“I’ve ripped up my fingers to shreds, they bled, they blistered”: Watch Nina DiGregorio’s jaw-dropping version of Van Halen’s Eruption, played on 7-string fretted violin
Nina DiGregorio is a very successful musician. She’s performed with The Killers for President Obama. She’s played with Deep Purple, Cheap Trick, Shakira, Michael Bublé, Boz Scaggs, Peter Cetera, Stevie Wonder, the Trans-Siberian Orchestra and plenty more. She was in Toni Braxton’s band. She leads the all-female troupe Femmes Of Rock, who are currently touring the US.
But when the dust has settled, Nina DiGregorio may be remembered most for her astonishing, fleet-fingered version of Eddie Van Halen‘s classic instrumental showpiece Eruption, performed with uncanny accuracy on a 7-string fretted violin.
“I struggled and fought the limitations of the instrument,” says DiGregorio. “I had some really hard practice days, but the best motivation for me is ‘it can’t be done.’ It took a combination of newly learned left and right hand technique, played precisely, practiced slowly for clarity, forever to even make the right sound. The spaces that you need to hit, quickly, on a fretted violin are much smaller than that of a guitar.