Thursday, March 16, 2017

How to Correct Bad Habits in Your VIOLIN Playing

As violin players we very often fall into bad habits which hamper playing and delay our progress by years. It is very important that you correct these problems as soon as you can remember the longer you ignore them the worse they will get and longer they will take to get rid of.

English: stuffed bear on violin (exercise for ...
Stuffed bear on violin (exercise for good violin hold + correct contact point)
(Photo credit: 
Wikipedia)

To begin correcting bad habits you must first begin to identify them you must be like a detective seeking out the root causes of the issues and difficulties you face in your playing. To do this play through the passages that are giving you difficulty extremely slowly without a metronome. Pay extreme attention all the while you are doing this be very relaxed and watch what your fingers and body are doing as you play.

There will be a cause and effect relationship behind every mistake that you make. The cause will be something you are doing wrong with your fingers and body that you haven't noticed before and the effect will be mistakes. It is your job to seek out these causes and correct them. Remember the reason behind almost all bad playing and mistakes is usually because you are holding tension in your body.

Concentrate on being very relaxed and tension free while you are playing and remember to breathe deeply in and out. You would not believe the amount of people who hold their breath while playing.

This is a very bad habit which will cause you to lock up and make endless mistakes

Once you have identified the causes of your mistakes and bad habits you must correct them. You do this by playing slowly through the problems passages using a metronome. You must pay extreme attention while doing this and stay relaxed playing the problem part correctly. You will have to do this over and over until the new way of playing is conditioned.

Do not ignore problems areas and bad habits trust me I did and I can tell you from experience that they soon grow into huge monsters that can cripple your playing for years. Remember it is always best to kill the monster while it is small.

    Eric B. Hill is an professional violin player and teacher with over 20 years experience.

    Article Directory: EzineArticles


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