During the past 2 weeks I've been talking to a lot of my students about counterbalancing. When you're holding the violin, you have a violin and an arm sticking out in front of you, so in order to be in balance, you have to sit back a bit and feel like you have weight in back of you to counterbalance the violin and arm sticking out in front.
If you're playing the violin, you can still play fairly well if you don't do this. If you're playing the viola, though, you absolutely have to counterbalance. It's the difference between a violist who looks like she's playing an instrument that's too big for her and a violist who looks like her viola is dancing with her body. Give it a try:
Start without the violin first. Do the following:
- Float your chest.
- Bouncy knees.
- Swing your arms. They are very heavy. Feel your shoulders go down in back as your arms swing up in front. Now stop swinging.
- As you swing your arms up, breathe right into your lower back. You are trying to breathe into the place that relaxed when you did "Shelf and Pee". Leave your arms there.
- Take a small snort of air out through your nose as you let your shoulders relax in back. Bet you didn't know they were up, did you?
- Let your armpits open up a little.
- Float your shelf.
- Bouncy knees.
- As you toss your violin onto your shelf, breathe into your lower back.
- Little snort out through your nose as you let your shoulders relax down your back.
- Let your armpits open.
- Relax your eyebrows. Really.
- Picture this: when you play, your sound will come out from between your eyes.
- Take a few bows on your string of choice (D or A is good).