I love to shift. It wasn't always this way.
Preparation
Before I teach shifting, basic beautiful posture and focus must be in place. This means:
You should feel absolutely great standing there with plenty of breath going through you, air in your armpits, floating, focused.
Shifting with the Big Muscles
When you shift "up", it's not really up, it's horizontal. Your hand moves toward your nose (shifting "up") or away from you toward the scroll (shifting "down"). Sometimes it helps to stop saying "up" and "down" and instead shift "across" to the other position. The tendency is to want to raise the left shoulder to do this. Please do the following instead:
- Make sure you have your forehead on.
- Close your eyes.
- Plop your first finger down on the A string.
- Let your left elbow draw towards you, bending more, closing your left armpit, until your left hand touches the body of the violin.
- Now let your left armpit open again; your left elbow easily opens and moves away from your body until your left hand arrives back in first position.
Many people shift as if the finger is doing the shifting. No. All you're doing is opening or closing your armpit and opening or closing your elbow until your hand reaches the position you want. Then you just let your fingers plop down, and there they are, with no effort on their part.
The other thing I see is people moving the hand away from the violin when shifting and then flying at the violin and hoping to land in the right place. Kind of scary! :-) If you concentrate on opening/closing the armpit and opening/closing the elbow, this kind of thing won't happen. Your hand will stay over the string and move easily and fluidly, because you are moving with the big muscles of your arm.
Note: I'm not talking about shifting into positions higher than, say, 5th or 6th. That comes later. Get the basic armit opening/closing in the lower positions first.
Training the Muscles
Once you're feeling the motion, shifting becomes a question of training the armpit/elbow how far to go to get to the place you want. An easy place to start is shifting from the 3 in first position to playing that same note with the 1 in third position. The notes ring against the open string below, so it's easy to make sure you're in tune. Once you've figured out how far you have to draw your elbow in for third position, use your forehead to remember what your left armpit and elbow feel like. Then open back into first position and see if you can smoothly get to the place you remembered. Use your ear to tell you if you remembered the way the muscles felt.
Try shifting on the A and E strings this way. Shifting into higher positions and shifting on the D and G strings require a slight modification of this technique to stay relaxed.