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octaves

I don't know. That was my guitarist friend's guess.
I would just say, you hit one vocally and one on the instrument. I don't know anything about chromatics though so I could be way off.

If you are talking about chromatics it would seem that you are refering to something to do with a twelve note scale rather than a seven. That would suggest sharps and flats to me. Say, playing a b and b#. This is possible on many instruments.

Now, on a violin you can play notes on two strings at once, and to tune the instrument you frequently play the same note on each to correct the higher string to the lower one. Say, you play a A on both the D and A strings. But not sure if that is what you meant.

But then, there is also the option of playing an octave up or down as suggested above.

Well, all sharps are also flats. Although there are some double or even tripple sharps and flats that are rarer. They can't be played on the most common instruments (guitars, pianos and many wind instruments) because those are designed to easily hit the main chromatics.

The piano is the best way to look at a standard western 12 note scale. You have the seven notes (an octave is 8, or C-C') plus the chromatic sharps and flats. A guitar has a similar setup, but it is harder to tell the difference unless you know your notes.

A violin, on the other hand, has no such set notes. Instead you learn how to position your fingers for certain 'keys' - setups of scales that hit a certain set of the notes. For example, a basic key of C major will be the main eight notes of each octave. A different key may use sharps or flats for certain notes.

Because you learn the physcial positions of the notes, with distances betwen fingers and actual positions on strings meaning something, you get a good feeling for what each sharp/flat is. It is very interesting when you think about just how much you have fixed in your muscle memory and are able to convert directly into sound.

I personaly quit lessions when I found that I was learning more through pure playing than through being taught. I kept playing in the Orchestra till I discovered that I was being forced to play things that I had no way of being able to play, or that I didn't enjoy.

My last enjoyable concert was playing Also sprach Zarathustra (the full movement, not just the 2001 introduction) (second violin) and Spring from the Four Seasons (first violin, with the fiddly bits) in the same concert.

Meh, not the biggest fan. I prefer things that have more of a full on feel to them. Things you can truely lose yourself in. Bach is good, as are the Seasons and Planets movements. I more or less memorised the first violin part to Jupiter through muscle memory, although I swear I couldn't concously tell you what I was doing at any point, even with the music in front of me. It is stuff you feel rather than know.

Probably why I am a metal head.