Absolutely amazing school. It is my daughters 3rd year with Rachel at piano classes.The staff is great and Craig is always helpful!
I know that the most joy in my life has come to me from my violin.
Albert Einstein
My daughters have been learning piano in Dublin school of music for the past couple of years. The standard of teaching is high and Craig is always pleasant to deal with and very accommodating with any changes in lesson times etc. Nina is a super piano teacher and both my daughters have learnt so much with her. We highly recommend this music school!
What people ask before they start, answered without the usual flannel.
Yes, at the beginning — and the difficulty is front-loaded rather than spread out. This is the honest answer, and it is worth understanding why, because the reason also tells you when it gets easier.
A piano gives you the right note the moment you press the key. A violin has no frets and no keys, so your left hand must find the pitch itself while your right hand draws a bow across the string at the correct angle, speed and pressure. Two unfamiliar physical skills, both required at once, before you produce anything that sounds like music. That is the hard part, and it lasts roughly the first three to six months.
After that the curve flattens considerably. Once the bow is steady and the hand knows where the notes live, progress starts to feel like progress. Almost everyone who gives up does so inside the first few months — which is precisely the stretch where a teacher is worth most, because the specific thing making your sound scratchy is usually one correctable fault you cannot hear yourself.
It is the hardest of the common beginner instruments to get a decent sound out of. It is not the hardest instrument to play well — that is a different claim, and most players would hand it to the French horn or the oboe.
Ranked by how long before you sound acceptable to someone in the next room:
What the ranking hides is that difficulty and reward run together. The reason the violin is hard — that you control the pitch and the tone entirely yourself — is the same reason it can do things a piano cannot, including sliding between notes, swelling a single sustained note, and producing a vibrato that is recognisably yours. Players who stay with it tend to say the early struggle bought them something. If you would rather not fight an instrument for your first six months, piano or ukulele are the honest alternatives, and When Should My Child Start Music Lessons? sets out readiness instrument by instrument.
The fiddle. It is the same instrument — a fiddle and a violin are physically identical, and a player can pick up either and play it. The word signals the tradition, not the object.
What differs is everything around the instrument. Classical violin playing is read from notation, uses a long sustained bow stroke and extensive vibrato, and sits inside an orchestra or an ensemble. Irish traditional fiddling is learned largely by ear, uses short crisp bow strokes with the ornamentation carried in the bow rather than the fingers, favours rolls and cuts over vibrato, and is played in sessions where everyone knows the tune. Some fiddlers do tune or set up the instrument differently, and bow grips vary by region — Donegal, Sligo and Clare playing are all distinguishable to an experienced ear.
Practically, the two are not a choice you have to make early. The left-hand accuracy and bow control you build in the first year serve both, which is why so many Irish fiddlers started with classical lessons and plenty of classical players can hold their own in a session. Our violin tuition covers classical repertoire and Irish fiddle alike — say which direction interests you when you enrol and we will match you with the right teacher.
For a beginner in Ireland, roughly €120 to €250 buys a usable student outfit — violin, bow, case and rosin together. Below about €100 you are usually buying something that will actively hinder you: pegs that slip, a bridge cut wrong, a bow that cannot hold tension. A cheap violin is not a smaller version of a good one; it is harder to play, which is the opposite of what a beginner needs.
Above that, the tiers run roughly as follows. €400 to €900 gets a step-up instrument with solid carved wood and noticeably better tone, which will carry a student through the graded exams. From about €1,500 upward you are into instruments worth keeping for life. The bow matters more than most beginners expect — a better bow on a modest violin often improves the sound more than the reverse.
Two practical notes. Children do not need an expensive instrument, because they will outgrow it: fractional sizes run from an eighth up to three-quarter, and most Dublin music shops will trade a size up as a child grows. Several also rent, typically for €20 to €30 a month, which is the sensible route if you are not yet certain the interest will hold. Ask your teacher before buying anything — ours will happily tell you whether a particular instrument is worth the money, which is a five-minute conversation that saves a good deal of regret.
Private violin tuition in Dublin generally runs from €25 to €45 a lesson, varying with the teacher's background and the length of the slot. Violin is one instrument where group classes are a false economy — the entire early difficulty is physical setup, and a teacher cannot correct eight bow arms at once.
At Dublin School of Music, violin is taught one-to-one on a ten-lesson course at €300, which is €30 a lesson, reducing to €27.50 a lesson on our automated payment plan. A three-lesson taster course costs €90, and if you continue that €90 comes off your full fees — so trying it properly costs you nothing extra. Given how much of the first few months is down to physical habit, three lessons is genuinely enough to tell whether the instrument suits you.
Lessons run at Tallaght, Stillorgan and Terenure, and enrolment is continuous, so you are not waiting on a term to start. Full details are on our violin lessons page.
