Why play the violin? I spend a lot of time as a teacher working on technique, but in every lesson I try to stress that everything you do when playing the violin should be something that makes your body feel good.

I used to have a somewhat adversarial relationship with the violin: I would have some music I couldn't play or something I couldn't do, and then I would lock myself in a practice room for hours at a time, trying to conquer whatever piece or technical item it was that needed conquering. Sometimes I would be successful, and sometimes not, but it always took a lot of practice time. These days, post-MS, I don't particularly feel like wasting time doing tedious or painful things. Violin practice has to be a comfort and a joy for me to want to spend time doing it, and I want my students' practice time to be the same way.

Playing the violin transforms me. I can be having a crappy day, be exhausted from teaching high school, and come home dreading the 5 violin lessons I have yet to teach that afternoon. But then I pick up my violin, and do some breathing exercises, and gently warm up. And 30 minutes later I'm in a wonderful mood, am energetic, relaxed, and ready to teach. One of my adult students said to me one day, "no one is allowed to talk to me when I come home from work until I've played the violin." Exactly.

Breathing, posture, setup...all of these things make playing the violin so much easier than it ever was for me that I feel like I can really start to express myself through the violin, like it's a part of my own body. I see it in students and call it the "woohoo" moment, when everything just starts feeling comfortable and the music sort of floats through the violin, as if the violin is just a vehicle for expressing human emotion. That's what it's all about, isn't it?

What if the only reason you play the violin is to make the fingers on your left hand happy? If you've mastered the basics of posture, this simple visualization exercise will take you to the next level.

For this to work really well, you should have mastered Sandwich #1 and Sandwich #2.

1. Think of something small and lively and cute. Puppies falling all over each other in excitement, for example.
2. For whatever you've just pictured: those are your fingers. The most fun thing for them in the world is to run all over your fingerboard. As you play something, the most important thing is to let your fingers keep having fun.

This is so simple that it sounds silly, but making my mind shift from "this is work" to "this is fun" suddenly gives me twice the energy in my fingers. Try it and see.

I really enjoyed reading The Talent Code, recommended by the parent of one of my violin students. The book is full of wonderful stuff, but the one that sticks with me is a very simple graph of music students, the amount they practice, and their level of skill. The book notes that, yes, more practice does equal more skill, but the biggest key to building more skill is the belief that you will be a musician for life. That is, kids who begin an instrument with the idea that they will play this instrument forever do better than kids who think they'll play for a few years, and they in turn do better than kids who are just trying it out with no real expectation of commitment. Wow.

There is also an excellent section on practicing at Meadowmount and somewhere in there the comment is made that being a musician is an "honest profession". You put in the time to learn something, and you either know it or you don't. This is different than when I was growing up...I thought that some people were just better at the violin, had some mysterious skill that I did not have. Of course, it's true that everyone has different skills they're better at, but it wasn't until I trained myself to play violin all over again that I realized that skill is really built by dedication, careful practice and awareness.

Yes, you train your muscles, you improve your posture, balance, and coordination. But the quickest way to do all of these things is to train your awareness of what your body is doing, starting with the big muscles and slowly becoming aware of the tiny motions you're making. The moment you can develop enough awareness, you can start to become your own teacher, to notice things you're doing as you practice and ask questions of your violin teacher when you're at your lesson. And finally, you're able to teach yourself.

This is what I want for all of my students. I'm thinking about and working on more exercises, and will get going soon with some fresh posts. I'm also thinking about ways to tie everything together, a "road map" for learning the violin. Exciting!