got as much pleasure from seeing violins as from hearing them.

He lifted the violin to his shoulder then, and raised the bow. And he played.

Wo wei ni xie de,” he said, as he raised the violin to his left shoulder, tucking it under his chin. He had told her many violinists used a shoulder rest, but he did not: there was a slight mark on the side of his throat, like a permanent bruise, where the violin rested. “You — made something for me?” Tessa asked. “I wrote something for you,” he corrected, with a smile, and began to play.

The soul is like a violin string: it makes music only when it is stretched.

I drew it over my skin like a violins bow, No one would ever hear the song of my shame.

It was loud in spots and less loud in other spots, and it had that quality which I have noticed in all violin solos of seeming to last much longer than it actually did.

The girl doesn’t need a violin,” he added. “She needs to have her hands bound so she can never touch an instrument again.