Was thinking about this today and wanted to know your thoughts? Is it just someone who can improvise over chords? Is it someone who knows some section of the “jazz canon” (tunes from a certain era of jazz) Is it someone who plays “the language” in their solo? Is it someone who can swing? Some might say it’s all of these out together however sometimes one or two of these are missing or one of these points seems to be a min focus over all of the others? I don’t think you have to have ALL of the above but I reckon most of these need to be in there somewhere. What am I missing?

Tell the group in 1-3 words, what your current goal is for your playing. mine: learn more tunes

Some say that Stuff Smith was one of the pioneers of electric violin. He came up with the idea of putting a D’armond guitar pickup on the bass bar side of his violin with elastic and plugging it into a tube amp. You can see it in this video here! https://youtu.be/kPVeEEdEQWE?si=2HTffFwqea6fXMzv

Hi all, There are two main streams into jazz violin: Classical and Folk. I’ve spoken a bit about how you can use your classical mindset to excel in jazz, but I wanted to see if anyone wants to weigh in on what folk music can bring to the table in terms of transferable skills for jazz. I find that learning folk music is extremely beneficial, as it’s often about learning tunes and focusing on style and small musical intricacies. The way I learn a folk melody is similar to how I approach a transcription, looking at the small details and trying to replicate them. Anyone else have any thoughts?

Hi Matt, this new platform seems very helpful, easy to navigate and all in one place, well done and hopefully it will become the permanent site.