Do you ever feel like after years (or even decades) of practicing scales and arpeggios, your left hand is STILL playing April Fools jokes on you (except…more than once a year)? Yep, me too. By the way, if you can’t relate at all, we need to talk because I have LOTS of questions! Anyway, last year I made an important tweak in my warm-up routine. It became a real game changer for me in the sense that my left hand suddenly felt more consistent and effortless. Continue reading “5 Quick Left Hand Warmups”
The left hand frame is one of those fundamentals on the violin and viola that’s important to constantly maintain (and/or improve) over the course of our playing years. While I created this guide to primarily help players with smaller hands, most of the concepts here are still applicable for everyone. The primary goals are:
- to create a reliable hand position, in which all fingers can drop on the string with comfort and consistencyand
- to overcome challenges of the stretch in first (and half) position, where the half steps are furthest apart.
Routines are a great way to help us stick to a practice schedule and build up discipline, especially during times when there are no externally-driven deadlines (such as performances or lessons). But do you ever feel that a seemingly reliable practice routine holds you back sometimes? Perhaps after a while of following a schedule you hit a plateau, and practice starts to feel like a waste of time. And what about instances when something important comes up in your life and it no longer makes sense to stick to the plan? Routines have their time and place, but I think it’s equally important to recognize when it’s time to stray away from their rigidity.
“Why do people post videos of their works ‘in progress’ and not wait until they’re ready for performance?”
This is an excellent question and an important topic that musicians are discussing more frequently on social media. Here are a few reasons why I share my own works in progress and how it benefits the musical and personal growth for both myself and my musical community.
People often ask me how to play off the string well. I hear questions like:
- What should the hand be doing?
- Do I need a special bow hold?
- Should my fingers or wrist be doing some special motions?
- What part of the arm does the motion for spiccato come from?
Even with the added variable of height, playing off the string is less complicated than many of us make it out to be. I used to ask myself these same questions when learning this technique. Eventually this over-complicated things and I just ended up getting stuck.
Do you ever have days when your body needs a longer time than usual to warm up when you start practicing? Perhaps there are moments when one hand is ready much sooner than the other. I know that on certain days my bow arm needs a LOT of extra time to “wake up” at the start of my first practice session. On other occasions, I feel like I’m accomplishing very little during my 20-min-long scale routine. Whenever I sense that it will be one of “those” days, I like to change up the entire fundamental routine. If you tend to experience something similar, are short on time, and/or just want to have a productive “bow day,” kick off your session with the following 5 bow exercises.
“Stress happens when the mind resists what is.” – Dan Millman
This quote jumped out and caught my attention as I was flipping through some books on sports psychology at the Barnes & Noble Cafe in Union Square. It was the middle of a busy audition season and I was fighting against my long history of performance anxiety and self-doubt.
I stared at this sentence and repeated the words over and over in my mind. “Of course! It’s so obvious,” I thought. Except it was anything but obvious in the spur of the moment. Instinctively, the fight or flight response had me “push away” nerves and “act tough” when placed in a stressful situation. My mind would try to resist the nerves, which in turn only created more stress, setting off a vicious, endless cycle. As the saying goes, resistance makes stronger. “Trying” to achieve something only creates a bigger obstacle by making the task at hand more challenging than it already is.
The concept about the relationship between the mind and stress can help us understand the first of the four principles of natural laws, as explained by world champion gymnast, martial artist, and author Dan Millman in his book Body Mind Mastery. Here’s a short summary of these principles and some of their roles in musical growth.
Continue reading “4 Principles of Natural Laws for Musicians”
Vibrato, Tension, & Performance Anxiety
Vibrato is like a musical fingerprint; it’s one of the aspects that distinguishes the sound between one string player and another, and can be developed indefinitely for as long as we play. It’s also one of the most difficult left hand techniques, both from a technical and musical standpoint…at least from personal experience; definitely ranking it among the top 5 for difficulty, if not #1! For some, vibrato is something that miraculously comes naturally. But for me, it’s always been this huge roadblock in my progression, especially during my undergraduate years in college.
Continue reading “Vibrato, Tension, and Performance Anxiety”
In part 1, we added diatonic and chromatic neighbor tones to a simple D-major scale ( click hereto review that first, if needed). Let’s expand and create turns for each note of the scale.
What will be your first scale of the new year? Do you ever feel that practicing scales becomes a bit stale after falling into a comfortable routine? I have to confess – some days I substitute my routine in favor of other kinds of exercises in order to feel fresh and engaged during the warm-up.
Some time ago, I was studying a chamber music piece from the Classical era in which the violin part had a section filled with embellishments – chromatic turns outlining descending arpeggios, to be specific. These ornaments caused me to stumble, and more than a few times. I was frustrated that a fairly “straight-forward” movement suddenly became very challenging. Any amount of routine scale practice (Galamian, Flesch, or Heifetz) wouldn’t have prepared me for this kind of passage. Instead of looking for an appropriate etude, I decided to come up with some new scale exercises.