June 22, 2005 at 10:36 PM

A week ago today, I was still in San Jose, helping my friends move. I went home on the 14th, but my husband and I had to go back down on the 15th one last time.

So, on the 15th, when I knew my right shoulder was in no condition for a lesson the next day, I called my violin teacher with fear and trepidation in my heart. She wasn't there, so I left a voice message saying I had to cancel, yet again.

She called back. I'm sure, to begin with, she was going to suggest we discontinue our lessons. She was concerned about my shoulder and about my lack of progress. It wasn't a matter of payment at all, as we had agreed at the start that she would be paid whether a lesson occurred or not. She was very kind, and very concerned for me, but I could see she did not want to continue if the violin were bothering my shoulder, nor if it were going to be a waste of her time and effort.

After much begging and pleading and promises to take the violin to my physical therapist and get his opinion, she agreed to a "let's see" lesson on Monday. The relief was overwhelming, and afterwards, I sat and cried, which I almost never do.

The other agreement was that I would let my arm rest until Monday, and practice only so long as I felt no strain or pain.

I did everything I said I would, and when Monday came, DM showed up at the door. You can't imagine how delighted I was to see her.

We took a step backwards, as it were, and went over everything from the beginning. I could have done better, but I could have done much worse, as well. We decided using the bow might be less stressful for my right shoulder, so she showed me how to rosen it, and said we'd start bowing my next lesson. She also gave me some exercises to help me find the first position on the D and A strings with reliable precision, and said I should do short sessions many times a day. The goal is to be able to go from an open string to the first position precisely, ten times in a row, at least 3 times a day.

This may sound strange, but I actually like doing scales and exercises more than playing tunes right now. Maybe it's because I don't find it as jarring when I make a mistake.

Since Monday morning, I have practiced faithfully a few minutes at a time, many times a day. By tomorrow morning, I'll have at least an hour in, which is significantly more than my previous 15 minutes a day. Although I am not always precise, I am much more confident of those positions than I was before Monday morning.

Also, trying to develop precision has made me realize just how important good, consistent finger, thumb, hand, wrist, arm, shoulder, etc. positions are. Just a tiny change in the position of the wrist or of the neck of the violin on the base knuckle of the index finger is enough to make a previous placement of the index finger-tip on the string go from being true to being flat or sharp.

So my husband put a mirror on the back of my office door, and now I can see what my arm, wrist and thumb look like. I found some excellent photographs of arm, wrist, hand, finger and thumb positioning that are exactly as my teacher requires, which I'm going to put up on the door for comparison.

As promised, I went to my physical therapist. My shoulder has made good progress. I brought my violin, showed him pizzicato, and he said that I couldn't hold my arm as high as one normally would when plucking the G string, as my humerus isn't being pulled back into the proper position yet, and is irritating the major nerve bundle that goes from the neck to the arm.

I also asked him about Alexander technique, which he enthusiastically recommended. Now I need to find an Alexander instructor here in Marin.

Bowing tomorrow! I am so excited!

From Pauline Lerner
Posted on June 23, 2005 at 7:07 AM

I'm glad that you have so much patience and persistence in addition to your enthusiasm. You'll do very well, I'm sure.

From Dan Winter
Posted on June 26, 2005 at 3:44 AM

How terribly frightening! I hope that everything works out for you. I know that is MY worst nightmare

I was wondering where you found these pictures of proper arm, wrist, hand, finger, and thumb pictures? It sounds like they'd be useful

From deborah mitchell
Posted on June 26, 2005 at 8:37 AM

Thanks for the sympathy and support.

The University of Vermont has a very nice website about playing stringed instruments. Here's a link to the pictures:

http://www.uvm.edu/~mhopkins/string/?Page=lefthand/hand.html&SM=lefthandmenu.html

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June 22, 2005 at 10:36 PM

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