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:

1. Scoop and Deposit or Shelf and Pee
2. Counterbalance
3. Forehead

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:

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!

Once you're relaxed and you're allowing the arm to take your hand back and forth between positions, it's time to refine the shift by adding more grace in your finger movement. Picture this:

You are standing with your feet together. You are about to take a step to the left. Do your legs stay totally straight before you take the step and while you are stepping? Of course not! Before you step left, your knees bend just a little, and you can even push off to the left a little, using your right leg as a little springboard to get you to the left with less effort.

The same thing happens with your fingers. Set yourself up on a finger. This finger will be the springboard that gets you to your next position, wherever it is on the violin. Just before the shift, let the finger bend a little bit, just like your knee would, preparing for the shift. Then, bounce off the finger to start your shift, and let your arm carry your hand the rest of the way. Your shifts, when done with this technique, will suddenly be more graceful, fluid, take less effort, and will land with greater accuracy.

Sometimes it's helpful to picture your fingers as legs, especially after practicing with your legs first, pushing off one foot to get to the next foot.