The Instrument

It was all very well to go running off to The Hague with all these big ideas of what was going to happen, but the fact is, I did not (and still don't really) have a baroque violin and bow.  This was the first hurdle.  Luckily the Conservatory has a collection of instruments, and they have kindly lent me one.  Although it is very limited, and I don't think it will be usable in the long run, it is sort of doing the job for right now, at least in this first stage of learning the baroque violin.  I will update on this subject as I continue to search for a good instrument.

Although I sort of knew in my head that I was going to have to learn how to play at the new pitch, that of A=415 Hz, I didn't really think through how weird it was going to be on first try! I tried straight away to play some Bach before realising that I was missing quite a few serious steps.  My advice to someone starting out is definitely first to download a tuning app.  I downloaded one called gStrings - it was free and seemed alright.  It's doing the job, you have to change the pitch of the A but that's easy and then you can tune each string.  I know there are probably better and more fancy tuning apps out there and I will definitely blog about others as I experiment.

After my first practice 'session' with the instrument at A=415, I had quite a severe headache.  I have perfect pitch, but now I realise it is only perfect pitch when A=442, and the new pitch made my brain swirl.  But it's OK! The headaches are very gradually dying away, and I am certainly excited to have a perfect pitch at any variable A. This was definitely something I never thought about before, but I reckon it's worth persevering and having some paracetamol to hand doesn't hurt.