Comments

Re: the flagpole 4th, I saw a video of a well-respected, well-known soloist who does that. Lurking at a different vln website, I saw people talking about it. They were wondering if he'd been taught that to compensate for something else. I emailed the person via this site, and respectfully asked what was up with it. They wrote back and said teachers tried to change it early on but eventually left it alone. So a whole slew of teachers now, including ppl like Zukerman, have apparently left it alone. The real reason for it is just because, like I'd been suspecting :) It's fine in that person's case, apparently. Jim,

You are probably correct.

Sometimes with a very advanced and talented player it is thought better to be leave alone on certain matters at certain levels. There has to be the will-power of the player to see the need and conquer the problem.

I could easily imagine PZ saying something to this player and they didn't grasp the need and importance, so he would not spend further time on the subject.

It is still not the best way to use the "pinky." It is too likely to develop over-stress or worse — tendonitis! I hope that is not true for the alluded to player, or anyone else for that matter. When I imitate the problem to new students of various levels they are able to conquer it in 99% of the cases.

It simply boils down to — bad habits are bombs waiting to go off for all of us. We have to rid our playing of them asap, and then EVERyTHING truly does become much easier and far more enjoyable.

Cheers,
Drew

To me it's an interesting bit of uniqueness and contraryness that's working, for the time being at least as you say. Actually, it even looks bent backward at the tip-most joint a lot of the time. Who is this player???
I am too curious:-) I don't want to say who, because I mentioned a private communication. I wish I hadn't, so we could talk about it more. Other people here might be able to guess. I'll neither confirm nor deny :) "It simply boils down to — bad habits are bombs waiting to go off for all of us."

Unfortunately we can get away with an awful lot when we are 20, even 30, but then it starts! Often we don't don't even realize we are mis-using our body!

The superb teacher I work with said she was doing something years ago that a highly regardedconcert violinist was also doing. At this time she was playing in one of the top orchestras
of the world when he CM, a friend, asked her why she did that. After hearing her explantion the CM laughed and said "so and so play exceptionally well in spite of that, not because of it."