Looking an Erhu Teacher

[brokendreamer]

Hello all, I'm quite new to this forum. I was reccommended to this site by p6grace on youtube.
I am looking for a teacher in the Sacramento, CA area.
I'm not sure where to start, so maybe I cna get some help on here? ;D

[davidmdahl]

Welcome to our forum! I hope you find something of use here.

I don't know of any erhu teachers in the Sacramento area. Until or unless someone else pipes up with something more useful, I suggest that you look for Chinese cultural organizations in your area. Google on sacramento chinese culture or something like that, and you will find some promising links. It can take some phone calling and emailing to come up with some leads.

Don't limit your search for an erhu teacher. If you can find someone involved with Chinese traditional music, they may know someone who does teach or play erhu. Traditional musicians are not necessarily hooked into the Internet, and it takes some digging to find them.

Be sure to attend any Chinese New Year celebrations programmed in Sacramento, if any. It is a good occasion to network, and you might even get lucky and find an erhu player.

If all else fails, you might find it worthwhile to travel once-in-a-while to the Bay area or even Los Angeles for instruction.

Best wishes,

David

[calden]

brokendreamer:

Yes, definitely do look in San Francisco. It's so close to Sacramento - what - two hours' drive? (I used to live in Merced, so I ought to remember...)

Also check in Davis. I wouldn't be surprised if there's some Physics PhD student from China who plays erhu for fun. Maybe call the Chinese student association there, or foreign students office.

Good luck. If you can't find a teacher in Sacratomato or Davis, definitely go out of your way to go to SF or Oakland and get some intro lessons. It will be well worth your time and will make playing the erhu much easier and more rewarding. This place can help you find someone, I'm sure:

www.clarionmusic.com/

Carlos

[jetz320]

Yeah. Come down to the Bay! We have so many good teachers here in many locations.

[brokendreamer]

Thanks for the info! I'll be sure to go down there and check, though the communte is quite long :/

[calden]

brokendreamer:

If you'll read the vast treasure-trove of beginning erhu posts, you'll find that almost every player here advises getting some beginner lessons. You needn't commit to weekly lessons. Find someone to give you two hours' of an introductory overview. Take a camera or video cam and take pictures, lots of notes, etc. Then go home and practice like a fool for a month, then get another lesson to check up on how you're doing. Once you've got the basics down, you're fine to practice on your own (unless you really want to get really good, then you ought to seek out regular lessons.)

If you don't get the basics down the right way, you will not sound very good, it won't be fun to play, you might injure yourself (seriously) and there is a decent chance you'll get discouraged and quit. Unlike a lot of other folk instruments, it's not an easy instrument to acquire on one's own.

Besides, Sac to Bay Area is only 85 miles. Not that bad. Put on a couple of good CDs, avoid the traffic rush times, and you're there. Take a friend, go get some good dimsum, and make a day out of it. I envy you being so close to erhu instruction! I'd give my right arm to be so close! Wait a minute... then I couldn't play the erhu......

Carlos

[dsouthwood]

I've said something about this in another thread, but the biggest mistake I made in learning to play the erhu was to start working on playing songs too soon. I hadn't gotten the basic bowing and techniques down, and the songs were a distraction from practicing bowing. The result was that I reached a point where I wasn't making any progress, and I was very disappointed with how everything sounded. So I scrapped the tunes, cancelled a couple of lessons, and did nothing but bowing exercises for a while. Interestingly, doing the exercises turned out to be not boring, because for the first time in a while I could hear a steady improvement. Right now, I am very happy with my progress, and I am starting to work again on "Jasmine Flower" in preparation for a lesson next week.

There's an old joke that goes:

A young boy was standing on a sidewalk in New York carrying a violin case. He stopped a man walking by and asked, "Can you tell me how to get to Carnegie Hall?" The man patted the boy on the shoulder and said, "Practice, my son, practice."

[Si]

Hmmm, i gave up partly cos the tunes that beginners have to play were so crap - chinese folk tunes and semi pop tunes. Thats not why I started learning the instrument for.

Since I have switched to the Guqin I feel very contented playing ancient tunes that are suitable for beginners without being tainted by farmers folk melodies etc

I suppose I never got much past the murdered chicken phase of erhu. Imagine things might have been different for me if I had been able to find anything for the erhu on the internet way back in '95-7