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Should you take your Violin with you on Holiday?

Should you keep practicing daily or is it even good to leave your violin at home during your holiday?

To get good results on the violin it is NOT absolutely necessary to keep practicing daily on holiday. It can even be good to let your mind and body rest, so the skills you learn can sink in and settle. Also it can refresh your motivation when you’re away from the instrument for a week or so.

Oh no, my playing got worse after my holiday!

If you decide to leave your violin at home for whatever reason, you do need a good warm up when you pick up the instrument again. Start with some slow scales and exercises to give your fingers the chance to find their spots again. Take a lot of breaks, because it might be challenging to keep your body relaxed and play fluently.

Avoid this ‘shock’ by taking your violin with you!

I don’t like it when my fingers feel stiff and I need to get back on track. I always want to be ‘in shape’. When I don’t play I start to miss the violin, emotionally and physically. Apart from enjoying music making, my body just longs to hold the instrument.

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Classical violinist helping you overcome technical struggles and play with feeling by improving your bow technique.

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I take a violin set with me, but I don’t pressure myself to practice

Being a professional my life is all about the violin. Sometimes I just need a reset and focus on other beautiful things in life. However I know that after some days I miss the violin. For me personally the best is to take the violin, but not push myself to practice. I practice when and what I want. Some holidays I barely touched the instrument, other holidays I played a lot.

Of course it also depends how ‘active’ my holiday is and how tired I am. If I played a lot right before the holiday, I won’t play much during the holiday. If I did a lot of computer work before the holiday, I use the holiday for some good practice.

How do you keep your violin safe in your hotel room?

You noticed perhaps that I talked about ‘a violin set’. Nope, I don’t take my precious antique violin and awesome Arcus S9 violin bow with me. I just don’t want to leave it in an appartment or hotel room. Instead I take an affortable violin and an Arcus S5 violin bow with me. A lot of stories go round about stuff getting stolen from a hotel room. If you do take your precious violin outfit, leave it in a locker or something. If you still feel insecure, make sure the value is at least insured.

Do you take your violin with you on holiday or do you find a break from practicing quite refreshing? Let me know in the comments below!

6 Steps to Practice a New Piece of Music

Do you feel lost when looking at that new piece you want to play?

Use these 6 practice strategies to learn beautiful music fast and play expressively:

If playing through the piece endlessly is not the most effective way to learn. Perhaps that worked in your first years of playing, but when you start playing more difficult repertoire you need smart practice strategies.

Step 1: Find good sheet music with handy bowings and fingerings

Some sheet music can save you a LOT of time as you don’t have to invent the wheel regarding fingering and bowing. Other prints can just confuse you. Find sheet music that is easy to read and includes handy notes. If you can’t it, buy an urtext without notes so unhandy notes won’t confuse you.

When I started learning the Mendelssohn violin concerto, I struggled a lot with it. I had sheet music with fingerings that made everything so much harder. Instead of inventing the wheel I searched the web and found the edition edited by Leopold Auer. That made things so much easier, saved me loads of practice time and made my sound a lot better. The fingerings weren’t only easier, but sounded better as well.

Step 2: Listen to recordings while reading the sheet music

Listen to different recordings of the piece you’re working on. Notice the differences and let them inspire your own interpretation. Listening to the music while reading the sheet music is very useful to get a good ‘sound image’ of the piece. The notes will come to live. It will be easier for you to correct yourself when practicing as you know how the piece should sound in detail.

Are you lost when looking at that new beautiful piece of music you want to play? Use these 6 #practice strategies: #learnmusic #musiceducation Share on X

FREE Violin Scale Book

Sensational Scales is a 85 page violin scale book that goes from simple beginner scales with finger charts all the way to all three octave scales and arpeggios

Download!

Hi! I'm Zlata

Classical violinist helping you overcome technical struggles and play with feeling by improving your bow technique.

READ MORE

Step 3: Play the piece slowly and mark the difficult parts

Play through as good as it gets and identify what the bits are you need to work on most. Best is to make notes of them in the sheet music with a pencil. Once you master that little part, you can erase it.

Step 4: Find exercises, scales or etudes to support your practice of the difficult parts

For a new piece it’s always good to play scales and arpeggio’s in the key of the piece. Look at the difficulties you identified in step 4 and think about how you can train the skills you need to play it. Find good exercises or an etude.

Step 5: Zoom in and practice in chunks

Don’t play through the whole piece again and again. Instead, start with mastering part of it. This can be three lines or just a couple of bars. You don’t need to start with the beginning of the piece.

Step 6: Zoom out and practice the whole piece

It’s time to add everything together. Play the whole piece. Now you’ve mastered the technical difficulties with step 4 and 5, you can focus on interpretation, expression. Also you can play together with others and go to the rehearsal well prepared.

Repeat all the steps several times for one piece

Listening, zooming in and out, practicing chunks or other exercises and working on interpretation aren’t strict steps. You go back and forth depending on your progress. In your practice session, your teacher is not present and you need to correct yourself. Also you need to guide yourself what practice strategy is best at the moment.

Grab your instrument, try this out for a new piece and let me know in the comments what your experiences are!

STOP Tolerating a Bad Sound Quality on the Violin

Your general playing technique improves, but your tone production is behind?

Perhaps you make this mistake in practicing the violin:

Do you catch yourself not minding a bad tone when you’re practicing scales for intonation or when you’re discovering a new piece?

Everytime you ignore a bad sound, this is what you tell your mind and body to do.

Practice makes permanent, so be very consious about what you make permanent

If you are NOT minding your bowing technique and sound and you’re playing with a vague tone, this is what you’ll automatically do in the future.

What you want to automate is a healthy sound with straight bowing, fluent movement in your bow hand and a beautiful sound.

Don’t be ashamed to make a full sound when practicing a piece you can’t play yet

A lot of violin players make short vague bow strokes, because they don’t want to play something they don’t know yet out loud.

Think about the end result: you want to play the piece technically correct with a great sound and expression. If you can’t play the right rhythm yet, if some notes are out of tune, please at least make sure that the sound quality is good. From that it’s so much easier to improve further on other areas.

Your general playing technique improves, but your tone production is behind? Perhaps you make this mistake in #practicing the #violin: Share on X

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Hi! I'm Zlata

Classical violinist helping you overcome technical struggles and play with feeling by improving your bow technique.

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A good quality sound helps you improve in other areas: intonation (playing in tune), rhythm, articulation and expression

With a vague tone, you can’t hear what you’re doing and correct it

You might want to cover up your mistakes by playing softly with short bow strokes, but this doesn’t give you the opportunity to correct these mistakes. 

Play everything with a full healthy tone, even the soft piano parts

If you notice a mistake, zoom in and correct it. Do something about your mistakes instead of ignoring them.

Don’t play through the piece and hope that you’ll get it right the next time

With a good tone, you’ll hear what goes wrong. Stop and analyse it. Repeat that couple of notes slowly. Fix it. Read more about slow practice here.

In your next practice session, keep your ears and heart open for a good sound.

Let me know in the comments below what difference you notice in the results from your pratice session.

Practice Slowly

This is one simple tip gets you big results from your violin practice

Practice makes permanent, not perfect!

Do you know those 10 hour YouTube videos with a movie quote, like Hitler saying ‘nein nein nein’ for hours? I often joke to my students that one day I’ll make something similar with my saying ‘practice slowly’. Or maybe I should print some shirts with that text. Why?

Whether I’m teaching a beginner or a very advanced student, we often talk about how to practice. In general my advice comes down to this: identify which bar or couple of notes you have difficulty with, analyze what goes wrong exactly and practice that extremely slowly.

It takes your brain quite a while to learn motor skills. If you remember to put something on your grocery list, you can instantly remember it even if you forget it later. Making your muscles ‘remember’ something takes a bit longer. It needs regular and slow repetitions for your brain to process it.

Have you noticed that sometimes a piece improves overnight?

You practiced hard for hours and nothing worked, you give up, go to sleep and… next day when you pick up your violin it suddenly works! Why? Your brain needs time to process what you taught it the day before. That’s why it’s good to ‘put away’ pieces you worked on for a long time to pick them up after some months. It’s wat we call the ‘wine cellar effect’. Good wine ages over the years and gets better…

Practice makes permanent, not perfect! This is one simple tip gets you big results from your #violin #practice. Here's how: Share on X

FREE Violin Scale Book

Sensational Scales is a 85 page violin scale book that goes from simple beginner scales with finger charts all the way to all three octave scales and arpeggios

Download!

Hi! I'm Zlata

Classical violinist helping you overcome technical struggles and play with feeling by improving your bow technique.

READ MORE

As a child I just played the piece I had to learn three times a day

When the teacher told me to play it three times daily… I did… and after that I was ‘finished’ playing the violin. Hang on… I was just eight years old.

Playing and practicing are two different things

When you play you have to get everything together in the right moment. When you practice you deliberately focus on ONE thing and leave the rest for a moment. You practice slowly, because you want to have control over what’s happening. You want to get it right in a slow tempo. Once you got it right you can speed up and eventually fit it into the rest of the piece. Zoom in and zoom out. Still wrong? Zoom in again…

If you do a wrong thing in a fast tempo many times, this is what your brain will remember

Try to do it right just one time… very slowly. One good shot is better a lot of random shots.

Only perfect practice makes perfect

When you’re practicing, try to think about what you are telling your hand and your brain. Tell them the good techniques, in tune notes etc. 

How will YOU apply slow practice? Share it in the comments below!

What Chinrest and Shoulder Rest I Use and Why

Now I play the violin comfortably without pain!

How I picked and adjusted my current chinrest and shoulder rest and what you should look for when buying one

A lot of violin players have spend a lot of money on rests and have a collection just catching dust. Around 60 to 80 percent of violin players complains about pain or not being able to play relaxed and comfortably.

How to avoid endlessly buying chinrests and shoulder rests

1) Don’t do as I do!

Choosing the right chinrest and shoulder rest is something very personal. Don’t follow me, your teacher or your favorite soloist blindly! Yes, what others have can inspire you, but always look at the complete picture: How is the shape of their body, their length, the length of their arms? How do they hold and play the violin? Is it the same or very different than your body, posture and hold?

2) 80% of the solution lies in your body posture and violin hold, just 20% in the rests

Of course this is just a rough estimate. After owning a violin shop for over 10 years, I’ve seen so many people struggle endlessly with rests, while the problem was in their body posture and playing technique. Chinrests and shoulder rests can NEVER compensate a bad posture and technique. 

3) Don’t spend a fortune on different rest. Try different adjustments on the one you own.

Another experience from my violin shop: over 90% of players can be very happy and comfortable with a good old Wolf rest. You can adjust them in width and height, tilt them and bend them. There are other brands that offer the same flexibility. Before you buy a new rest, experiment with the adjustment of your current rest first.

How to avoid endlessly buying chinrests and shoulder rests for your #violin Share on X

From sponge to Wolf shoulder rest

sponge as violin shoulder restWhen I started playing the violin at the age of eight, I used a yellow bath sponge with an elastic band

Yup, were spoiled these days. My parents didn’t have the money for a ‘real’ shoulder rest. Also I played with my sheet music on the dinner table by lack of a music stand. However, I learned to play this way, so don’t worry too much about the things you should buy or not.

After some time I got a real shoulder rest, but the guy in the music store made a mistake and I played with a viola rest for years. My English was too limited those days to distinguish viola from violin.

So… it took years before I actually got a fitting normal Wolf violin shoulder rest and I played with that for over ten years.

For the chinrest I think I’ve always sticked to a Guarneri rest. I liked the ‘hump’ that goes behind your jaw bone, so the violin won’t slip away.

Now I play with more freedom of movement

Quite late, in the last years at the conservatory, I finally had a teacher who busted the myth that you have to hold the violin with your chin and shoulder

I learned a whole new left hand technique. It dramatically improved my intonation, my vibrato and made me play way more comfortable. It means that you let the violin rest on your collar bone, balance it between your collar bone and left arm and have an active left hand and fingers.

It completely releases the tension in your neck and shoulders. It makes your violin hold more flexibele and balanced opening up new possibilities of expression. Ok, enough about this as I teach it in Free your Vibrato and this article was meant to be just about my set up.

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Hi! I'm Zlata

Classical violinist helping you overcome technical struggles and play with feeling by improving your bow technique.

READ MORE

My Stradivari chinrest

conrad gotz stradivari chinrest boxwood

I discovered that the hump in my Guarneri rest caused tension in my neck

The chinrest pulled my neck and I had to compensate with muscle power. I needed a smaller and flatter chinrest. As I owned a violin shop I could try out any chinrest I want. I did and with all rests I missed the Guarneri shape. What I like best now for years, is the Stradivari chinrest. You don’t see them often, but I find them REALLY comfortable.

However, mind my disclaimer: what’s good for me, isn’t necessarily good for you. Watch this video about adjusting your chinrest and playing comfortably.

My Viva la Musica Diamond shoulder rest

VLM augustin diamond shoulder rest

Now my violin sounds better and I have more freedom of movement

Did you know a shoulder rest mutes the sound of your violin?

You can try it out by playing with and without your shoulder rest. I found the VLM Augustin Diamond shoulder rest, because it’s light and doesn’t mute your violin. The feet have a special design and barely touch your violin.

With my new playing technique I wanted to have contact between the violin and my collar bone. Also I wanted to have a lot of freedom of movement. As I support the violin partially with my left arm, I don’t need so much stability as I have a better balance. The VLM rest allow me to adjust the feet in many ways and also make the rest very low.

What’s your story?

What chinrest and shoulder rest do you use? Or do you play without? Let me know in the comments!