Fretted Violin
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 Improvising Violin Learn to Play Fiddle Lessons Book  US $19.95
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 Anne Murray What A Wonderful World 1999 Used Co US $1.99
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 A Place in the World by Mary Chapin Carpenter CD US $2.99
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 Christmas Live by Mannheim Steamroller CD Aug 2005 American GramaphoneB639 US $3.39
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 DUNCAN SHEIK Humming JARON LANIER Folk SOUTH CAROLINA US $8.49
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Best of the Beatles for Cello
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Violin Masters' Duet Repertoire: Violin Duet Collection - Unaccompanied (Rubank Educational Library)
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Improvising Violin
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Is the violin an instrument you can learn by ear?
I don't really know how to read notes or anything like that but I play some instruments by ear (piano, guitar, drums, and clarinet)--I was just wondering if the violin is something that can be played exclusively by ear as well...
The lack of frets scare me!
If you want to play classical music, you will need to learn to read, as classical music scores are just too long and difficult to figure out by ear (IMO).
If you want to play bluegrass or old-time Appalachian square-dance music, or traditional Irish music, etc -- YES, you can do that by ear. I did!! I started out on guitar, got into old-time music, learned mandolin and banjo, then picked up fiddle by ear.
Traditionally, most folk fiddlers learned and played entirely by ear. At the very least, even if they could read music (and very, very few old-time, Cajun, Irish and bluegrass fiddlers back in the day could read music), they might occasionally use sheet music to help them learn a particular tune, but they didn't use the sheet music when they were jamming with other people or when they were performing. Nowadays, more people are apt to use sheet music to learn tunes but even they don't use it when jamming or performing. Its just "not done".
Ironically, the lack of frets is relatively easy to learn to live with. With practice, muscle memory -- and your ear -- teach you where to put your fingers on the fingerboard to get accurate intonation. The really tricky part for fiddlers is getting the bowing right. In fiddle music -- as opposed to classical playing -- the bow is not only used to express and sound the melody, but to create a repetitive, danceable driving rhythm at the same time -- because fiddle music, by and large, is dance music. And back in the day, the only musician available to play for a local square dance or set dance or whatever, might have been a solo fiddler playing with no back up -- so he had to not only play melody but rhythm at the same time.
There's a percussive element to fiddling that's not present in classical music. Learning to pull a good sound out of your fiddle AND express the melody in an esthetically pleasing way, AND create a driving, toe-tapping beat that dancers could follow -- all at the same time -- is a challenge that can take years to get good at.
But, it CAN be done!
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