The violin can be an incredibly rewarding instruments to play.

For beginners, the road to success is riddled with lessons in patience

and discipline, but when met with enthusiasm and the right guidance, the journey is certainly worthwhile! Many say that practice
makes perfect, and while of course regular practice is a must, it does not guarantee perfection in fact, improper practice can yield
consistently poor results. So what are the fundamental hallmarks of proper violin practice, and how can you use your practice time
productively? In this article wed like to shed some light in this area and take you through a few tips that are important for beginners to
understand for improvement.

1. Private Violin Lessons

When learning to play the violin, the best place to start is by signing up for one-on-one violin lessons. Choosing a teacher is no easy
task, but a few things to consider are the teachers:

Understanding of the violins mechanics

Knowledge of universal music and repertoire

Personal playing skills

Communication strength

Above all these characteristics, the most important thing to consider is the teachers understanding of the learning process it must
correlate with where you are as a student and your ability to learn. Naturally, private lessons are valued for their personal
developmental qualities and progress, especially when it comes to younger students.

2. When and Where you Practice

Ideally, practicing the violin should be done in your personal prime time, when you feel most fresh and focused. For some this
might be first thing in the morning; for others maybe its in the evening, right after school or work. Try following a routine that
accommodates your natural energy peaks or dips. If, for example, you feel drained during a long practice session, try splitting your
practicing into two shorter sessions. Whatever the case, make sure that youre practicing consistently. Also, keep your environment
where youre playing in mind, as well. Make sure youre in a quiet space that allows for minimal interruptions.

3. Practice Accessories
Take a few moments to gather all the materials you may need before starting your practice session. This doesnt just mean your
music and violin you may also want to set up your stand according to your preferred position (sitting vs. standing), as well as sharp
pencil to mark tricky passages and fingerings. If you prefer to play the violin while seated, use a chair with sufficient support to assist
your posture slouching only leads to poor violin tone!

4. Practice Length
When it comes to your violin practice sessions, its less about how long youre practicing for and more about what youre achieving
in each session. Sure, repetition of exercises can be helpful, but be careful that it doesnt become mindless! Mindless practice can
lead to the reinforcement of mistakes. Keep your practice sessions at a length that you can maintain concentration at this way,
quality will trump quantity, and thats what your aim should be.

5. Get Limber
Improved violin playing, solid practice sessions, and core disciplines all work together. While warming up with exercises or scales
and trills can begin to feel like a chore after a while, theyre crucial to strengthening your fingers before any proper playing can begin.
Practice holding your bow before even picking up your violin and when you do start practicing, ensure that you relax your bow
hand in between exercises by vigorously shaking out tension without the bow in your hand.

6. Practice More Scales

You have two options when learning a new scale: academic or physical. The academic approach relies on you being comfortable
with looking at the music, learning the signature key, and then figuring out the relative minor and major keys. The physical approach
can be a little more exciting it relates to feeling the occurring tones and semitones by observing the spaces between fingers. Either
way, you should practice all scales slowly and in detail until there is no clumsiness.
Many people tend to rush through areas of difficulty; instead, learn how to play a challenging scale or piece slowly until you get it
right, and then speed it up. Another tip is to try practicing scales in front of a mirror this will help you simultaneously develop a few
other techniques, like the correct arm positioning during shifts or wrist flexibility.

7. Games for Beginners

There are many bow exercises you can start doing to improve how you play the violin in terms of grip and posture, and many of them
can be done without the use of a violin at all! This is one of our favorites:
Step 1: Hold the bow out horizontally in front of your body.
Step 2: Assume the proper bow hold.
Step 3: Start to alternatively push your first finger down, dipping the bow down a tad to the left.
Step 4: Now push your little finger down, dipping the bow down to the right.
Step 5: Try keeping your fingers bent while repeating this movement several times.
Thats it! Upon repetition youll start to experience the benefits of your newly-found finger strength, flexibility, and bow balance!

8. Listen to Yourself
Its a good idea to record yourself while you practice playing the violin. Take time to consider areas that you are doing well in and
areas that sound like they need improvement for example, are you missing tones, or not quite getting the rhythm right? Recording
your practice sessions also helps you document your development and gets you more comfortable with the idea of performance.

9. Listen to Others
To help you stay in tune, its important that you improve your ear by listening to the pieces youre learning daily. Youll need to hear
how an accomplished violinist handles things like style, pitch, rhythm, and tone. By listening to these pieces daily, you will be
developing your own ear. Worried you dont have time? Simply make it a part of your daily routine try listening to great violin
music while you work out, cook, or during your commute.
As you do this, try to get in a variety of both passive and active listening. Passive listening includes the above, as well as going to
inspirational concerts and live performances. Active listening, on the other hand, consists of listening to these pieces with your violin
and bow in hand. While actively listening, you can work through details relative to tune. Its important that you listen intently, to a
point that you can hum, sing, or whistle the tunes precisely, identifying downbeats and timing with accuracy.
If youre a beginner, we strongly recommend giving some of these tips a try for progress in the way you play the violin. Perfection
wont happen overnight, but productive practice will surely improve your skill over time.
One of the most satisfying feelings comes from viewing the end product of your labour. Artists such as painters, sculptors, writers and
photographers, for example, have physically tangible products to show for their work. For musicians, the sense of accomplishment has a
different quality. Music is an art that exists in the moment, inseparable from the performer in time. Even recordings can only be experienced

in the flow of the now. Funny thing is, most of every musicians labour goes into practice.

I wonder if this ethereal quality of music is why musicians spend a disproportionate amount of time practising compared with actual
performing for live audiences. In a way, like dancers and actors, we are the product. Yes, we study and train for our art, but more than
anything else, we just practise. Love it or not, the not-so-gentle Art of Practice is a significant part of musicians expertise and life.

1.SlowPractice/FastPractice
Every musician knows the necessity and value of practising slowly, learning to perfect a piece at an achievable speed. Making the
connection with the music at the normal tempo is not as simple. It requires a different kind of practice: fast playing is not just slow playing
speeded up. Performing a passage quickly requires additional skills, such as finger preparation, economy of motion, thinking ahead and
learning some new ways of playing. Many techniques take on different qualities at speed. Certain types of staccato bowstrokes, for example,
must be executed with the rapid springing of the bow rather than deliberate finger pinches originating at the bowhold.

Posture, bowhold and left hand skills that appear adequate for slow playing may not work well for quick playing. Stiffness in the elbow or
fingers and excessive movement of the bow arm hampers fast bowstrokes and string crossings. Habitually raising fingers too high above the
fingerboard limits the speed with which they can be accurately placed and causes poor coordination with the bow.

2.OnlyWorkonWhatNeedsImproving
A little story In the early days I was perplexed by the unusual progress of two of our young students. Despite learning new pieces quickly
and keeping up all of the preceding pieces, their playing style and technique constantly lagged behind. Each week at lessons I had to go
over one of the fundamental techniques with them again often the identical one. Correcting the same problems over and over is
discouraging for everyone. I couldnt work it out: their lovely dedicated parents, well-educated professionals, worked conscientiously with
them every day at home. No matter how carefully and thoroughly we went over the point with the mothers and students in the lesson, things
didnt really get better in proportion to the practice they were doing.

Eventually through trial and error, we discovered a solution. Notwithstanding the consternation of their parents, I resolved to feature both
students as soloists in a concert later in the year. So each week after the group class several of our teachers and I conducted a rehearsalmasterclass for them and other students. In this friendly public setting we identified a specific point for each performer to practice during the
week. Over several months, the combination of focused attention and the irresistible power of social proof watching other students
improving had the desired effect. Their solos at the concert were delightful!
Children naturally enjoy practising the music they already know and play well. Its the means by which we learn musicality, freeing the
attention to focus on expression alone. New skills are a different matter. Finding and working on challenging parts is the pathway to real
progress in technique. I joke with my students that good musicians are happiest when they discover the really difficult passages. And its
true. As frustrating as these parts can be, they are the cutting edge of our skills and abilities, providing a clear vision of what needs to
improve in our playing.
I teach parents and students to identify and isolate the part that needs improving as precisely as possible. Is it difficult because of an
awkward shift, a tricky string crossing, a speed problem, troublesome intonation or a particular bow technique? Correctly solving these
problems makes students better players and fixes future pieces.

3.PractisewithRecordings
Unless you can go to live concerts regularly, recorded performances of the great players provide us with golden models for study. On a good
audio system you can listen again and again to great interpretations from the worlds top musicians of the music you are studying, a feat that
was impossible just a few generations ago. Suzuki took this a step further by teaching students to play along with these recordings,
absorbing the styles, phrasing and tempos of professionals, much in the same way as Leonardo da Vincis apprentices absorbed his painting
styles and techniques by imitating and replicating his masterpieces.
When done correctly and consistently, this daily practice habit produces the fluent ability to perform securely and confidently without
stumbles.

4.SetTimeGoalsforYourPracticeSessions
I often hear this advice: the quality of practice is more important the quantity. Its true, of course. Half an hour of good concentrated practice
is more valuable than an hour of sawing mindlessly away without a clear purpose. Nevertheless the reality is that we can fool ourselves into
thinking that our short sessions are sufficient because we practised the important things. Ive done it myself all too often.
The quantity of practice is important too. The first hour is essentially warming up maintenance. In the second hour you can start to make
progress, and after another hour or two there comes a point when you feel like you can play almost anything. The strings begin to feel silky
smooth, the bow moves freely and you become able to create subtle and minute differences in pitch, shape, colour and rhythm.

5.UseRepetitionFearlessly
How often have you worked on a troublesome section in a piece trying to get it right only to have the same frustrating problem appear the
next day? It certainly applies to me. Correct and sufficient repetition is the foundation of good practice. Like the magic third hour, its a kind of
musicians secret that must be discovered by personal experience. Until a student has achieved lasting improvement for themselves through
enough correct repetitive practice on a small section, they wont realize its transformative power. Suzuki taught the fearless use of big
numbers and would often instruct, practise this 10,000 times, which meant, keep going until it is part of you. (Read my embarrassing post
on violinist.com)

Thanks for coming to Teach Suzuki Violin. I hope you have a really great week. If youre a member, please add your voice to the newly
opened Members Forum, accessible through the Member Dashboard. Already theres a question there needing your answers. New
members are welcome!
Cheers,