Violin Adventures (Update 1)
So I've been playing violin for a total of seven days now. It's fantastic. I love it. My friend Charlie, who inspired me to play violin (or at least take action, since I've wanted to play my whole life but my parents thought I'd never actually practice), just won our high school's talent show and took first place, with a prize of $300. He's magnificent and has been playing for six years now.
The violin is a lot different than the piano in a lot of different aspects. I've played the piano for four years now. The main difference between the two is that on a violin, you have to play by ear, whereas on piano you plunk a key and it's more or less the exact note you're looking for. Since I played piano for quite a while before transitioning to violin, I think I have the advantage of having heard pitch perfect notes for so long (I played an electric piano, so it was never out of tune).
But the one thing I didn't really anticipate is the arm pains. I've got the arms and legs of noodles of spaghetti (although I've been complimented on my legs several times, so I suppose they're not so bad) and don't have much muscle tone to speak of. Hidden benefit of playing violin: buff arms.
Within that seven days, I'm proud to say that I've practiced every single day. It's a big accomplishment, because when I learned piano, I rarely took lessons (I think I had a total of four? Maybe five) and it took a lot of effort to actually sit down on that really uncomfortable bench and practice for more than ten minutes. But with violin I love practicing. It pains me to stop. Except recently with the sore arms, it pains me to go on as well, haha. I guess it's because I started violin with formal training as opposed to just sitting down and playing like I did with piano.