Have you been thinking for a while about taking up the violin, or having your child take lessons, but wondered how to get everything you need for the first lesson? I‘ve created a checklist of everything you need to get to take the first step on an exciting musical journey.
The two most important items to bring to your first online violin lesson are yourself and a decent internet connection. Yes, you read correctly – you don’t need to own a violin before our first meeting, which is a free trial lesson!
One of the first things your teacher can help with is choosing the right instrument. Violins come in four sizes, and especially for young students a little guidance may help you choose the right size for your child. Your teacher can also help you to be sure to make the best purchase for your budget. In my experience, you should be able to buy locally or have your violin delivered before your next lesson, but even if there’s a delay that’s no problem at all. There is so much to learn about music in general, so we’ll focus on basic concepts of music theory (which we need to cover anyway, with or without the instrument) and how they work on the violin. This helps students feel more at ease once we’re working with the violin.
So you see? There really isn’t any reason for you to not book a trial lesson: be brave and do it now! Click here.
But yes, the violin and bow are the first items you need to purchase, and luckily for beginners they usually come together in a violin case.
Violin ✔️
Bow ✔️
The third indispensable item is rosin. You cannot produce a good sound without applying this powdery substance to your bow hair. Rosin is a solid form of resin, whose purpose is to create friction between bow and strings to make them vibrate more clearly. It can be purchased from any local or online music store and, if you’re lucky, it may come with your violin and bow: look for it in the little compartment in your case.
Rosin ✔️
The last important item: a music stand! This makes it easy to read your music comfortably and to play the violin anywhere in the house. Adjusting your music’s height and angle allows you to maintain correct posture when playing, which is very important in the long run, because it helps you avoid pain and muscle tension. Of course, we can always improvise and use our violin case to prop our music up, or find similar solutions around the house, but I think it’s worth investing in this because I often see students struggling to see the music properly and prevent it from sliding down, and their posture suffers as a result.
Music stand ✔️
The last two items are optional and can be purchased as you go.
The first one is a shoulder rest which is a pad we place between the violin and our left shoulder to elevate the instrument slightly and make playing more comfortable. Getting used to supporting the violin on one’s shoulder is one of the challenges beginner violinists have to overcome. It is possible to play without any extra support, but this requires a little more playing experience and in most cases slows down the learning process. If purchasing a shoulder rest is possible, it might be, in my opinion, a good option for beginners.
(Optional) Shoulder rest ✔️
Lastly, a spare set of strings. One of the first things violin students learn (as early as in their first or second lesson) is how to tune the instrument, and violin strings sometimes break in the process, especially A and E strings. So it is good practice to have at least those two as spares, if not all four. I remember comforting one of my students when her E string broke in her very first lesson and she worried that it could not be fixed. I told her I thought it was great that this had happened to her because she learned two very important lessons early in her violin journey: 1. How to change a broken string, 2. That having spares in the case is important because it allows us to change the broken one on the spot and resume playing immediately.