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5 Reasons Why You Need The Violin In Your Life Right Now

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why you need a violin
A violin only has 4 strings, while its bow has several hundred horse hairs. We’ve recently covered the evolution of classical music and its impact on contemporary music and so today we’ll be adding the proverbial string to the violin’s bow (even though we know a bow has no strings) by giving you…

Learn Why The Violin Can Enrich Your Life

1. Appreciating the Music of Today

From The Beatles’ ‘Eleanor Rigby’ to Ed Sheeran’s ‘I See Fire’, the violin has a proud place in the pantheon of modern pop music, thanks to its beginnings in the 15th century when King Louis XIII of France created an orchestra, Les 24 Violons du Roi and helped put the violin on the map.

It had been around in different guises in previous centuries (it evolved from the lyra into the “rebec” and then the fiddle) and so it spread across continents and cultures, from Ireland to India, as an instrument that requires fine motor skills and exceptional musical reasoning to be able to play. In fact, Mozart’s first musical instrument was the violin.

Its status was entrenched with its unique, elegant shape, as designed by luthiers (someone who makes violins) in Italy in the 17th century – the most famous brand that survives today being (Antonio) Stradivari.

The Italian violinist Niccolò Paganini gave the violin its “rockstar image” in orchestral circles in the early 1800s as he battled other violinists at live events to win over the European crowds. He is still credited today with having inspired many of the world’s best composers, as his compositions (most notably ‘24 Caprices for Solo Violin Op.1’).

So if you are an aspiring DJ or musician fiddling around with violin samples on FruityLoops at home, the history of how the violin has influenced composers over the centuries is a fascinating one that can enrich your personal appreciation of the instrument played under the chin.

2. Enlivening Social Gatherings

Modern-day violin virtuosos such as Asher Laub are lighting up the American continent by taking Paganini’s desire to entertain the masses and performing at concerts, corporate events, weddings, and cultural celebrations as the world recovers from the pandemic that put paid to live events and community connection for the past two years.

The modern violin has even ‘gone electric’, as a modern sensibility is combined with a classical nous at parties where a DJ playing the same old hits doesn’t do the event justice.

A small peg inside of a violin receives vibrations from the strings and sends them to the back of the violin, giving it the complex sound that is appreciated by a cultured audience. The sound of Pachelbel’s Canon being played by a live violinist as the bride walks down the aisle simply can’t be beaten.

3. Improve Brain Plasticity

“Fritz” Kreisler was an Austrian violin master in the early 1900s known for his exquisite tone (duration, pitch, intensity, and timbre combined) and expressive phrasing (the way a sequence of notes is given shape). His aural sensitivity was so good that when he served in the Austrian Army against the Germans in WW2, his job was to listen for the artillery advancing across the battlefield.

Neuroscientists today will often study the neural pathways of violinists to better understand neural plasticity and the brain’s ability to adapt. Violinists have, on average, faster cognitive and processing speeds than normal people do.


As you would play classical music to a child in the womb to help develop their brain, learning the instrument oneself and combining dexterity of the fingers with the notes you are reading or the band you are playing along with is a surefire way to add value to your life.

4. Add Flavor To Your Social Media

The “cellar violinist” Vera Lytovchenko inspired millions on social media recently by playing a lullaby to a young boy who was seeking shelter in the basement of her building in the besieged city of Kharkiv in northeastern Ukraine.

As refugees flee Ukraine during the Russian invasion, the Youth Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine was among those who made it onto a long train journey out of the troubled country, with the violinists taking only their instruments with them as they fled.

Inspired by the cellar violinist and troubled by events in Ukraine, 94 violinists from around the world, including those from the London Symphonic Orchestra, performed in basements and bomb shelters of their own as an act of solidarity, posting their recordings to their own social media accounts.

A casual scroll through your Instagram feed and you’ll most likely hear the string sounds of American violinist Lindsey Sterling who, with over 13.3 million YouTube subscribers and counting, is ensuring that the violin has a rightful place at the pop culture table.

5. Pimp Your Personal Relaxation

Perhaps one of the most famous violin moments in history is the sinking of the Titanic. On that fateful day in 1912 as the ship hit an iceberg and started to sink, the Titanic’s violinists bravely performed ‘Nearer, my God, to Thee’ as an act of simultaneous defiance and acceptance of their fate.

Who can say whether the stoic string section who attempted to instill calm had any real effect at the moment, but by accepting their collective fate, they duly signed off with a sense of purpose and panache that is the stuff of legend.

Now you don’t need to be on a sinking ship to seek out calm, but in the event that you are looking for new ways to meditate and ease your troubled mind, then Sea of Strings is a string meditation that will serenade you softly somewhere between sleep and awake.

The violin’s rich cultural history is still shaping what captures our attention on social media and what calms us down when we’ve had enough of the outside world. In between, it’s enlivening social gatherings and improving our brains, adding strings to our proverbial bow as we find new ways to fiddle and have fun in this modern world.

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Hi, my name is Erick Ycaza. I have a BA in Advertising & Graphic Design. This blog is to provide you with daily music news and share my personal style.

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