take up learning the violin.
it takes a long long time to get to the not-painful-to-listeners stage, and stating to him that you "really think you are getting good" might lead to some sort of compromise amazingly quickly.
hunt ebay or the local markets for as cheap a violin as possible.
tuning it's optional...
( evilstevie misses the Orange Place of late, Wed 20 May 2009, 23:26, archived)