Stephen Fine

Your question is answered below... took a few years. One of the things I like about Maestronet is the tendency for old questions to eventually get answered. vlyosifov hasn't been online in half a year, but maybe will return for this answer.

I'd forgotten about that... crazy that at the end he just doubles down asking "what is really real?" and saying "if people believe something, it's true." Feels a bit like the Zeitgeist now.

I guess I should write here in case the link is ever dead: Oklahoma City Times (Oklahoma City, Okla.), Vol. 70, No. 129, Ed. 1 Thursday, July 9, 1959 Page: 34 of 63 It's a story saying that a previous story reporting that the "local hobbyist violin-maker" had moved to Europe had been in error. In fact, he'd only moved down the street. It describes him as having a shop selling instruments of the viol family and "rare" grandfather clocks.

https://gateway.okhistory.org/ark:/67531/metadc2002995/m1/34/ See the story under "It's Our Move".

The only time I've ever heard string oil mentioned was by someone who was mostly familiar with Indian classical violin where the oil is used to aid in sliding if I recall correctly. I just read a few posts on gut string oiling elsewhere and I'm not convinced. The people are not getting good results after the oil and I feel like it's probably the oil that is contributing to their bad results? But maybe we should reach out to a gut string manufacturer and see if they'll give us their thoughts.

I'm a little confused... maybe it's a plucked string thing? But, yeah, as everyone else says, don't. I've played on gut strings for years and years and never had the thought, gee, I wish this string was oily.

Viola Strings since summer 2024, retail at a store that does national business: Spirocore Tungsten C string has jumped about $10. Spirocore G has jumped $5. Pirastro Oliv D and A only up $1. Violin Shoulder Rests since February 2025 (!) Wolf Forte Secondo up $5 BonMusica up $5 Kun Bravo Collapsible no change

Predicting at this point seems silly, but that is a remarkable technical achievement... an extraordinary improvement over MIDI.

Music school is a time for you to learn and practice and play and make connections. The value of attending music school is that it's all built in, but you can have any kind of music career you want with enough drive and talent whether or not you attend a school. (I sometimes tell the story of the cellist in my quartet at Rice who dropped out of the Shepherd School not because it was too intense but because he knew all he needed was more time to practice. A few years later he was touring with a piano trio. Eventually he spent some time earning a degree and now he's principal with the Israel Phil.) You can take lessons with qualified teachers just by paying for them. You don't need to be enrolled at a university. You can practice 3-6 hours a day by building that into whatever academic/professional schedule you want. You can seek out chamber music and orchestra opportunities, read music history, learn music theory, practice your keyboard skills... none of this requires a university. There are free syllabuses to excellent courses all over the internet. Why are you dissatisfied with music school? What would make your music school experience better? What do you mean can someone survive without a diploma? It really depends on what type of job you want to pursue in music.

(It's a fundraiser)

Jazz students often copy solos before they come up with their own. Same thing here. If you're learning a piece, find 4 recordings and try to pick out elements you really like. Do they take time somewhere? Do they slide somewhere? Is their vibrato a certain way? What fingering are using (you can usually tell by listening)? Whatever stands out to you. And dive deep on a few players. Once you can recognize a player's particular style, that will give you a sense of what it means to have a particular style. I'm not sure if you're like my students, but they're all just listening to whatever recording gets served up to them by YouTube or Spotify or whatever. Before music was streaming, you had to buy recordings and so you would choose which one you wanted and you'd listen to you dozens or hundreds of times. It would become intimately familiar so that when you heard another recording it sounded "wrong." I feel like that has been lost. Music is more available but more anonymous than ever.

I have both cases open in my studio when I teach and I sometimes grab the violin bow by accident and as soon as it hits the string it feels tiny (by which I mean light and not stiff enough). I wouldn't want to try to playing anything intense with it, but it'd be fine for most things. The viola bow sounds better. On my Baroque viola strung with gut I use lighter bows close in weight to violin bows, but that's a very different bow stroke and technique. I'd think that Primrose had a bunch of bows. He was a bit of a collector I thought. I would be surprised if he only or even mostly used violin bows. I've seen Ron MacDonald a couple places on the internet (including here a few times over the past 20 years) saying that a friend of his inherited a favorite bow of Primrose's that was a heavy gold-mounted Voirin violin bow, but I'm not sure that's conclusive. reedman, do you have any more information? I'm not an expert, but he was my teacher's teacher's teacher and you usually learn the interesting tidbits.

Years ago someone with recording engineering experience wrote down a hierarchy of recording considerations for us here on Maestronet that I liked. I think #1 was microphone placement. I've been trying to get the microphone 3.5'-4' above and away from my f-holes, but I experiment depending on the room (which might've been #2 on the list). The microphone itself is less important. Check out these old posts: and this one

It is true that in some ways mastery is in the opinion of the listener. In some ways... My ears are very finely tuned to listen for a bunch of things. But different genres of music are like different languages. Sometimes there are vowels and consonants that you can't quite even understand or identify. It takes a lot of listening before you can understand the subtleties. Sometimes before you understand that concept it's hard to know what you don't know.

As far as classical training is concerned, maintaining a level of tone quality in sections of difficulty while displaying style makes a master I think. But as I've mentioned before, if the style is good enough you don't need tone quality. (My example was seeing Bobby Mann near the end of his career... bow control was not great, sound wasn't particularly good, but it was an absolutely arresting chamber music performance. His knowledge shone through.)