May 18, 2004 at 9:17 PM

Over these past 4 months I've had to just about relearn everything I did on the violin. Thankfully, my teacher did it one step at a time. The first thing he did was cut out my foot-tapping and head-bobbing. That just looked too ludicrous, like violin aerobics. Then he focused on my bow hold, teaching me the Russian hold that is deeper into the hand than what I was used to. After that, he had me put the weight of my hand onto the strings, instead of skimming the strings as I was doing before. He adjusted my elbow position, told me to stop hunching my shoulders, ... Then it was the speed of the bowing, to vary it with the faster speed at the attack of the note. All this time, I was thinking, that my left hand was okay at least. But not so. It turns out that I was all wrong there also. My fingers were not facing forward but sideways, my elbow was bent too much to the front, my wrist was not straight, I was not reaching back with my index finger, but rather stretching forward with my fingers, resulting in sliding stretching of my fourth finger. My hand was not relaxed, my thumb is gripping to hard, so that the muscle on my hand closest to my thumb would be sore after playing exercises. My fingers were not ready over the strings when not in use, but tucked into my palm.... Now he's teaching me tricks with double-stopping, where your finger can be between the strings on a fifth, not pressed completed on both strings. But I'm happy that he is finding all these flaws and correcting them, because my playing has improved greatly from when I was just fiddling around last year. I am thankful that I have a good competent teacher who is not hesitant to point out any errors and insists that I get it right. I have an acquaintance who has fired five teachers because he does not like it when they criticize him. But I told my teacher on day one that I welcome criticism and correction. In fact, that's what I'm paying for, not an admiration society. It's the only way to improve and not deceive yourself.

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May 18, 2004 at 9:17 PM

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