Teaching the violin for the first time!

June 21, 2019, 5:34 PM · On this late-afternoon on the Summer Solstice, after having spent a good chunk of my afternoon just enjoying playing my violin, I taught my first-ever violin lessons! (Two in a row.) This post will be a little bit about how that experience went.

So they just started learning through me, and hadn't touched it before. Because I am only teaching them for the summer, my plan is to get them started with the basics, and then recommend a violin teacher they can get lessons from during the school year and beyond. Today with both students, I worked on holding the instrument and proper position for plucking the four strings, and having them learn the names of the different strings. I figured it would be too difficult to start them with the bow right away, and we could spend a whole lesson next week just on the bow.

Going back to the beginning I knew would be a challenge! I just naturally know what to do when I play. It did help put things in perspective though in teaching them how to hold the instrument, trying to think about everything I normally do and demonstrating a little on my own violin.

It will be interesting to see just how far I can go with them leading to the end of the summer. This experience I'm sure will help guide me in what I did right and wrong should I pursue private lessons again around and after grad school in the future. I used this very website, violinist.com, for some tips; reading comments on old 2008 posts was a little helpful. Any tips on this post would definitely be appreciated, since I am brand-new at this.

Thanks everyone, and have a wonderful day!