I bought a $100 viola two weeks ago. I plan to perform in a quartet before my next birthday!

I have never played any classical instrument to any significant level. I grew up with the guitar and that was enough to get me by, and over the years i've been slowly expanding, purely on a curious level, to piano, clarinet, drums, and others.

Now, I decided to tackle the viola.

Why not the violin? Why not the cello? Precisely because they are so popular. Everyone plays the violin and everyone appreciates the cello. If you have a shitty pop song you want people to think is good, slap a cello in the mix and you're sorted.

Where's viola? Hiding behind the jokes.

For those who don't know, the viola is the middle-sized string instrument. Bigger than a violin and has a range of about half an octave lower. Smaller than a cello, playing an octave higher. In short, the viola is designed to play the middle harmonies, the stuff that doesn't lead, and doesn't support, but fills.

It's a filler instrument.

However, in my mind, it's just a violin but bigger, which is more suitable for my clumsy fat hands. The void that it fills is hardly unimportant. Removing, say, the third of chord removes our understanding of what makes a chord major or minor (happy or sad), and this is often a middle note. It's just that in a stack of notes making a chord, your ears don't typically focus and notice these harmonies.

I like to think this is a perfect instrument for my personality. Somebody who is at least a valid human being, but not one that likes to stand out much and be appreciated.

It was actually harder than I expected just to buy it. When searching on Taobao (the Chinese amazon), the results kept coming up with just violins, which was annoying. I modified the search though and got myself one in the end which didn't even come with any shoulder rest or training books or anything. More annoying.

But that's ok. I have the internet.

I figured since I have a musical background and i can already play a stringed instrument pretty well (guitar), my ears and fingers should be pretty well-prepped for this instrument giving me a pretty big advantage over true beginners.

Turns out I was right, I think. Here's a video of me trying it out on the day it arrived. Warning, it ain't pretty:

It turns out you can 'tighten' the bow, which in this video I was unaware of. So I was annoyed at how loose and dangly the hair of the bow was, thinking it was just a cheap, broken piece of garbage. I was soon corrected and things improved.

I find getting a melody out is pretty easy. I am already trained to hear the right pitch and its not much effort to get the finger to follow suit (obviously SOME effort otherwise I'd already be a master). The first obstacle I came across was how to actually hold the bow, but I think this can be overcome fairly quickly.

Here's a video after 4 days:

And here's after 11 days:

Here I'm told the bow is TOO TIGHT and I've had some great advice given to me across various sources including reddit.

The latest video is after 14 days:

I hit a frustrating roadblock called vibrato, which is apparently physically impossible, but I'm told this is something that takes years, so I guess I can relax and just practice my scales and positions and posture and such.

The plan is by next June, I will be able to play in a quartet at the school I work at with the cellist math teacher, the violinist president and maybe another student violinist. Since I'm the least important, it fits well with my beginner position, and I can probably get away with something fairly simple, so it shouldn't be too much pressure. As long as I can get this cursed vibrato down...