One of my favorite instruments is the violin.

I know that comes to some as a shock, because I also love drums.

But I ever since I was a child, I loved the violin. It started one day in church when a friend of my mom's played.

I loved the sound as the bow was pulled across the strings. And I loved the tones when the strings were plucked.

When I was in elementary school, I played the violin in the school orchestra. And though I wasn't any good, I loved it.

Other members of my family have shown more of a talent for the instrument. My sister played for a long time and was even part of a youth symphony recording. And my youngest daughter is getting pretty good and is part of her school orchestra.

Well, another violinist has captured my attention and my imagination — Emilie Autumn.

Autumn has been around for a few years and has performed with the likes of Courtney Love, Otep and the Smashing Pumpkins' Billy Corgan.

Recently, she appeared (in cartoon form) on "Metalocalypse."

Not only can she play intricate arrangements of Bach, Corelli and Ortiz, but she also shreds it away with an unruly version of Cyndi Lauper's "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" and Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody."

Then there are her original arrangements that mix metal, classical and goth all in one dark and fantastic offering.

Autumn is doing what Vanessa Mae did in the 1990s — playing violin in a contemporary rock-inspired fashion — but taking it to the extreme.

She is a classically trained violinist who went against the grain. In fact, she loves the work of English composer Edward Elgar so much that she named her violin after him. During her studies at the Indiana University School of Music in Bloomington, Ind., she hated the fact that her professors told her that the music she was playing wasn't about her, but about the composer.

"They told me that we needed to keep in mind what the composer wanted," said Autumn during a phone interview from San Francisco. "They told me that my job is to re-create what the composer wrote."

"But how did they know what the composer wanted?" she asked. "My professors weren't there. I mean, these pieces were written hundreds of years ago."

And while Autumn wasn't alive back then either, she felt that since the composers were artists, they would have allowed some freedom within the notes and even how she presented herself.

"I remember when I played one night, I was in a revealing red dress and my professors called my parents and told me that they needed to discipline me," said Autumn. "They told them that I wouldn't get very far in this business if I didn't look the part.