Claire and Adam's Violin Lessons, Blog 2: Squeezing sponge

Written by Claire Silvester
Published: December 28, 2013 at 7:08 PM [UTC]

I take lessons every two weeks, it’s currently the ‘in-between week’ and I’m working on a particular bowing pattern/feel/interpretation/skill in the gigue I’m learning. This feels like backwards Bach, I love it (I’m enjoying turning former conditioned phrasing on its head) but it’s the direct opposite of the motion my right arm instinctively insists on executing. It is a pattern of three slurred semiquavers (16th notes) followed by three detache semiquavers, repeat.
Adam’s instruction for this pattern goes something like this; I need to start at the heel and create an intensifying/crescendo/denseness that travels throughout the slur right up until moment of bow change (which I do technically by dropping weight into my bow, moving my sound point closer to the bridge and reducing bow speed) rebounding light into the detache bows, which are performed in a zig-zag motion returning towards the heel for the next slur. Each pattern loop moves a short distance further towards the middle of the bow until the end of the phrase.

Okay :) I genuinely intellectually comprehend that.

Adam metaphorically described this as if having hold of a sponge and squeezing it increasingly tighter and then allowing it to release to original shape (concentrating on the densest/release transition)

Okay :) I can genuinely imagine that image whilst playing the phrase in my mind and I hear it work musically.

So why can’t I do it on the violin?

I don’t have an abundance of actual time to practice, but I’m finding I think about it a lot every available moment, proper contemplative thinking about how to maximise my experience. I particularly like deconstructing and theorising using a neurodevelopmental approach. Especially during the dead areas of day taken up by walking to work or similar…

Back to the point! So why can’t I do it on the violin!
I’ve considered this; it starts with a premise from Montessori education – we are sensorial beings, our very first route of learning is entirely through our senses. Montessori is a proponent of rooting early education in the concrete and not in the abstract. The violin is a multi-sensorial instrument.
When Adam is instructing, for him it is already concrete, he can physically execute the bowing, he knows how it feels, he can describe a metaphor to further clarify the sensation, he knows how that feels and that it is a metaphoric match.

Even though I comprehend the description, for me, this is all abstract. I cannot execute the bowing, I do not know how it feels. I can squeeze an actual sponge for a concrete sensory starting point though. This is also easier than the bowing…

Making things concrete deepens my ability to translate sensations. So I've been working in the concrete like this; play the phrase in my mind whilst applying the dense/release pattern appropriately rhythmically to a sponge ball. The real world tactile feedback of this is actually quite cool. Because I've actually felt it with my hands, in conjunction with the music - it’s become an easier thought to reference when practicing on the violin. Now practicing focused repetitions in the abstract is making much more sense, because it's just not quite so abstract...