<p>I have played the piano for about 10 years and would love to learn how to play the violin. I can play some advanced pieces on the piano. Will this make it easier for me to learn violin? How long would it take to master the violin and become proficient on some difficult pieces?</p>
<p>Which is a harder instrument to learn out of the two for most people?</p>
<p>Well, the thing piano would help you with is reading the notes…</p>
<p>It’s a bit hard to learn violin because there’s a certain posture which can be uncomfortable. It would take a pretty long time to play more difficult pieces, especially if you’re in high school.
But that’s my opinion. I played violin when I was really young, and didn’t like it at all so I switched to cello which is not uncomfortable for me.</p>
<p>I play violin, piano, and am attempting to teach myself guitar [badly]</p>
<p>I found the violin much easier to pick up because of
- only reading one line of music and its all in treble clef
- you already know how to read notes so you save quite a lot of time </p>
<p>The difficultly with the violin is that you need to tune it and there are an infinite array of sharps and flats. The piano gives us the illusion that each note only has one sharp and one flat; however, with the violin, you need to practice and develop a good ear to all the different notes. </p>
<p>How long will it take to master the violin : … a long long time. You’ll probably need to study for many many many years ~ 20 + to only begin to ‘master’ the violin. </p>
<p>As for just getting good enough to have a decent placing in your school orchestra? You can do it in a year or two with a good amt. of practice. </p>
<p>Proficient on difficult pieces … uuh… what’s your definition of ‘difficult’? Plus, it’s different per person. Some are prodigies and they can pick up a new instrument frighteningly quickly. Some people like the semi-tone-deaf me just slowly plod along and hope no perfect pitch people beat me up.</p>
<p>From what I can gather, it’s more difficult to play something on a violin than it would be to play the same thing on a piano. However, that’s the whole reason you can play pieces on a piano that you never could with one violin. I guess it all comes down to what you’re best at. If you find coordination more difficult than speed on the piano, perhaps you’ll find the violin easier to play, for example. However, because of how different the two instruments are, I doubt your playing the piano will be helpful for anything that isn’t theory.</p>
<p>OP: it not hard to learn how to play a violin, hard to master it. But you play piano so you should be able to successfully know the notes. </p>
<p>Source: I played in Orchestra since 6th grade.</p>
<p>If I could play the violin when I was like 7, you probably can.</p>
<p>If you have a talent for knowing how to learn, then you’re set.</p>
<p>An excellent teacher will make the journey more successful. Having a good ear also helps immensely since you have to change your fingerings based on the sounds you hear.</p>
<p>I’ve played the piano for about 8 years and the violin for about 3. I found playing violin more difficult; but that’s probably explained by my relative lack of experience. On piano, once you reach a certain level, it seems easier to improve, and it doesn’t require as much oversight. On the violin, it felt like you were constantly learning new things (bowing techniques, shifting positions, etc.), and I felt that it was harder to progress. If I didn’t get what my violin teacher was saying, I could be stuck learning something for a month or so without much improvement. In piano, I felt that if I was practicing my pieces I always improved.</p>
<p>I played the piano for about 5-6 years before I switched to violin; granted, I was never super talented at piano and I found the violin easier to progress in, but what I think many pianists have trouble with when they switch is mainly intonation. It’s a lot harder to get the notes in violin. I can hear the difference of up to a half a hertz and intonation is still something I need to constantly work on. Some pianists are really frustrated because it really is a lot of work to get everything in tune. Being able to play the piano will definitely help you in reading music, but the two instruments employ totally different muscle sets, so I would say AT LEAST 4-5 years before you’re proficient on some of the more advanced works. A lot of it also depends on the way you practice and how much time goes into it. I made more progress practicing 6 hours a day over a summer than I did in nearly two years, so it really depends. </p>
<p>With all this being said, I really hope you pursue learning the violin because it is a GREAT instrument and it is definitely rewarding. As a last note, I want to say that playing the violin adds so much more to making music because of all the variables that go into the sound–you can create totally different colors from bow speed, vibrato, arm weight, etc. The sound you make is a lot more personal than in other instruments.</p>
<p>Violin is an instrument where it’s going to be hard to get perfect intonation at first until you’ve been very accustomed with the instrument. The piano experience helps it’s not an automatic ticket to being perfect on every other instrument in the world.</p>
<p>Source: main instrument is saxophone, others are piano, clarinet, guitar, bass, marimba, etc</p>