String music and cognitive dissonance

I don't know why, but lately I've really been into string music. Specifically, bowed instruments. I have never really been into listening to them in general; I didn't particularly dislike them but I always tended to focus my listening to piano repetoire, and when jazz came along, jazz pianists and small groups. But somehow along the way, I really started digging the sound of the string instruments. Though contrary to classical convention, for now at least I like the vibrato to be a bit more restrained than customary. While vibrato does add depth to the tone (visually I can see a warm tone filling the room), there is also something to be said for a more stark, austere tone I think (where it's a focused column of light as opposed to a lightbulb, to continue the visual analogy). Perhaps it's a reflection of my pianist sensibilities. Though, once in a while I find myself unconsciously shaking my finger while holding down a note, as if to 'fake' a vibrato effect. Regardless, I'm diggin' the string music -- not just in the classical realm, but also some Stefan Grappelli (jazz violinist), some covers of popular tunes by string ensembles (no, not just Metallica, it's overdone and a prof here does that with his group String Theory :P), and even some prog-bluegrass by Bela Fleck, virtuoso banjoist. An interesting thing that happens in my dichotomy between engineer and musician is sometimes I just feel like I'm more attuned to one than the other, at a particular time. I was playing horrible at rehearsal tonight -- horrible! But yet I came back and did some pretty good work on my homework, and I just felt on the ball with it. On other days it might be reverse, I could be the most scatterbrained when it comes to coursework but play pretty well. It's not particularly a 'left-brain/right-brain' thing, because really, I find music to be analytical as well, and a very beautiful theory in physics or concept in mathematics is as much art as science. I wonder if there's a mechanism for deciding when I'm "off" one thing and "on" another.