Learning an instrument like the violin or viola is a massively rewarding undertaking.  Making music can bring a joy and peace of mind that is hard to put into words.  Both practicing and performing teaches every musician a lot about themselves and about life as a whole.

You will never stop learning, no matter how hard you work.  For each technique or piece of music you master, you will discover a dozen things that can challenge you further. This journey is endless and as long as you possess curiosity there will be no end in sight. As a violinist for close to 40 years I am still learning, experimenting and discovering new things every time I practice. 

These four decades have been a continuous rollercoaster between the most extreme highs and lows, and more often than not, the lows were caused by my ignorance of how to practice. My parents, not being musicians, did the best they could.  They provided me with a reputable teacher, and my mother was there every day to help me with my practice. Within a few years, I was regularly on stage and on TV, and a finalist in several national competitions.  Sounds awesome, right?

And it was, for a while at least.  Then I hit a wall.  No matter how much I practiced, my progress slowed down until it felt like I was drowning.  It turns out that if you do not understand how to practice, you get saddled with habits that will eventually get in the way of progress.  The most common issues are tension and bad posture.

So, after 10 years, I changed teachers to someone who had a more sustainable approach to practice and progress.  Now, the right thing to do would be to go back to basics until you ‘unlearn’ these bad habits and rebuild from there. But honestly, do you think a 13-year-old boy is going to go from doing concerts and competitions to basics?  Of course I didn’t! I wanted to play fast and difficult pieces.  Show off how amazing I was.  Not understanding just how many holes there were in my technique, and how all that tension would damage my muscles over time, I charged ahead.  More repertoire, more concertos, more and more problems, and a slower progress each year.

My teacher tried, honestly, but I didn’t pay attention.

Another 5 years later, at college, I started to understand some of the issues I didn’t know I had been struggling with.  Three boring months of ‘open string exercises’ later, I thought: “Everything is sorted now.”  Boy was I wrong!  Over and over, old bad habits kept me back. Understanding them, picking them apart and replacing them with better habits became a way of life.  Even today I notice the consequences of my and my parent’s lack of understanding almost 4 decades ago.

Now, why does this matter?  This story is not unique.  Many musicians made these mistakes when we were young, and we spent years paying for that ignorance.  All these years we that could have played in orchestras, or chamber music groups, etc., we spent indoors drilling basics.

The sad thing is that for most of us all this wasted time and energy, the frustrations, the pain … were largely avoidable. It would have required a different focus at the beginning. Not half a dozen variations of ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star’ to begin with, but some exercises on how to hold your bow and instrument. Maybe some exercises on making a nice sound without tensing up?  Experience has taught me that a child is equally happy to do open string exercises or a finger exercise than a nursery song; as long as the parents seem equally impressed and enthusiastic with their achievements. An exercise can be interesting for any student, no matter what ability or age, as long as you present it in the right way.  The parent’s involvement and encouragement  is invaluable for young children here.

The course I present here on my website will start with a strong focus on basics.  Understanding why you are practicing a certain exercise or piece, and how to achieve it step-by-step will help anyone progress faster.  Patience and concentration will avoid unnecessary tension, and with it, a lot of bad habits.  I will present all exercises and pieces with play along videos in different speeds to guide you through the learning process.  I will try to cross reference all useful foundation exercises with each piece, so you have an easy choice of useful warm-up exercises to go along with it.

The first two chapters will address core techniques that are essential to even the easiest pieces.  I suggest you work your way through them patiently.  I have tried to be very clear about the why and how for each exercise.  Even though the videos are quite long, they can easily be divided into smaller exercises if necessary.

After that it is completely up to you how you proceed.  You can stick to the course where every exercise and piece takes a small step forward, or you can deviate via the repertoire of the ABRSM, Trinity, or Suzuki method.

There are no wrong choices, as long as you spend 50% of each practice session on foundation exercises.  I promise you, the time spent on those exercises will speed up your whole learning process!  Please, do not repeat my mistakes!  Being impatient and overly ambitious just ended up slowing me down… The better you understand your instrument and its technique, the easier everything will be for anything you learn in the future.