Emma requests a post on how to set up the left hand. This is how to set up a beginner hand, with your hand in contact with the violin neck at all times.
Prerequisites: Set Yourself Up for Success
The first thing you need to do is to find your touch point. Do this by turning your left palm towards you and locating the crease just above your base knuckle. Your touch point is on that crease, slightly to the inside of the hand. Mimi Zweig calls this the "magic X".
- Set yourself up for success.
- Since you tossed your violin onto the shelf, your hand is now on the body of the violin. Smoothly and quickly slide your hand, with the touch point touching the neck, away from you until you clunk against one of the pegs.
- Swing your left elbow a bit to make sure your left armpit is relaxed.
If your left armpit is not relaxed, it's probably because you're lifting your left arm using the front of your shoulder. You need to counterbalance. Look for a post on that soon.
You should still have your beautiful shelf and relaxed neck and knees. Repeat the whole thing until it feels like a little dance...the shelf inflates, the violin floats, the head floats, the chin settles in, the hand slides away from you on the touch point, the elbow feels swingy. Beautiful floating shelf! Bouncy knees! Wheeee!
OK, once you have the motion feeling good, and you have the touch point on the neck so that the neck of the violin is kind of nestled on top of your base knuckle joint, how do you know exactly where along the neck your hand should be when in first position?
This is when you will discover your "3 spot". Your teacher should have put a tape on the fingerboard right where your 3rd finger will go down. If you don't have a 3rd finger tape and have no chance of anyone putting a tape on for you, get some pinstriping tape at the auto parts store and slip it under the strings and across the fingerboard right at the spot where pushing down on the string and plucking makes an octave with the next lower string.
Now do your little shelf-violin-head-touchpoint-sliding dance. Ready? Throw your third finger (your ring finger) in a nice gentle arc onto the 3rd finger tape on the A string. If you miss, don't worry, just adjust it. The arcing motion is more important right now. Now keep your finger there and sort of wiggle around with the rest of your hand until you find the most comfortable spot. Take your time. Check out where your hand is on the neck of the violin. That's your "3 spot".
Your "3 spot" is your "home base" when learning beginning violin, and whenever you are in first position. Your 3rd finger is so important that the best thing you can do when setting up your left hand is to center your whole hand around the 3.
Now that you can do the whole dance, see if you can slide your hand out to your 3 spot. Then add your 3rd finger to the end of the dance. Let it fly through the air in a nice arc and land on the 3 tape, and wiggle around until your hand is comfy. As you keep doing this, your hand will start to "know" where it should be on the neck of the violin, so pretty soon you won't have to wiggle around so much to find the comfortable place.
Once you know where your 3 spot is, play on the A string: 3rd finger, high 2nd finger (right next to 3), and 1st finger, down the scale. You will probably have to tilt your hand a tiny bit upwards and pull back towards the scroll a tiny bit to place the 1st finger on the 1st finger tape. These are miniscule motions. Easy does it! The point here is to keep your hand feeling as comfortable as possible.
Important note: though the neck of the violin is in contact with the left hand, resting just on top of the base knuckle, your hand is not holding the violin up. You should be able to move your hand freely along the neck, just feeling the touch point.