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Help Needed - Rental Viola for Beginning Student


B.A.R.

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I have always been amazed by the varied breadth of knowledge contained on this board, so I figured I would throw this one out there.

My daughter has decided to take up the viola ( :D ), which I know nothing about. When perusing the various rental store programs, it seemed like I was buying a puppy. Essentially, all the stores sell puppies that are all cute and cuddly, but you don't know how the puppy's going to turn out, or how healthy it is, until long after the purchase. So who you buy the puppy from matters a great deal.

So, now that I have made a horrible analogy, does anyone know of a music store in NoVA that rents good equipment and can properly fit a viola? Furthermore, can anyone suggest any superb pieces of viola performance for my daughter to listen to.

Thanks in advance, Rocks feel free to move delete, etc (I checked the Professionals and Business section, FYI)

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Foxes Music Company in Falls Church has quite a hold on local school orchestra rentals. We have been using them for more than a decade for our kids with no complaints. We have no viola players in our house, but Foxes does rent them. They credit some of the rental price towards purchasing an instrument (it does not need to be the one you are renting), so if she sticks with it one day you will arrive at a point when it is cheaper just to buy a viola than keep making rental payments. They are very responsive when things break or need to be adjusted, which they inevitably do (you need to buy the insurance, which I strongly recommend). They will do fittings as well. Good luck.

The links are acting up for me. Here are the particulars in case they will not work for you: 416 South Washington Street Falls Church, VA 22046. (703) 533-7393

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Please share. :P

I cannot in good conscience utter any of them here, and thus mock some of the most wonderful and unappreciated musicians out there. Also often unheard, not to mention unseen: hidden behind those big, theatrically bowed cellos being furiously sweated on by a bunch of agonized Yo-Yo Ma wannabes. And not at all like those accursed bagpipers, who are always farther away than they sound, because they intentionally keep their distance in order to foil your windage estimate as you try to take aim. But let the evidence speak for itself: in this collection of humor, there are typically five or six jokes per instrument, but three pages devoted solely to viola.

Also, Don is right. Heed Don's advice.

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It's a fine instrument, and an important backbone of any stringed orchestra, but there simply isn't as much...hmm,..ehmpasis placed on violas. Violins and cellos definitely are featured more prominently, both in smyphonic scoring and as soloists, because they are more distinctive-sounding instruments. Hence, they are the most underappreciated and consistently ragged-on members of an orchetra. That said, one year a very talened violist won our concerto competition with a great performance of Vaughan Williams' Flos Campi.

I haven't heard that the viola is any harder than the violin, and if she sticks with is and is any good, it should be easier to get a more proiminent "chair" in the orchestra than if she played a violin because there's much less competition.

Note: learning a stringed instrument isn't so bad for the musician, since they are concentrating, but the first few month can be hard on the ears of family members...

Also, Foxes is my favorite music company in the area.

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II haven't heard that the viola is any harder than the violin, and if she sticks with is and is any good, it should be easier to get a more proiminent "chair" in the orchestra than if she played a violin because there's much less competition.

This is a very significant point. I am convinced our son's college options were improved because he expressed an interest in orchestra and played an instrument in which the market was not flooded (it also served him well during his high school years). I realize that college entrance is not the driving force here and may seem like a far ways off (believe me, it arrives faster than you think), but it is never too early to interest her in fencing as a sport. Those schools that field fencing teams are always looking for experienced fencers to fill out their squads.

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Note: learning a stringed instrument isn't so bad for the musician, since they are concentrating, but the first few month can be hard on the ears of family members...

It might depend on the strings. Perhaps I'm biased as a koto player (and, of course, the musician; not Azami or the dog), but it's hard to make harps sound painful.

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It might depend on the strings. Perhaps I'm biased as a koto player (and, of course, the musician; not Azami or the dog), but it's hard to make harps sound painful.

You've never been to Sunday brunch at the Hyatt! :lol:

NB - The only justification I've ever seen for driving a minivan was one that had the license plate NSOHARP.

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actually, the viola is probably easier to tolerate than the violin for those forced to listen in the early months because it doesn't have an E string. this is coming from a childhood violin player, whose first performed piece was "Jolly Old St. Nicholas" in the elementary school orchestra. ouch.

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You've never been to Sunday brunch at the Hyatt! :lol:

NB - The only justification I've ever seen for driving a minivan was one that had the license plate NSOHARP.

when my brother was in the junior symphony in West L.A., he was good friends with Gary Karr, a double bass player (who went on to have a professional solo career). Gary's sister Arla played the harp in the same orchestra. Can you imagine the logistics their mom had to deal with, driving them to lessons and rehearsals with their instruments?

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Some scattered thoughts from a former violin player:

-Don is right about instrument selection.

-Viola may be easier to tolerate in the early going, but no beginning string student is pleasant to listen to, unless your daughter is Midori.

-Your question about suggestions for superb pieces of viola performance leads to another issue you've raised - choice of instrument, violin or viola. There's simply far less interesting writing for viola than violin. Probably not an issue in the early years when all student pieces are uninteresting, but if your daughter sticks with it and ends up playing in a school orchestra, her music will be generally less interesting than the violin parts, which will have more of the melody. And the solo repertory is also more limited. That being said, viola is less competitive and could -- could -- provide some kind of advantage in the future.

If your daughter's method of selection was simply alphabetical, you should have her listen to some examples of both instruments and see which sound quality she prefers.

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Some scattered thoughts from a former violin player:

-Don is right about instrument selection.

-Viola may be easier to tolerate in the early going, but no beginning string student is pleasant to listen to, unless your daughter is Midori.

-Your question about suggestions for superb pieces of viola performance leads to another issue you've raised - choice of instrument, violin or viola. There's simply far less interesting writing for viola than violin. Probably not an issue in the early years when all student pieces are uninteresting, but if your daughter sticks with it and ends up playing in a school orchestra, her music will be generally less interesting than the violin parts, which will have more of the melody. And the solo repertory is also more limited. That being said, viola is less competitive and could -- could -- provide some kind of advantage in the future.

If your daughter's method of selection was simply alphabetical, you should have her listen to some examples of both instruments and see which sound quality she prefers.

The thing with viola (I've never actually heard this said before, but I just thought about it) is that it postures a beginning student to move upward to violin (very similar technique, and many violinists also play the viola in chamber music), or downward to cello (tuned exactly one octave above the cello, so the tones will render themselves familiar).

Matt used to play the viola, but left it for clarinet (which, in some ways, is the viola of woodwinds).

I was in Foxes Music today (*), and had never seen it so crowded. There are certainly many violins and/or violas there on the wall, and many people's business cards lie in waiting near the register.

(*) If I die during this tornado, it's going to be while playing Beethoven.

While we're on the subject, is there such a thing as a "decibel recorder with multi-sound memory," sort of like what Tom uses to measure noise in restaurants? I'm working on evenness of tone, and it would be nice if I could play (for example) ten notes in a row, and have the decibels of all ten recorded.

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While we're on the subject, is there such a thing as a "decibel recorder with multi-sound memory," sort of like what Tom uses to measure noise in restaurants? I'm working on evenness of tone, and it would be nice if I could play (for example) ten notes in a row, and have the decibels of all ten recorded.

You can buy logging meters but they're not exactly pocket change, and you still have to learn how to use them properly. Back when I was a lazy undergrad, slumming it in an auditory signal processing research laboratory writing data acquisition systems (as one did in those days), we were partial to meters from Brüel & Kjær...nowadays one handheld meter plus some PC software is vastly faster and more capable than what we needed two racks of equipment plus an NSF grant to do.

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Just to update, Isabella chose the viola after hearing all of the string instruments played for her. She liked that the viola was "lower in sound and deeper" than the violin. So I was happy about that.

Foxes seemed to be many peoples selection, but my knowledge of musical instruments is threadbare, so I chose Brobst Violins http://www.brobstviolins.com/ because they seemed to specialize in just stringed instruments. We got there at 9:45am Saturday morning and the shop was loaded with violins, violas, cellos, and the occasional bass. There seemed to be a few practice rooms in the back where children were having private lessons, and there was a violin technician in a heavy black smock, with wavy blond hair who seemed straight out of central casting.

Everyone who worked in the place seemed to easily pick-up and start playing any of the instruments they touched.They spent a good bit of time with us, answered my inane questions, and never seemed to be pushing crap on me that I did not need. All in all, a very nice experience.

Isabella did take the bow to the viola for a quick "lets see what we got here" spin. The sound was horrendous, and both of my hounds started baying immediately. This should be fun!

Thanks for all of your help and suggestions.

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