On Learning Violin
I have had the opportunity to talk to many people in all different stages of their musical journey. One of the most common things I hear is how paradoxical the violin feels when just starting out. Common questions like “How am I supposed to be able to relax my hand in such a position?” or I even remember wondering “How do I relax while playing with passion or intensity?” And there seems to be almost no way around it; the violin is not played in a natural position for the body, nor is it guaranteed to feel more comfortable the longer you play it. I hope to provide some helpful guidance in this blog to get the violin to feel more natural in your hands so you can worry less about injury, and enjoy playing. Everybody’s body is different and nothing I tell you will take the place of experimenting with your own body. I can, however, hopefully speed up the process by telling you what I found most important to focus on while you learn. Some valuable things to keep in mind is that it is very important to separate tasks while learning. It is impossible and impractical to expect yourself to learn everything at once. Separate focus; zoom in on one thing as much as possible.
I also want to state of utmost importance: play things that you enjoy and keep your passion for the instrument and music above playing “perfectly”, or playing only things that do not bring joy like scales/etudes.
I’ll start by telling a very brief summary of my time playing violin. I started with some teachers who were not as interested in my form as (looking back) I might have liked. It would be easy to say I developed bad habits but what I really want to focus on is that I developed unnecessary tension in a lot of different areas of my playing. It didn’t feel so bad through college and it wasn’t until I started touring and performing literally every night for up to two months in a row that I soon found that my form needed to change. There were very obvious warning signs. Pain in my wrists and arms. So much tension.
I play violin for the folk band The Riverside, and it provided an important opportunity that humbled me a lot: listening to myself play. The first album I recorded with them was Oregon to Virginia. Listening back to that particular album is difficult for me because I hear the tension in my playing. It comes out in a super tight and jarring vibrato. That is the place you can hear it most but it affected every part of my playing. That is when I decided that I wanted to change. So I went back to the beginning. I pretended that I knew nothing of violin and I sought out what the most professional violinists do for their amazing sound. I watched masterclasses, and it didn’t take me long to see that the bow is THE MOST important part of playing the violin. It makes sense, you can forgive a singer if they sing a note slightly out of tune but you still feel the emotion they are trying to convey. The same is true for violin, the bow is what conveys the emotion. This particular video of Rey Chen says it very well (and I highly recommend his other videos as well): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEF4ALva7ak
That all said, one of the best things you can do for learning what tones you can create is just long slow bow strokes. Make sure the bow is perpendicular to the strings. Use a mirror. Try different places between the bridge and fingerboard. See just how long you can make the bow last. Experiment!
The next thing I decided I wanted to tackle was my left hand. It was a super difficult, discouraging and, a somewhat scary time. I understood that the things that were wrong with my left hand were rooted in the form that allowed me to play in tune and get by with my playing. It is hard to overstate the dread that I felt when I decided to fix my left hand. I tackled this at a time when we had a while before the next tour started (thankfully). I just found videos and tried what they suggested. I had to go very small bits at a time and anytime my hand started going back to old habits I had to stop, release and try again. It is important to keep in your head why you are going through the steps to improve. For me my main goal was for better vibrato, but I’ve found it improved so much more than that.
These are the steps that really helped me improve. I understand it may not be the same for everybody especially as I will admit that even though I felt like I “started over” in my playing in order to fix the issues I encountered. Having the background of playing is different from stepping into the violin with no background. You cannot learn unless you try. I would recommend if you are just starting, get a teacher for a while so that they can help you with the basics in person and maybe you can avoid some of my pitfalls! Happy violining!
Feel free to ask me any questions! Email them to me at chase@chasetheviolinist.com