« Elegant Shifting, Part 1: Big Muscles | Main | Sniff and Toss »

Elegant Shifting, Part 2: Quiet Stomach

Once you're using the big muscles to shift, it's time to improve your aim. Here's a magical way to do that:


  1. Deep breath, float your shelf

  2. Counterbalance: let shoulders slide down in back

  3. Shoulders down in back means arms float up in front of you

  4. Toss violin onto your floating shelf

  5. With floating shelf and arms, feel like you could hula hoop with your pelvis

  6. Find your forehead


OK, now you're ready. Put your "forehead mind" on your stomach. Now play 0-3-1, shifting into 3rd position (1 goes where the 3 usually goes) with the big muscles. As you let your armpit/elbow come closer to shift you into 3rd position, can you let your stomach stay quiet?

There it is, simple as that. Part 3 of Elegant Shifting will have to wait for a while, because I need to talk about finger motion first. Stay tuned!

TrackBack: http://www.violinalchemist.com/cgi/mt/mt-tb.cgi/19

Post a comment

(If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.)