Here are my thoughts on the key elements of successful learning (and achieving your highest potential as a volinist). It’s hard to boil everything down, but there are few simple guiding principles that really stick with us.
- Position and posture. Not just the cosmetics of position but the function of good position. At first, you must just check for the proper alignment and where everything must be, but as time goes by, you must always monitor how the body’s position impacts the ability to produce sound on the violin. Good posture transmits energy to the mind and helps set the tone of serious learning.
- Listening. It starts with the discipline of listening to the teacher, listening to your parents, then listening to the piano accompanist and other musical colleagues, and finally (if we’re lucky) listening to our own violin. The last step is really the most elusive step toward becoming a true artist, but if we can master the first three we will be doing pretty well already!
- Thinking. This, along with listening, is the first step toward really learning. Without thinking – meaning, focusing the mind on the task at hand – practice becomes mindless repetition and habits will develop on their own, without specific goal-setting or feedback towards those goals. Even if you (by chance) get to the goal, you won’t know and therefore won’t be able to reproduce it when it matters most.
- Looking at what you’re doing. The eyes are really the window to the mind. If you focus your eyes on something, your attention immediately goes to that object. Ever notice that I am intensely involved visually with all of my students during their lessons? I am trying to encourage their gaze to go where mine is going. Use your video cameras or your own eyes to try to follow my gaze…you might discover something you hadn’t noticed before!
- Desire. This is the human spirit at work. Children are pure examples of motivation by desires. They all want to be part of this magical energy that is produced when so many violins play in perfect unison. Our job is to help guide them there through each step of the process, without judgment but with total honesty. There is freedom on the other side of each of the barriers that they will inevitably face along the way! Some nuts are tougher to crack than others. But out of love for our children and our own desire to see them reach their own goals, we owe them the effort we are asking of them.
