Somewhere My Love/Lara’s Theme from Dr. Zchivago

Being a strolling violinist means that yes, I can walk and play at the same time.  I just can’t chew gum while doing it…

What being a strolling violinist really means is that I have all of  my music memorized and I take requests from the audience.  I stopped counting  just how many pieces of music I had in my repetoire when I reached 500.  People ask me all the time, “How do you remember them all?”  I wonder the same thing myself sometimes!

In all of my music studies, I was never forced or instructed in how to memorize.  When I started strolling, I thought if  I just played each song a million times, that it would do the trick.  Then I realized  I could memorize more songs with less time in 3 different ways:  visual, aural and kinesthetic.  There are times when I will use one or the other or some kind of combination.  For example, visually means that sometimes I see the sheet music in my mind’s eye – when you look at a piece of music a million times, trust me you can see the music in your sleep!  The phrase “playing it by ear”, means I have never laid eyes on the sheetmusic.  I may have only heard it on the radio or tv.  I start hearing it in my head, sort of singing along and presto! The fingers follow along.

The most challenging way to memorize a song is by touch or feel (kinesthetically).   The challenging part is that once your fingers are trained to play in a certain way (some people call this muscle memory), you can never play the song in the original or transposed/different key.  “Clair de Lune” was one of those songs. It was originally written for piano in a difficult key for the violin.  I started by playing it a million times (visually) but unfortunately, I had never even heard (aurally) of this song before.  It was taking forever to memorize this beautiful but lengthy piece.  In order for me to “feel” my way through it,  I changed the key so that my fingers felt comfortable on the fingerboard.  I am the only strolling violinist in Chicago with this song memorized…as long as it is in the key of C!

As for the “taking requests” part of being a strolling violinist, I just hate to be stumped by the audience.  On the rare occasion that there is a request for a song I don’t know, I will look it up as soon as I get home.  My motivation is strictly based on having fallen in love with so many of my audience’s favorites.

My claim to fame as “Chicago’s Favorite Strolling Violinist” is supported by the fact that there are only three songs I don’t know.  What are the three?  If you happen to pick one of them, I’ll be sure to let you know!