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Hello everyone! This is Mike Sanchez violinist/tutor/performer. You can call me any of these! Today I am going
to explain to you a very popular question that is probably the number one question actually
out of anything that I have ever been asked as a teacher and that is what is the difference
between a violin and a fiddle. Many people ask this question all over the Internet and
today I am going to answer that question and not only answer it but show you a few things
on it. Just to give you a little bit of a background I was raised classically and I
learned through the symphony orchestra I could play all classical music from my chair and
didn't move too much. But then I started to branch off into some other forms of music
which ended up being country music. I also learned bluegrass and cajun style music. The
coolest thing about it was that it allowed me to do other things that I have never been
able to do before with country and cajun music. The reason that I bring all this up is because
the violin is going to be the exact same instrument as the fiddle! That is a shocker to many people!
So you can do pretty much everything that I just said as far as styles on this one instrument.
So it is all about how you play it! This violin here is actually my Grandfather's he played
in a local symphony for over 25 years. What happened is that I actually turned the violin
he gave me into a fiddle! I put a pickup on the violin, and duct tape! You aren't supposed
to do that so leave me alone on that comment. :) So anyways, I turned this thing into a
fiddle but I can still play very much classically and when I teach in my own studio I do teach
all different styles of violin as well as fiddle. Different students want to go different
ways with it and they always ask me should I get a fiddle or a violin? I say it is pretty
much the same thing! Let me kind of demonstrate for you what I mean by different styles and
how the fiddle and the violin are exactly the same instrument. Classical violin, let's
demonstrate here. (Tuning). Alright so here goes a little bit of classical. (Classical
music playing). So classical is very much classical! It is single notes, vibrato, it
is very much technical and not very free, but it is very pretty and I love it. So on
the same violin, notice I didn't change the video or anything. This is the same instrument.
I am now going to show you some other styles. Let's see so what should I play? A lot of
people can relate to maybe Orange Blossom Special? Something like that? (Playing Orange
Blossom Special). So that is a lot different than what I did earlier! (Playing). Obviously!
There is all different styles on the violin you have blues (playing blues) as well. That
was also jazzy. Or cajun music (playing cajun music). That is similar to country but pretty
much the same idea. So that answers the question what is the difference between a violin and
a fiddle. As far as the body of it there is absolutely nothing, but the style of it is
totally different and it is all going to depend on what you want to learn and the style that
you go after. You will eventually branch off into different things that you might want
to learn later on. If you want to learn about the violin and how to play it do visit my
website! It will teach you everything you need to know. www.violintutorpro.com. Hope
to see you all there and have a great night. I hope I answered your question!