Welcome to the new learningviolin.com, learningviola.com, and learningcello.com!
You have entered the social network and blog for, about, and by string instrument players! It is my hope that this site will become a vibrant community of supportive musicians, sharing what their musical self is up to.
We will be bringing you articles and features on all things strings, from the practical to the silly. Our goal is to include a wide variety of perspectives, and we are especially curious about new and exciting things happening in the world of strings.
On the Learning page we will gather all our posts related to learning your instrument, practice tips, recommended music books, and the struggles and victories we all go through while improving our skills. Our Festivals & Camps page will focus on educational opportunities around the world for both students and professional players.
If you are a teacher, your profile will allow prospective students to find you. And if you are a student, you can use the Find a Teacher search engine to search for teachers by location, instrument, styles and levels taught.
For over 10 years, or ever since the old learningviolin.com became desperately outdated, I have been itching to update my site. It wasn’t until 2017 that I realized a new role for it, a string networking site. The old site served its purpose, and kept me in business teaching violin and fiddle for over 15 years. I now bid it farewell with warmth and gratitude.
In 1999, an adult student of mine showed up to her lesson one day, and announced that she had built me a website. All we needed was a domain name. In those days we had a broad choice of simple domains, apparently not many music teachers were building their own websites at the time, so learningviolin.com it was. My student set the whole thing up, and before long I was getting e-mails and calls from prospective students. I was in business!
In 2004 I decided to teach myself to use DreamWeaver so that I could make my own updates and redesign the site. After obsessing over it for months, writing scripts for video lessons and video taping in my dining room, learning how to edit videos in iMovie (anyone remember that one), and adding to the online e-lessons, I had a relatively updated and useful website on learning violin for beginners and intermediate players. I enjoyed the process very much, and probably knew somewhere in my coding hungry brain that this would not be the extent of my web designing days.
Fast forward to 2012, and several life changing events later, I found myself studying graphic design and web design at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts. Boy was I in heaven! I took every web design class that was offered, and after three years of taking classes in the evenings while teaching violin during the day, I found myself still thirsty for more coding knowledge. In spring 2015 I took an online course on freelance WordPress development from Skillcrush.com, and planned to dive into the world of web design after graduating. Life was however in the mood to throw me another interesting challenge, when I was diagnosed with breast cancer in July 2015. Coding days would have to be put on hold, and I would have to spend another two years squirming over the outdated learningviolin.com. I suppose it was a good lesson in humility and patience.
2017, cancer free, and ready to rock this new project! I am sooo excited to finally be here, and I feel so lucky to be working on something I love so much. This project is all my worlds put together, music, violin, fiddling, strings, writing, designing, coding, and communicating with all you string players, wherever you are in the world. I hope you enjoy!
Takk & Thanks!
Íma
