August 2011

An attempt at "puppeteering" with the violin...

August 19, 2011 22:03

Pizza wrist. Waitress hand. We all have a name for the pesky habit that many students have of collapsing their left wrist so that the entire palm of the hand is touching the neck. This problem (which like to call the "waitress wrist") plagued me for two years while teaching public school violin. But when I decided to make the transition to private teaching, I thought, "Well, if it's only 1 student at a time, surely this problem won't be very hard to fix!" Boy was I wrong!

Case in point: my 11-year old student, Danielle (name has been changed). Having a years worth of lessons under her belt, she had progressed to Minuet 3 in Suzuki 1. But her waitress hand was holding her back from playing the piece in tune. So, the first thing I did was zero in on the wrist. Unfortunately, our first lesson went a little like this:

Me: "All right, we want to relax the wrist away from the violin so that your forearm and wrist are in a straight line."

Danielle: (Wrist relaxes, scroll of violin falls towards the ground)

Me: "Hmmmm, I like that your wrist is relaxed and in line with your forearm now. But now the violin isn't parallel to the floor. What can we do about this?"

Danielle: (Collapses wrist to raise violin)

Me: "Alright, so we're back to where we're started. How about relaxing the wrist and then using your left arm, rather than your wrist, to hold up the violin?"

Danielle: (Relaxes wrist, arches back as far as possible to raise the violin, somewhat succesfully, back to the proper position)

Me: *sigh*

It was then that I realized the disconnect in her brain, the disconnect that so many students have. They don't see a "collapsed wrist". They see their hand holding up the violin. It took weeks of unsuccessful attempts at curing this issue. Every time I tried to explain how the wrist or arm would move instead of looking at it from outside the body. In a final attempt, I switched my tactic and used the idea that our hands are responding to "outside" forces, rather than the body creating the movement. I pretended to attach a string to the bottom of the left elbow and one to the top of the left thumb. While she set her violin in position, I pretended to pull up on the left thumb. Voila- violin in position. Then for the real test... I "pulled" the imaginary string attached to her elbow to gently pull the wrist back into position. After figuratively beating my head against a wall with countless numbers of students, something as simple as imaginary strings would prove the cure to her ailment!

Since then, all of my students have been introduced to what I now call "Puppet Strings". At any point, they know I may pull on one of the "strings" helping them play their instrument. I've added a string to the top of the head to help elongate the spine. I call them "my three magic puppet strings". Three magic strings to fix posture, relax the left wrist, and keep the violin held high.

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'An order of legato bowing please? Hold the marcato...'

August 8, 2011 09:21

I've decided to jot down some of my observations as a teacher. I teach a large number of voice and piano students but I will always be a violinist at heart. I am constantly amazed at the complexity of a stringed instrument.

This week's observation: legato bowing. This is probably the first thing I work on with any student, especially those who come to me having played for a while. Often as teachers, we are just happy to have our students make any semblance of a decent noise when they place their bow to the string. With a beginner, it is easy to let it go and continue on to the left hand (which is infinitely more fun and exciting for the student). Then, years down the road, the student will hit a wall and then will suddenly be faced with the fact that their right hand is not as advanced as their left hand (in my own childhood this played out- it wasn't until late in high school that I had any idea I didn't have any sort of bow control!) I was lucky I found a teacher who was brave enough to force me to "go back to the beginning" and re-learn my bow techniques.

With many students, the bow gets neglected for months, even years. After all, beginners are EXPECTED to sound like beginners, right? As teachers, should we expect them to be able to create a legato sound, something that even professionals have to work for?

YES! A beautiful tone is the first thing someone hears about your playing. Why wait until the student has a strong left hand to incorporate bow training? Students in their elementary years are learning coordination and movement and easily pick up new information.

The past few weeks, I focused on this bowing with my violin and cello students. The concept is quite simple, and students from ages 7-60 were able to pick it up quickly.

Concept: A bow needs to be able to move at a constant speed.

As professionals, we know that our bow speed, weight, and sounding point needs to be constantly adjusted to a phrase, piece, or note. However, we cannot experiment with these until we first have control over all of these elements. For most, the constant speed is the hardest. Take for instance a car or a bike. Anyone who has ridden one of these knows that you need to slow down your speed in order to make a sharp turn. Not doing so would be... foolish, to say the least! This is just a law of physics, so we then think, "Oh, this should be the same for my bow. If I have to change my bow, it must require some sort of change in speed, or maybe I should stop before I have to change the direction!" I find that almost every student instinctively slows down or speeds up just before a bow change, because they are scared of that moment where the velocity of their arm must change.

But a bow is not a car, even the ones that are as expensive as a brand new Lexus. To give students a counter-example (I warn you, I use an example that is not known for its physical accuracy, but one that works incredibly well as an illustration). I like to remind students of the Atari game "Pong" (I believe that's what it was called- for those who are too young, I usually show them a video of what it looked like). The digitized ball in the game goes back and forth and is hit with a "paddle", where it is forced to move the other way. I love to use this as an analogy- the ball does not have to speed up or slow down before it changes direction. Now this is a video game and simplifies the real physics of playing ping pong, but I use it to explain the motion of our bow.

The fact is, we don't need to change the speed of the bow just to make a bow change. Advanced students and professionals may choose to do so for a specific sound or bowing, but for the beginner, it is not necessary. For students, I help them play "Pong" with their bows. I instruct them to pull at a certain speed (I love to use analogies to driving a car, so I'll usually give them a mph to go for). Then I tell them that when they hit my hand, the direction has to change but that car is stuck at that mph and is not able to go slower or faster. I do this at both the tip and the frog. If the hand is well balanced and the fingers are strong but relaxed on the bow, even doing this at the frog can be made easy!

So, here I am several weeks after beginning my crusade for smooth bow arms. Do all of my students have it yet? No, sadly they do not yet, but all of them (even the 4 year olds) are closer and closer every day. Soon, they'll learn that the bow doesn't always get to stay the same speed and that there are many bow strokes that require far different techniques. But we are only at step 1 of the process!

Next week, step 2 of the bow process with my students- playing with the whole bow! (After all, you or your parents bought the entire bow, so why not use it!)

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More entries: May 2006

August 2011

An attempt at "puppeteering" with the violin...

'An order of legato bowing please? Hold the marcato...'

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