In order to indicate the intended musical context of a composition with a universally recognisable vocabulary, composers all around the world (and from the ages past!) enjoy the use of certain expressions in one of the 3 main European languages: Italian, German, and French. Let’s start here with the most used terms in Italian, which makes up probably about 90% of all musical composer-musician dialogue! Enjoy discovering, and try them out at the tip of your tongue, too! It’s fun!
Accelerando - Accelerating
Adagio - Slow / at an easy pace
Affettuoso - Affectionately
Agitato - Agitatedly
Al / Alla - In the style of
Allargando - Broadening (Literally, large-ning)
Allegro / Allegretto - Happy (fast) / Moderately happy (moderately fast)
Andante / Andantino - At a walking pace / Somewhat at a walking pace (this can mean either slightly faster or slightly slower. The final decision of an exact speed needs to be decided by the context.)
Animato - Animatedly
Appassionato - Passionately
Arco - Change to playing with bow (after pizzicato/plucked section)
Arioso - Like an aria (very fluid, as if singing a love song)
Assai - Very
Attacca - ‘Attack’: Go the next section, without stopping (instead of leaving a pause before beginning). Composers sometimes use this to keep the transition between movements as seamless as possible.
Ben (+adjective) - Very (+adjective)
Brio - Vigour / vibrancy. Usually: Con (with) brio.
Cantabile / Cantando - Singing
Capriccioso - Funny, mischievous
Con / Col / Colla (+ verb/noun) - With the (+ verb/noun).
For example: Col legno (with the wood of the bow), con calma (calmly).
Comodo / Comodamente - Comfortably
Con (+ adjectvive / noun) - With (+ Adjective/noun). For example: con brio.
Crescendo - Gaining in volume (dynamics). Also written as cresc. in short form.
Da capo - From the top (literally, ‘from the head’). This appears after a section of repetition and the composer wants us to start again from the material at the top of the page.
Dal Segno- From the Sign (this can take many forms, but is usually represented by a highly stylised S-Shape).
Deciso - Decisively
Decrescendo / Diminuendo - Opposite of Crescendo. Waning in volume (dynamics). Literally, ‘diminishing’.
Delicato - Delicately
Dolce - Sweetly
Doloroso - Painfully
Energico - Energetically
Espressivo - Expressively
Facile - Easily
Fine - The end
Forte / Fortissimo - Strong dynamics (loud) / Very strong (very loud).
Forza - Force. For example, con forza (forcefully).
Fretta - Rushing
Fuoco - Fire. For example, con fuoco (With fire).
Furioso - Furiously
Giocoso - Playfully
Gioioso - Joyfully/ joyously
Grandioso - Grandly
Grave - Gravely. Darkly.
Grazioso - Gracefully
Impetuoso - Impetuously. Impatiently.
Lacrimoso - Tearfuly. Mournfully.
Largo / Larghetto - Broadly/ Somewhat broadly.
Legato- Smoothly. No audible break between notes.
Leggero / Leggiero - Lightly
Lento - Slowly
Liberamente - Freely
Maestoso - Majestically
Marcato - Marked (articulation on every note).
Meno (+Adjective/dynamic) - Less. For example, Meno mosso (less movement), meno forte (less loud).
Mezzoforte (MF) / Mezzopiano (MP) - Moderately loud (less than forte) / Moderately soft (more than piano)
Misterioso - Mysteriously
Moderato - Moderately paced
Molto - Very. Quite.
Morendo - Waning. Dying.
Mosso - Active, moving. Pushing. For example: più mosso (more active), meno mosso (less active).
Moto - Movement. (Con moto means with movement)
Nobile - Noble/nobly.
Non - Not. For example, allegro ma non troppo (quick but not too much).
Ostinato - Obstinately. To be played with very regular tempo and rhythm.
Parlando - As if talking (about an event, or to someone).
Pausa - Pause
Perdendosi - Losing oneself
Pesante - Heavily
Piangendo - Crying
Piano / Pianissimo - Gently, softly (also written as p) / Very gently, very softly (pp)
Piu’ - More
Pizzicato (Pizz.) - Played by plucking the string (instead of bowing)
Poco / Pochissimo - Little / Very Little.
Precipitando - Falling, stumbling, running into a higher pace. The effect is acceleration and loss of control.
Presto - At a quick pace
Prima / Primo - The first. For example, tempo primo (first indicated tempo).
Quasi - Almost. For example, quasi niente (almost nothing).
Rallentando - Slowing down
Rigoroso - Rigorously. Energetically.
Rinforzando - Reinforcing (gaining) in energy and speed
Risoluto - Resolute (very steady speed)
Ritardando - Slowing down
Ritenuto - Holding back
Ritmico - Rhythmically
Rubato - Taking time. Literally, ‘stealing’ time.
Scherzo / Scherzando - A joke / jokingly
Seconda / Secondo - The second. For example violino secondo (second violin/s).
Semplice - Simply
Sempre - Always
Senza - Without. For example, senza vibrato (without vibrato).
Segue - As before. Literally, ‘to follow’.
Sforzando - Usually written as sfz. Accented / strongly reinforced articulation.
Simile - Similar. (Like segue, but less commonly used.)
Slancio - Onward precipitation by force of inertia. Like accelerando, but less common.
Smorzando - Dampening/ refraining in general energy (speed, sound).
Sonoro - Resonant, with rich tone.
Sopra - Above
Sospirando - Sighingly (to imitate a singer’s voice - from a death scene, for example).
Sostenuto - Sustained sound and articulation
Spirito - Spirit, life, energy. Usually, con spirito.
Spiritoso - Mischievously
Staccato - Clearly detached notes. Opposite of legato.
Stringendo - Clearly detached notes. Opposite of legato.
Subito - Suddenly. For example, subito forte (sub. f), subito piano (sub. p).
Tacet - (Latin) Silence. For example, when a soloist is playing and the orchestra stays silent.
Tempo - Speed
Tenero - Tenderly
Tenuto - Same as Ritenuto - held. May be an instruction for either articulation or speed, or both.
Tranquillo - Tranquil. Calm.
Triste - Sad
Troppo - Too much. Usually seen in the combination: , ma non troppo (_, but not too much).
Tutti - Everyone (this follows a solo section where the accompaniment / orchestra stays silent - Tacet).
Veloce - Quick
Vigoroso - Vigorous
Vivace / Vivo - Vivacious / Lively. (Also, very fast.)
Voce - Voice
With various students I’ve tried different methods over the years to make the reading of the dots and lines on the page as accessible as possible. The verdict? All it takes is some good old mathematical logic, and a little intellectual ‘elbow grease’ to get into the grind of things, and surely enough, things start to make sense the moment we start stringing up all this information together, in the form of a simple piece! let’s start with some self-discovery to help illustrate what we’re really dealing with :)
STEP 1:
A little self-awareness experiment.
Take a look at your hands. Give every single finger a wiggle, up-down and left-right, trying your best to move that single finger and nothing else. What do you notice? Which two neighbouring fingers seem to always be affecting the other?
Maybe you’ve got it right, so here’s the answer! The middle and ring fingers, being the two center fingers, have a shared nerve which makes them naturally bound to the other’s movements. This poses a unique challenge to all instrument-playing musicians, but not to worry! We have plenty of ways to develop finger independence in our learning process! Also, if you happen to have all the other fingers wiggle in unison with whichever single finger you were trying to control individually, fret not! Me too, if I’m being honest :)))
💪💪💪
So, the whole point of this little experiment was to illustrate why we place our fingers the way we do on the violin, and at VSG, this is what we call the ‘neutral’ or ‘normal’ first position. It looks a little something like this:
notice the natural spaces between each of the fingers?
Whilst the middle two fingers touch, the first two fingers and the last two fingers don’t! This gives us the natural configuration of the first-position hand: denoted by numbers per finger, starting with 1 for the index finger: 1__23__4 😜
And voilà, we’ve just discovered the most important basis for finding our notes on the violin! CONGRATS FOR MAKING IT UNTIL HERE!!!
Step 2:
Understand that every finger-space represents the ‘home’ of a note.
just imagine…
each note living in its very own home, and a whole long staircase to join them all up. And, much like real houses, not all notes occupy the same amount of space - something that we measure in ‘steps’. Lucky for us, the combinations all start from half- or whole-steps. As soon as we learn to recognise this, learning to read and to understand the relationships between notes becomes easy… all we need to do is to count the number of half- or whole- steps!
Step 3:
Understand how all of this fits into musical notation
Broadly speaking, the notes that we play are easily recognised in the form of the piano keyboard. You might be thinking, ‘but I’m here for the violin! What does that have to do with the piano?’, and to that, I’ll say, give it a minute! The convenience that the presentation of the piano keyboard offers us is the simple spelling-out of all the half- and whole-steps we’d ever need to understand the way music is written on paper, and it helps that everything is laid out, well, in black and white! Let us consider the piano keyboard at the bottom of this following diagram:
Let’s first ignore all the indications coloured in red for now. Looking at the arrangement of the black and white keys of the piano keyboard, we quickly observe the emergence of a recurring pattern - 2 black keys to each other (I like to think of them as two little front teeth), followed by 3 black keys, and so on! Where we have no black keys separating the white keys on the keyboard, the distance between these two next-door white-key neighbours is considered a half-step. On the violin, we create this next-door relationship by having two fingertips line up next to each other, touching, on the fingerboard. Easy enough, so far!
Now, what’s important to note is that any single sideways movement on the piano keyboard, stepwise, is similarly counted as a half-step. This includes a white key going to a black key, and vice versa. But the music that we play isn’t only composed of single sideways steps! In order to quickly and efficiently create the other sort of standard measurement that we briefly mentioned before, all we need is to separate the two interested fingers at their base (in the palm) and create just enough breathing space to introduce a small window between the two fingertips, thereby creating a full step! Now, this all sounds very simple, in theory, but as our current VSG-ers can attest, being able to successfully and reliably pull up a full step between two fingers takes a lot of method, and practice! But that’s of course what I’m here for, to make your life easier by accompanying your violin-playing adventure with constant guidance and heartfelt encouragement! But, you get the point :)
Now, there’s obviously a lot more that goes into actually being able to read the music in front of you, and to understand what you’re seeing. But for now, I think this is more than enough information to start, but if you want to know more, why not get in touch with me, Cheryl, and see how I can help you along your very own violin-learning journey, in as logical and enjoyable a way as possible, all while living the beautifully diverse life you already have?
Write in to violinstudiogeneva@gmail.com and be sure to add our address to your contacts page, in order to be sure you get our response (and not have it lost in spam, for example… sounds funny enough, but it’s happened before).
But above all, ENJOY your time here with us, and HAPPY PRACTISING!!!
X.O.
Progressing in our violin-learning journey, we often find ourselves needing a little more in the way of supporting materials, be they exercise books, étude anthologies, or just some good new strings to give our instruments a new ‘breath’. Here’s a slowly growing list of merchants I’ve had positive experiences with over the years, and in this very special part of the world where not all mega-online-retailers manage to ship things to :) ENJOY!
1) For books / music scores: SHEET MUSIC PLUS
This is a US-based sheet music source for the serious learner. They stock all kinds of method books and prints of the most-used classics such as collections of the Bach Solo Violin Partitas, Beethoven Piano Sonatas, etc. A fantastic resource offering great prices, and even with low-cost shipping (considering that much of their printed material comes from the US! I don’t remember which postage company they use, but what I do remember is always getting a knock on the door and having everything I order from them hand-delivered, with SMS-updates and all… even during COVID times, so this is certainly a service we can all appreciate! Just remember to wash your hands after you’ve removed and discarded the packaging :)
The link HERE will bring you to a credit-based referral system where a small amount of what you spend ends up in my account too, without affecting your final payment in any way, so that I can continue looking for amazing violin projects for all of you!!
Build your musical library over the years and enjoy the fruits of your labour!
2) For violin accessories: THOMANN and GEAR 4 MUSIC
These are two German- and UK-based online shops that offer a huge (and I mean, HUGE!) selection of all things you could possibly think of needing for your violin.. and perhaps even your violin itself! Although I really do not recommend buying a stringed instrument as sensitive as the violin from an online source without being able to try several variants of the same model and then being able to choose your favourite, I do appreciate the choices of accessories these two websites offer in the way of cleaning cloths, case/instrument humidifiers, and all that find stuff. Heck, you might even find an electrical adaptor for your Italian pizza oven!! Just saying :) They each have a slightly different selection of specific models of everything, so give them both a look! Thomann and Gear 4 Music links here :)
3) For Strings, and quickly: Violin-shop.ch
A ‘local’ Lucerne-based business, they offer local shipping charges and timings (YAY!) and strings and accessories at reasonable prices. Who knew?! I stumbled upon their online shop looking for a very specific Corelli E-string upon recommendation by someone else, and my first searches led me only to faraway shops based in other continents, and the necessity for bulk-orders and exaggerated shipping prices. And then I found this little corner, which not only had the strings, but also allowed me to order just a few to try them out before developing a taste for them :) But nevermind my Corelli adventure, here’s a direct link to the strings we have always loved - the Dominant strings for G, D and A. A word to the wise - whenever possible, spend a little more on the Silver-mounted G and D strings… your violin will thank you later. Also, as a general rule, we steer clear of the Dominant E strings, so enter the Corelli E strings (Crystal was good for a while, but I highly recommend using the Alliance model now, for its sweet richness).
Aaaand that’s it for now! Hope you find this list of shops helpful for the next time you need a learning / accessory upgrade, and leave a comment here to help others hear about your own experiences, too!
In the meantime, stay safe everyone, and HAPPY PRACTISING!!!!
X.O.
As we’re increasingly feeling the weight of halting our engagement in activities outside of the home in an effort to curb the rampant spread of the Coronavirus, here’s a crazy list of programmes to follow from home, thanks to the magic of streaming, live or on-demand. And, as art isn’t just entertainment (or, certainly not the art we’re involved in), take a look, pick a few to try out, and who knows, you might even discover something you didn’t know about this vast internal world we call ‘the arts’!
Here’s just to name a few -
From Russia
Moscow’s Bolshoi Theatre:
Revel in the genius of Russian artistic excellence, with
6 of its most popular productions made available to us, dubbed ‘the Golden Collection’ will be available on its Youtube channel - Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty, Nutcracker. Honestly, I haven’t found them, but to be fair, I only gave it about 2 minutes while I got distracted by clicking on other videos… (for example… La fille du pharaon looks AMAZING! I’d love to watch its entirety some day.)
The Theatre also be showing us some the Bolshoi’s most popular productions: The Tsar’s Bride (oops, they did it two days ago now), Marco Spada (a première: April 4), Boris Godunov (April 7) and The Nutcracker (April 10). These upcoming performances will go live at 7pm Moscow time and will be available online for 24 hours.
From Europe:
The Vienna State Opera announces on its website that:
‘‘starting Sunday, 15 March 2020, Wiener Staatsoper will broadcast recordings of previous opera and ballet performances daily via its streaming platform www.staatsoperlive.com – worldwide and [several] free of charge’’. After a quick registration on its sleek livestream page, a detailed calendar is immediately available, elaborating the available programmes until the end of June. The programmed streaming for the month of April comprise of past productions of some of the great classics - L’Elisir d’amour, Le Nozze di Figaro, Cinderella , La Bohème, Elektra, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Ariodante, Parsifal, etc.
Paid viewing is also possible for certain productions, with prices start from 14 Euro per event, or 16.90 Euro per monthly subscription, if I’ve understood correctly… considering that entrance to an actual opera production in Geneva would easily cost double for audience members without a student discount, I’d say it’s a steal. Plus, you can cuddle up in your PJ’s with a glass of wine in hand and enjoy the production from home… what more could you want?
NB: televised programmes remain available only for 24 hours, so take a look to see if something catches your eye, before it’s taken down!
Bavarian State Opera in Munich states:
‘After the cancellation of all performances at the Bayerische Staatsoper from March 11 to April 19, we provide individual performances as live streams on www.staatsoper.tv and as video-on-demand.
Programme includes: Parsifal, Lucia di Lammermoor, Il Trovatore, etc as well as its weekly ‘Monday Concert’ series… and can be streamed directly from their website without account registration
Opera Europa, the professional association of opera companies and festivals in Europe, is happy to participate!
The first thing I clicked on at the production viewing platform, OperaVision, turned out to be Alceste from the legendary Teatro La Fenice in Venice!!! I might have passed by this historical opera house on my one trip there, but never entered. It airs this evening, and I might tune in just to see how the theatre looks like from the inside. And then, perhaps, allow myself to be transported by composer Gluck’s mastery of melody. Next up, Guillaume Tell on the 7th of April.
The Paris Opera, according to Vogue Magazine,
‘will be putting its most beautiful shows from its archives online free of charge. From Don Giovanni to Swan Lake and The Tales of Hoffmann, there are many great classics to see or rediscover from home’
Next up on their programme: The Barber of Seville, for the entire week April 6-12.
More information on their website here
The Finnish National Opera and Ballet:
invites us to their online platform, Stage24, to browse their rich programme offering. Did you know, for example, that the Little Mermaid has been staged as a ballet production? (Worth noting, though, that it’s also narrated in Finnish, no subtitles, but it doesn’t really matter, given it’s a ballet!)
From the UK
The Royal Opera House announces that
raising its virtual curtains to the ‘culturally curious’ with weekly opera and ballet productions every Friday
These include: Acis and Galatea (April 3), Cosi’ fan’ tutte (April 10), etc.
Opera North
has made the entire Wagner Ring Cycle (cue Norse mythology + Lord of the Rings) available to us mortal beings!!! Many things to criticise about aesthetic choices, but, can we just stop and admire the fact that someone actually offered it up for free viewing? Respect.
… And here’s a little palate-cleanser for anyone wanting a little change from this immense list:
National Theater Live
is offering live-captured plays including Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, Treasure Island, Jane Eyre. Beginning on April 2, audiences can watch a number of NT Live’s live-captured productions for free via the National Theatre’s YouTube channel. Every Thursday at 7pm UK time, a production filmed in front of an audience in the theatre will be streamed and made available for a week.
There’s so much to discover that there’s no time to complain of boredom being stuck at home!
Happy viewing, STAY SAFE, and don’t forget that we WILL get out of this eventually, so keep working your violin, and we’ll catch up in person, hopefully soon!
XO. Cheryl.
do what you love.. and preferably with people (or animals) you love!!!
Had a full day at school or work and now you’ve come home with an exhausted body and tired mind, but still want to practise a little on the violin so that you keep progressing? Renouncing on practicing altogether seems at first to be the first choice, but it quickly turns out that NOT practising for more than 3 days can easily give way into a whole myriad of troubles with catching up, personal frustration, and very simply, just more fatigue in general. Indeed, not having a regular practice schedule quickly reveals itself as a short-term non-solution with real, very annoying, long-term consequences, as those of us who have gone more than 3 days away from the violin can testify.
What to do?
Follow these steps outlined here can help you quickly get back on track, and soon be playing your favourite pieces to your heart’s content!
1) If starting exhausted, the very first thing to do is to acknowledge that you are, in fact, exhausted. Denial will not be a friend here. But practising tired has a very therapeutic effect, if done right! Before starting, take a good stretch on your back, arm and neck muscles, and breathe a heavy and happy sigh of relief that this is your time now, for you! And then, perhaps, make yourself a strong cup of tea (with honey?), and know that this is the time to go into relaxed focus. (We learn much better and efficiently in this state, whereas anxiety will trigger the brain’s inclination towards CANCELLING the whole experience, and that’s definitely NOT what we want to happen with our hard-earned practice progress!!!)
2) Now that you’re ready, pick 1 or 2 purely mechanical things to work on / learn (technique and scales are our best tools here), and set the bar at a manageable level. Next, without compromising on the highest quality of concentration and of sound production, do 3 repetitions of this small technique and pause to re-evaluate. Figure out what needs to change in order to get those repetitions perfect each time, with no hurry but with a quiet certainty. When the technique is stable, there are a couple of things we can do to master it: Adding the number of repetitions when 3 is easy; raising the speed up a notch for precision and strength; switching up bowing combinations…. every item on this list makes the technical work seem so much more challenging, and the moment you master one and feel the exhilaration rushing through you, congratulate yourself, because you have just entered the positive cycle of self-motivation!!!
3) Picking 1 or 2 small sections of a musical piece (we don’t call them songs anymore) you are working on, perhaps a 4-bar phrase or 2-bar transitional passage, work in the same way! Choosing a speed, or tempo, that is comfortable but not TOO comfortable, work on small sections first by dealing with the mechanical aspects, and then the musical aspects (like vibrato, for example). Work for real stability: after having ‘nailed it’, and celebrated a little maybe because it was the first time you managed to play through the passage without hesitating, repeat as necessary in order to make it ‘your own’: so that you would be able to pick up the violin and play it anywhere, without needing to squint at the fingerings on the page. In a sense, it’s learning the music by heart, but it’s much more than just memorising the movements - it truly is LEARNING the music! When we KNOW the music, we can switch our brains off (from fear, doubt and anxiety) a little a finally enjoy ourselves in the process of playing it for others!!
So that’s how it goes!
When you’ve practiced effectively, you feel stronger at the end of each session, and much happier inside, because our instinct for productivity has been satisfied, and there’s no better feeling in the world!
Next practice session, it’s wash, rinse, repeat, but only after checking very quickly that the items from the last practice session are holding their shape! Remember, it should be a quick check, not a repetition of the last session, since, we want to move on! This makes the quality of each practice session so much more valuable, and practising becomes a little more demanding, but so much more satisfying!!!
and, after having all this information, know also that …
you’re not alone!
If you’re a member of our current class, let the Practice Logs help you along!
Or, let the community help you (cue Facebook), reach out to the other learners around you, and don’t be afraid to learn through your mistakes! That’s how we all grow.
GOOD LUCK, AND HAPPY PRACTISING!!!
X.O.
Travelling all the time without too much time to stop and regroup?
We’ve all been there, what with easy travel options and the need to get away from city life… but the violin experience doesn’t have to stop when you leave your town of residence!
Violin progress seems to come to such a standstill for every one of us every time we take a break from lessons. And since lesson time is so precious, we do almost nothing else than to focus almost exclusively on how to make our fingers and arms function better on the fingerboard and bow… that there’s barely any time at all to talk about everything else outside of the violin lesson - and that’s where the real experience starts!
So then, it follows quite logically that when we don’t have time with the violin, we are presented with a special opportunity to work on the other aspects of our musical literacy and culture - things like note-identification and understanding the anatomy of scales (so that we’re not drawing a mental blank when we are on the violin, and can in fact focus on where our fingers, and not why they go where they go)!
And we like these special opportunities on the bus/train/plane! Considering that a concerto usually lasts anywhere between 25 minutes to an hour (I might be wrong, so please correct me), instead of playing Candy Crush for hours on end and then hating yourself (we’ve all been there) for having literally gotten nowhere with our time, how about discovering a little Beethoven, or Bach, or Tchaikovsky? The added advantage to this is that, with our headphones on, we hear so much more than what a crappy laptop/phone speaker could ever offer. Double-win!
So, instead of rambling on about the benefits of learning on the go…. here are some truly awesome resources I personally love that can help grow our musical awareness, in an inspiring and very enjoyable way!
1) Youtube Inspiration from the Masters of the violin
Go to the section ‘Our Idols’ on the homepage of the VSG website. There’s a reason this section is named like this. Pick a musician, or a composer, or an instrument, and start exploring! You never know what you’ll find if you don’t start looking! So go ahead, and enjoy the legacy these great humans have left for us.
2) Work on your Music Theory!
A fantastic online resource can be found here: https://www.musictheory.net/lessons. They even have a mobile app that costs very little, but I’ve been told it’s only available right now on Apple phones. Boo. But the good news is, with a computer and an internet connection, you can learn just about anything from note-identification to Roman numeral musical analysis! I only wish I had this when I was a young’un. Never too late, though!!!
3) Listen to Podcasts to see what other musicians are up to
Nathan Cole and his wife Akiko Tarumoto have a funny, honest, and very self-effacing sense of humour in their podcast Stand Partners for Life. As important members of the LA Philharmonic Orchestra, they know what they’re talking about when it comes to conductors, orchestra etichette, and growing up in very different environments as young musicians. Of the several channels that are available around the internet, this is the one I most highly recommended.
https://www.natesviolin.com/the-stand-partners-for-life-podcast/
. . .
So that’s it for now!
Find the thing or the people that inspire you most, and, who knows, you just might be well on your way to building your very own personal, robust, very lively, musical culture! No more stunned silences when the conversation leaves the world of finance and politics… you’re going to have so much to contribute (and educate the others around you about), now!
ENJOY, BE INSPIRED, AND HAPPY PRACTISING!!!
Picking up an instrument for the first time and expecting to be able to play it in a short amount of time is no joke, especially when it’s your VERY FIRST playing experience! Follow these 3 pointers and you’ll be off on a better start than before you chanced upon this information!
1) Be prepared to accept that playing is an ACTIVE experience!
Most first-timers (adult students, I’m looking directly at you!) associate PLAYING (active) with their past experiences of LISTENING (passive), which are two distinctly different activities. Sure, we do need to listen intently (but actively!) while playing, especially in a group, but you’ll soon learn that, with the instrument in hand, your attention needs to become laser-focused!
2) Muscles take some time to learn even the simplest movements!
It may not seem obvious, but our bodies are made of living organic material (as opposed to steel machine parts)… haha! What I mean by this is that we often build up a mental ideal that’s so far removed from reality that the only thing left after is guaranteed disappointment.
Especially when dealing with your first instrument experience ever, let go of your crazy expectations, find out first what your arms and body want to do naturally, and then course-correct from there. Relax, be curious, and you’ll find that with much less stress, you’ll quickly be on your way to one of the most exciting personal discoveries you could imagine!
3) Our bodies need some preparation
As an extension to the previous point, our bodies aren’t made to function like machines. Instead, what we DO have is supple tissue, ready to be shaped by whatever tasks we decide to pick up, on a regular basis! That said, before the shaping begins, we want to make sure we start with minimal tensions, accumulated stress, etc, as far as we can manage. In practical terms, this means that if we’re coming from a long day of work and we’re setting up for our lesson on a Friday evening (some of you may be laughing right now!), take the luxury of a stretch, a yawn, anything to get the oxygen circulating again in your knees, back, and shoulders! Your body’s going to thank you for this, and believe it or not, so will your sound! Do the right thing, stand up now from your desk, and swing your arms around a little!
(If nobody’s looking, GO CRAZY and turn it into a full-blown dance party!)
Stay healthy, keep your bodies happy, and talk soon!
X.O.
Learning to play the violin as an adult is a daunting task - if you do it alone! But, just because we're no longer attending compulsory formal education doesn't mean we stop growing as a human being. And what's interesting is that, whether we already read music (because we were among the lucky few who had the chance for music education as a child) or not (perhaps because LIFE IS LIFE), we tend to understand the process of going through life in terms of emotional content.
I'm not talking about swinging between ups and downs, although that does tend to happen in extreme situations! I'm talking about the colourful imagery that springs to mind when certain labels are called up. Think: blue sky, sour lemon…. And it's not just a question of colour! We naturally swim in an ocean of shape, texture, taste….. And honestly, right now, all I'm dreaming of now is an ice-cold strawberry milkshake… (my tummy's beginning to stir… help!!!)
Imagine being a trained musician (even an amateur one, but trained!), who hears the word Russia and all you can think about is Tchaikovsky's immensely lush, generous, and so very rousing harmonies; try to imagine having the depth to appreciate the rigours of Bach's mathematical genius for structure, but also the amazement at the poetry so tightly ensconced in his apparent 'severity'… imagine being a little rascal hopping among the wildflowers among the bees, being yelled at by your mother to come inside before you get in trouble… you would have embodied the spirit of the eternally youthful Mozart from the time he wrote Le nozze di Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro). So you see, learning to understand this other dimension in life.. Is really not far away from what we already know.
But learning to listen, and learning to play the music we love, are two very different endeavours.
The violin, for all its incredible Baroque beauty, can be a devilish instrument of torture, if not handled properly. The set-up of the left arm below and around it, the pursuit of true finger dexterity, and then learning to use this powerhouse which is our bow arm… is something that needs some significant expert guidance. Especially if you're not the kind of person who actively goes looking for physical injury.
And because LIFE IS LIFE, yours truly has had the unique opportunity of having developed, and then overcome, an almost crippling bout of tendinitis in the left side of my body. It's a work in progress to keep it completely at bay, but such a revealing schooling on how to use the body gently but effectively! Especially since, in this hyper-connected world, we tend to spend more time at the computer than not, and it's pretty obvious by now that this is the hell we have chosen in order to get ahead in life. If you're already thinking of learning to play the violin, or to continue your journey without forgetting the wellness of your physical body, why not try it out with someone who's already made the mistakes we all make, and streamline the learning process in order to enjoy life to the fullest?
Don't be fooled, the violin is not an easy instrument to learn to play, and convincingly. I could name some very famous people who didn't even get to the 'convincing' part, but let's keep that conversation behind closed doors, shall we? So if you're in it to fill in another line in your CV, and, I kid you not, I have met people like this and wonder why they didn't just boast about their symbolic 'gym membership' instead, I'd invite you to just stick to the 'gym membership'.
But if you're in it for the sounds and the fluidity in breathing and body movements, and the excitement of surmounting ever-bigger personal challenges, you're exactly where you need to be! Get in touch with me and let my eye for detail nudge you through your own learning process, and meet some amazing people on the go.
Let me and your extended circle of 'classmates' accompany your journey based on your personal schedule, specific interests… Hell, we even had a song from Maroon 5 in one of our first classes! I mean, since LIFE IS LIFE, everyone is so uniquely different. Let the violin speak for you, and you will thank yourself later for having taken this opportunity to give it a go.
Much love.
