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Erin Shrader
- San Rafael, CA
- United States
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- Blog Posts (6)
- Discussions (45)
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- Groups (6)
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Erin Shrader's Groups
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Book Lovers
23 members
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Contemporary Violin Make…
28 members
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Junior High/Middle Schoo…
16 members
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Contemporary Bow Makers…
14 members
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Fiddlers
64 members
Erin Shrader's Discussions
Cello pickup suggestions?
Replied Feb 11
Erin Shrader's Page
Latest Activity
I suspect that most fractional cases either stay with the instruments as they get sold on to the next family or get tossed. A good case is an investment that lasts for many years while a child outgrows a half-size instrument in a short time. Small i…
For anyone who likes to pick up a bow
and take a ride on a tune
Camber (the curve in the stick) and graduations (the taper from frog to tip) will have more to do with that undesireable bounce than carbon vs wood.
Strings published an article on pickups for bowed instruments about two years ago. It explains the various types of pickups and mentions brands that were available at the time. Some cellists, including Turtle Island cellist Mark Summer, weighed in o…
Well, carbon fiber bows are not necessarily lighter than wooden bows, nor do fiddlers particularly prefer them (speaking as a fiddler, myself, with lots of fiddling friends). Arcus bows, which I like very much, are light. The designer had Mozart in…
For anyone who likes to pick up a bow
and take a ride on a tune
Planetary Pegs do need to be professionally installed. But once they're in, neither peg nor hole wears out so it seems to be a one-time job.
Yes, pegs do let go with a significant change of weather--it's one of the violin's few serious design flaws…
Profile Information
- My Instrument(s)
- fiddle
- My involvement with string music
- Professional musician, Instrument/bow maker, instrument/bow repairer, Other music trade professional
- Music I like to listen to
- Early music, Classical, Jazz
- I'm looking for people to play music with
- No
- Where I like to play
- trad/folk group
- My involvement with Strings magazine
- Subscribe
- My involvement with allthingsstrings.com
- Regularly visit
- My favorite website for music and instrument shopping
- http://Tarisio.com
Erin Shrader's Blog
Frustration! Some perspective for the beginning musician from down the road
Illustration by Jacob Chalkley
A Strings Community member recently wrote:
Its been a good six months now since I started the violin. It feels, at this point, like buying a new car: you know how everything works, but you don't know how to drive, and when you do its scary. On some roads you feel li… Continue
Posted on December 15, 2009 at 9:30am — 5 Comments
Plays Well with Others
Every summer for about the past ten years I’ve been teaching Irish music at Lark Camp, an international music festival that takes place far back in the redwood forest near Mendocino, California. The Mendocino woodlands facility looks much the same as when it was built in the 1930s by the Civilian Conservation Corps. The real heart of Lark camp is not performance or even the classes that fill the daytime hours—it’s social music making, especially the Irish session, since Irish musicians outnumber… Continue
Posted on August 28, 2009 at 11:30am — 4 Comments
It’s Right or It’s Not
“Your training is where you start,” said English bow maker Tim Baker. “I prefer to find a way that works, that gives the result you want every time.” He handed me a square needle file that he’d modified to perform the task at hand—creating the inside angle of the ivory tip of a violin bow—and offered to let me try it.
It was midafternoon at this summer’s annual Bow Makers’ Workshop at Oberlin College in Ohio. I’d come to Tim with a style question about the angle of the tip of a particular genre… Continue
It was midafternoon at this summer’s annual Bow Makers’ Workshop at Oberlin College in Ohio. I’d come to Tim with a style question about the angle of the tip of a particular genre… Continue
Posted on July 7, 2009 at 11:19am — 2 Comments
The Best of the Best—or, What I Like About My Job
“He actually is a rocket scientist,” someone warned me on the way to my first meeting with Jeff Van Fossen about four years ago. Van Fossen is the designer and public face of CodaBow, innovative makers of carbon fiber bows in Winona, Minnesota. Faced with meeting a Princeton-trained mechanical and aerospace engineer, I’ll admit I was a bit intimidated, but Van Fossen has had plenty of practice explaining complex topics in terms the lay person can follow.
Not long ago I had an opportunity… Continue
Not long ago I had an opportunity… Continue
Posted on May 21, 2009 at 10:37am —
Coolidge Auditorium, Library of Congress, 1953
I’m listening to Nathan Milstein playing Bach’s Partita in D minor. The Library of Congress Recital, 1953. Last night I turned the house upside down to find it, and the glove box of the car, too. Nothing else would do. Not a different recording, not even a YouTube of the man himself playing it—too distracting. Having just spent the better part of three months fussing over the minute details of a recording of my Irish trio, I need to hear this recording—the one that leaped out of the speakers, so… Continue
Posted on April 2, 2009 at 3:12pm — 1 Comment
Comment Wall (6 comments)
- At 6:52pm on January 25, 2010,
Katerina Stamatelos said…
- Thanks for your friendship, Erin!
- At 8:42am on April 27, 2009,
Lillian Poole said… - Well I got my instrument and it's awsome! I just got back from Disney World, that was pretty darn cool.
- At 5:27pm on April 20, 2009,
Lillian Poole said…
- Hi! how are you?
- At 5:49pm on February 2, 2009,
Peter Houser said… - Hi Erin,
I’m sure we do have friends in common. I actually met you back in the late 1980’s just after I had moved to Seattle. I’m not sure if we met at a jam session or Greg and Jere Canote’s stringband class, or Fiddle Tunes. But I do remember you playing old-time and beginning to explore New England and Irish music if my memory is correct. I was a guitar and mandolin player back then. I pretty much gave up playing music for many years to pursue my career, got married, bought a house, had kids, etc.
About 5 or 6 years ago I decided to try and get back into playing so I went to Greg and Jere’s classes playing the guitar and mandolin. I also started to go to Fiddle Tunes again. Well, about two years ago I decided to start taking Suzuki violin lessons with my daughter. She had already been taking violin lessons for about 3 years when I began. She has since given up violin and is now taking folk harp lessons. I also have been taking the fiddle to Greg and Jere’s classes this past year. I would describe myself as a beginner violinist/fiddler. I’m still working on technique and can’t play at fast pace yet. But I have definitely gotten the bug and love playing the violin/fiddle (mostly at home or at my lessons). I know it is a long journey to learn the violin/fiddle. And, starting later in life will limit how far I can go with it. But, I love it just the same.
- At 11:35am on December 3, 2008,
Cindi Kazarian said… - Email it to me and maybe I can fix it for you.
- At 10:16am on December 3, 2008,
Cindi Kazarian said…
- Oops you're already here. Tee Hee. You need a picture sweetie!
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