Hi! I’m just curious about Rocky from Lackadaisy, and if there’s any inaccuracies in his playing within the pilot.
[I.D: Screenshot of Lackadaisy where Rocky plays violin on a bridge. Behind him is one of the bridge's support beams and a view of a river, the moon, and a city on the river banks. His bow is on the strings, a little closer to the frog than the tip. End I.D]
Admittedly I'm not familiar with this show, but I did go ahead and find this scene of him playing violin, and honestly, I'm pretty impressed with how it's animated. There seems to be a good deal of care and attention put into how Rocky plays, and there's a couple things that I really appreciated.
[I.D. Two screenshots side by side of Rocky playing violin. His bow sits on the strings at the tip as he shifts to about fifth position, his hand moving to rest against the body of the instrument. End I.D.]
First of all: shifting. It's a pretty common thing in more advanced violin music, but isn't necessarily shown that much. It's really nice seeing it show up, especially in such a casual moment of a guy playing for himself as he monologues. He's not performing for anyone, but he's still playing well.
Another example of his variety in technique: in the clip, he uses his left hand (bow hand) to pluck the strings at one point, and plays double stops (two strings at once) at a few others. I get the sense listening to the music he's playing that he knows what he's doing, and is probably a decently advanced musician. Also, the music that he plays is impressive, as he basically seems to be improvising in this scene. He's messing around, basically, but there's solid technique behind it.
There's also a lot of attention paid to which string he's playing on- the angle of the bow is very different for the higher notes and the lower notes, meaning that the animators were actually paying attention to how a violin would be played. For example, in the above screenshots, he's playing on the E string (high notes), and has a mostly vertical bow. I also appreciate the fluidity of his bowing in the clip, especially the wrist position and movements.
There are a couple of shots in the clip where the proportions of the violin seem off- mostly at the start, when it looks too big for him. There's some weird bow hand positions are some points, and also a few places where the fingering seems a bit off. A lot of the time his fingers don't really seem to be changing the string they're on, but that's a matter of trying to animate super precise motions that most people wouldn't notice so I'll let it slide lol. (And to be fair, fingering probably works different when you have less fingers anyway. Maye his violin would be tuned differently than a real one?)
His violin doesn't seem to have a chin rest and he isn't using a shoulder rest either, but again, that makes sense from an animation standpoint. Besides, while those are common in modern day playing, this show has more of a historical distant past setting from what I can tell.
My overall vibe from this character is that he clearly knows what he's doing with his violin, but that he's also just playing for himself. He's not performing, he's not trying to impress anyone, he's just playing violin and enjoying it. I might be a little more critical of a few areas of weird technique if he were supposed to be playing an existing piece or performing for an audience, but overall I think for the most part the breaks in technique match the general air of carelessness/ carefreeness Rocky is giving off.
I do, however, question how often he would have to replace his strings given that long nails are a no-no with violins, and he has obviously pointed claws. He probably breaks his strings fairly often lol.
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