Muscle Memories
I always made sure to open it up the same way, in the same order. The two zippers always meeting at the middle, pulled away from each other simultaneously with both hands. Left and right. A dark green case lined in black, its end broken to where the fabric flapped upward and showed the cheap wood underneath. It opened in two pieces. The top half had strapped on its interior the bow, which was removed by turning a little plastic nob that held it there. Unsheathed, it was placed on the stand until a hunk of calcified tree sap was taken out and rubbed on it. Rosin. Sometimes it was an amber color or a deep sort of violet. It had to be marred with a key or a scissor blade before it could be used. The white powder it left like a lubricant on the length of horse hair. When you played it emitted almost imperceptible clouds of the residue and after a while the strings would get caked up with the substance and need to be cleaned. The black finger board dusted with chalk. The cloth used was a special square of micro-fiber fabric kept in the same compartment that the rosin was in and a few other miscellaneous accessories, including a minuscule pitch pipe that was never used.
The instrument itself was held down by its neck with a velcro band. Fastened by the neck and only the neck. The casket it laid in perfectly contoured to its shape. Rounded at the top and bottom; at the middle, bowed inward. Everywhere in its profile a sense of curvature. Fuller than that of its more famous cousin but still diminutive compared to its larger brethren. Kind of a square peg, really. The middle child, the neglected step-sibling. When a violinist in an orchestra ages out of their chair, they're often demoted to the viola section. Look it up, it's true. That's the level of admiration you're dealing with. Most people won't know what it is when you tell them about it. You can say its an octave lower and little bit bigger. The simple log-line. You might suggest trying to pin-point it out of a performance but you're not sure if you're even capable of doing that yourself. It's there for harmony, pretty much exclusively. To be weaved into the greater tapestry of sound, not percolating to the top but blending within like one flavor among many.
It's a cheap instrument, but cheap is a relative term. Below two hundred is considered a steal and these are of a lower quality and school-provided, as synonymous as those two descriptors are. But I did not complain. It did its job, usually stayed in tune, and I took good care of it. Once I made the mistake of attempting to tune it myself and ended up with a dislocated bridge that my perennial teacher put back in. The bridge was a wooden platform that raised the strings taut between the finger board and the fine tuners. You played in the gap it provided. And it wasn't secured to the instrument in any way except by the tension held in the strings. The tension that's responsible for the sound. Pulled tight in just the right way by the pegs in the peg box at the crest of the instrument, at the perched, spiraling scroll.
The strings themselves had steel cores. When they went bad their outer wrapping unraveled and could cut the bow string or break the skin. They used to be made from the intestinal lining of certain felines and sheep. Some still do. They have a unique warmth to their sound but with less precision than what you get with metal strings. A, D, C, E. In that order. The E is the lower E, a hefty cord that in my experience didn't get enough action.
The strings are everything. It is a stringed instrument, after all. They are malleable under your command. Dexterous fingers glide and dance on them concordant with the bow and the hand and the arm that controls them. You conjure up demarcated notes that sequence together to make melodies like individual words forming a sentence, like the letters that make the words. With calloused skin, with touch.
But what's most vital is the frame of the instrument itself. Inside is an empty room purposefully shaped. The flowing, undulant silhouette of the outside shell is not just there for decoration. It harbors inside the chamber that collects and amplifies the sound. The curling F-holes waft intonation as a gust of wind bellows embers from a campfire. Going in and out, synced with the lungs in your chest cavity. Your own body reverberating the protracted whole-notes and key changes and tempo, The wood carving under your chin and your rib cage and the auditorium you're playing in. Acoustics, all as one. In an ideal scenario, anyway. It didn't happen happen every time I played, or even the majority. Often I played because it was my duty as a student, because it was simply the task set forth in front of me. I didn't nurture a compulsive love for it, but there were few who did. Now almost none of us who were there play now. We just didn't have the drive, I suppose. But there were moments, isolated instances, where there was a true unity between the players and our limbs and our instruments. Where everyone's part was uttered without flaw and in perfect timing and you were no longer thinking about where to put your fingers or how people were looking at you. There was only the sound and it was with you and it was in you. You were alive.
The instrument itself was held down by its neck with a velcro band. Fastened by the neck and only the neck. The casket it laid in perfectly contoured to its shape. Rounded at the top and bottom; at the middle, bowed inward. Everywhere in its profile a sense of curvature. Fuller than that of its more famous cousin but still diminutive compared to its larger brethren. Kind of a square peg, really. The middle child, the neglected step-sibling. When a violinist in an orchestra ages out of their chair, they're often demoted to the viola section. Look it up, it's true. That's the level of admiration you're dealing with. Most people won't know what it is when you tell them about it. You can say its an octave lower and little bit bigger. The simple log-line. You might suggest trying to pin-point it out of a performance but you're not sure if you're even capable of doing that yourself. It's there for harmony, pretty much exclusively. To be weaved into the greater tapestry of sound, not percolating to the top but blending within like one flavor among many.
It's a cheap instrument, but cheap is a relative term. Below two hundred is considered a steal and these are of a lower quality and school-provided, as synonymous as those two descriptors are. But I did not complain. It did its job, usually stayed in tune, and I took good care of it. Once I made the mistake of attempting to tune it myself and ended up with a dislocated bridge that my perennial teacher put back in. The bridge was a wooden platform that raised the strings taut between the finger board and the fine tuners. You played in the gap it provided. And it wasn't secured to the instrument in any way except by the tension held in the strings. The tension that's responsible for the sound. Pulled tight in just the right way by the pegs in the peg box at the crest of the instrument, at the perched, spiraling scroll.
The strings themselves had steel cores. When they went bad their outer wrapping unraveled and could cut the bow string or break the skin. They used to be made from the intestinal lining of certain felines and sheep. Some still do. They have a unique warmth to their sound but with less precision than what you get with metal strings. A, D, C, E. In that order. The E is the lower E, a hefty cord that in my experience didn't get enough action.
The strings are everything. It is a stringed instrument, after all. They are malleable under your command. Dexterous fingers glide and dance on them concordant with the bow and the hand and the arm that controls them. You conjure up demarcated notes that sequence together to make melodies like individual words forming a sentence, like the letters that make the words. With calloused skin, with touch.
But what's most vital is the frame of the instrument itself. Inside is an empty room purposefully shaped. The flowing, undulant silhouette of the outside shell is not just there for decoration. It harbors inside the chamber that collects and amplifies the sound. The curling F-holes waft intonation as a gust of wind bellows embers from a campfire. Going in and out, synced with the lungs in your chest cavity. Your own body reverberating the protracted whole-notes and key changes and tempo, The wood carving under your chin and your rib cage and the auditorium you're playing in. Acoustics, all as one. In an ideal scenario, anyway. It didn't happen happen every time I played, or even the majority. Often I played because it was my duty as a student, because it was simply the task set forth in front of me. I didn't nurture a compulsive love for it, but there were few who did. Now almost none of us who were there play now. We just didn't have the drive, I suppose. But there were moments, isolated instances, where there was a true unity between the players and our limbs and our instruments. Where everyone's part was uttered without flaw and in perfect timing and you were no longer thinking about where to put your fingers or how people were looking at you. There was only the sound and it was with you and it was in you. You were alive.
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