Lessons I'm teaching, lessons I'm learning

I haven't written a teaching post for a while, so I'll take the time now. The student I would be teaching now rescheduled her lesson, and I'm in teaching mode. Maybe some of the teaching adventures from the past few weeks will be of use to somebody reading this.

But I'll start with what I have been practicing. Now that I'm spending so much time practicing the violin, I have decided that it is high time to try to speed up my vibrato, and vary its amplitude. There is a kind of habitual rhythm that you get into with vibrato, and mine is simply too slow and wide for the variety of sounds I would like to make on the violin. A slower and wider vibrato is acceptable in the lower registers of the viola, but I don't really want to limit my possibilities when playing the viola either.

I have been learning ways of breaking certain habits of thinking these past few months, and I'm also breaking out of habitual ways of musical thinking that have been limiting my creativity and progress. I am finding the experience empowering. It is very hard work, so I am attacking the problem in several different ways.

Listening to Augustin Hadelich's vibrant vibrato, a vibrato that is fluid, and is always responding to the demands of whatever phrase he happens to be playing, has inspired me to do the hard work of paying attention to the speed of my vibrato and the way it corresponds to the movement and comfort of my bow arm. I have noticed that if my right arm does not feel free and fluid, my left hand does not feel free enough to vibrate faster. But, on a positive note, if I focus my attention on the expressivity and freedom of my bow arm, it is easier to change the speed and amplitude of the vibrato.

Practicing slow and lyrical pieces helps. And I'm experimenting with playing lyrical pieces that are not slow (like the first movement of the Mendelssohn Concerto) with a faster vibrato than I would normally use, and the metronome set at a slow tempo. As I increase the tempo, I am also working to increase the speed of my vibrato, as well as the comfortable feeling in my bow arm. I do believe that being comfortable while playing allows us to be more expressive. And I believe that it makes the experience for the listener more comfortable as well.

[I consider myself to be a student at "Hadelich University" these days. And last night I had a dream that Augustin let me try his violin. It had a strange bow that had a set of comb-like teeth attached to it. Unfortunately I woke up before I really got to spend time with the instrument.]

I used this left-hand/bow-arm observation while teaching a lesson to a beginning student who has not yet learned vibrato, and she noticed that the tension she had in her left hand lessened when she paid attention to her bow arm.

And then I tried something new with her. She is just learning to use her fourth finger, and, like most fourth fingers in relatively new violinists, it wants to curl up rather than stay poised above the fingerboard. I tried a trick with her. I asked her to try to control the fourth finger of the left hand by tapping the right hand fourth finger on the bow stick (where it should be curved with the tip "standing" comfortably on the stick above the frog).

Then I showed her the way the hands and arms work together by asking her how to write her name in cursive with her dominant hand, and concurrently write her name in cursive backwards with her non-dominant hand (as a mirror image).

Try it! It's fun. It's also really challenging to demonstrate by way of videochat!

Then I showed her that if both hands work together it is not difficult to draw a square with one hand and a circle with the other.

I really wanted to share the fourth finger thing with another student, but I will have to wait until tomorrow.