On Saturday, March 17, 2001 at 8:54:01 AM UTC-8, Keith A.H. Smith wrote:
I thinks it's a 'given' that guitar players press way too hard when learning strings (violin in my case). On my first $200 fiddle I once went through about $100 worth of strings in a month - the alminum wrap on the A string died in a few days and I soon revealed that the fingerboard was really stained maple or such like. Admittedly, I was practicing about 25-30 hours a week. (read Major obsessive personality).
The guitar is, after all, a percussion instrument. Like a drum, or a piano, after the note is struck what happens depends more on the instrument than
the player. With the bow you're injecting far more energy into the string than you ever could with a pick. And with no fret, no matter how hard you press, the string will see some soft flesh after it leaves the fingerboard. Actually, I don't think my strings touch the fingerboard much at all
anymore.
I recently talked to a symphony player about some violin lessons. The first thing he said was 'don't press nearly as hard as you would with a guitar'. (something I think I'm cured of now.) Experiment a bit and I think you'll find that Victor is on the money.
Maybe some of the classical folks on this list could help us 'great unwashed'.
The guitar is a plucked string instrument, like the harp.
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