I knew the violin was an unforgiving instrument but I had always wanted to play it. I didn’t make the decision to learn lightly.

My violin is about 120 years old. It’s a family heirloom: imported from Europe before the first world war by my German-Lutheran great-great-grandfather, a wheat and sheep farmer in western Victoria. It came into my mother’s hands in rather battered condition more than a century later, after the death of a beloved great-aunt. Mum pledged to get it fixed up if one of her children ever chose to learn.

This year, at the age of 40, I finally did. I apologised in advance to my downstairs neighbours. I found a teacher, a well-known Melbourne fiddle maestro, and had my first lesson on the restored instrument in July.

Nobody sounds good when they first play a violin. Unlike guitars, violins don’t have frets: you have to find the notes by ear. Years of piano training and choral singing gave me a head start there but I still didn’t expect to make magic. When a professional musician friend told me it took her a good 12 months to get a decent sound out of one, I lowered my expectations even further.

My goal at the end of three months was modest: to play something that wasn’t a nursery rhyme and didn’t screech.

My strategy, however, was bold. I chose to embrace the horror. The best way to stop subjecting my partner, neighbours and my poor, terrified cat to bad violin, I figured, was to immediately subject them to as much of it as possible, and get past the screechy phase quickly.

So I practised every day, for anywhere between 30 minutes and two hours. And I fell in love with it. Yes, it sounded like fingernails down a blackboard, but it somehow felt expressive and all-encompassing, the way singing does.

I discovered that not only are violins unforgiving, they are existentially fussy. They are picky about the weather – too dry and they can crack; too humid and the whole thing can come unglued – and even sunlight plays havoc with the tuning.

I also learned that the violin’s biggest difficulty is simultaneously its greatest joy: to play well you must relax. The bow judders and scrapes with too much tension. A sweet sound requires mindfulness and calm – a tall order for a beginner, because there is nothing calm about that noise. But I found the desire to get past that first hurdle, the discipline I’d established to ensure I played every day, crept over into the practice itself. Playing the violin became a way to clear my mind of everything else, because the violin by its nature demanded my undivided attention.

Sooner than anyone expected, least of all me, the dedication started paying off. I started sounding good. After six weeks I was done with the introductory workbook and was playing “proper” songs. Before three months had passed, my teacher was handing me grade four repertoire to learn.

A few months ago I played for an audience of friends for the first time: five whole songs, not a nursery rhyme among them. They weren’t perfect but I was proud. “You’re flying,” my teacher said.

Now I just want to see how high I can get.