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RE: DIY - My home-made franken-violin named Margarite
Wow. I wanted to hate this - for abusive of an instrument... Sort of what @bengy was saying. (I played violin in grade school.) But I love what you did with it, and the obvious love and care you put into the project.
Great job.
I found you because @bengy featured you in the Pay it Forward Curation Contest. Keep up the great work!
Hey thanks so much for coming and having a look. I understand what you're saying and for sure there was a risk that I would destroy it with my experimentation.
Personally I like to pull things apart and see how they work. It was either this 40 dollar violin that was never going to be used again or another one I saw in a window at a second hand charity store for 70 dollars.
Also I've had many guitars over the years of my travels and I've left many behind in places I've been, but because of my willingness to have a go when something is broken or if I feel I can make it better, I have an instrinsic understanding of how they work.
My current guitar is a 100 euro wonder from Skopje in North Macedonia and I've made alterations to make it something I'm happy with.
Playing music on the street means I want a good sound but I don't want to carry around a gold mine to be taken from me from when I'm sleeping. Which happened in Barcelona once.
It's my first time to experiment with a violin like this and I'm pleased there was no casualty. I would like to work my way up to learning an actual Cretan Lyra (played with fingernails on on the neck) or a Bulgarian Gadulka (played with a gentle pressure on the strings not pressing onto the neck).
I didn't want to wait to go back to these countries to learn and buy one of these so I just made an imitation myself. I may go back there some day soon, but I love the sound of a stringed instrument and wanted to use it now in my work.
Anyways, I bet you weren't expecting an essay in reply but here it is!
All the best,
Monty
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You're also a writer at heart, so, that's just cool. I can rarely keep comments short-and-sweet either. :-)
Your strings experience sounds wonderful. I'm more of a woodwinds gal, myself - I used to have the full octave set of tin whistles, for instance. I still don't have a sopranino recorder though.
I totally get your point of not wanting to carry around a gold mine - and something truly unique is to your advantage to be sure. It's like when I travel with black suitcases - I always paint them up with dabs of sampler paints so that I can recognize my suitcase in an instant.
Something I miss from living in England is all the buskers here and there - on the Tube, along the town's pedestrian precinct... wherever. It gave such a lively atmosphere - not something often done in the US, unfortunately.
Great to meet you, Monty. I will try to catch your posts again soon.