Fundamentals, fundamentals, fundamentals

I've been continuing to practice, although missed one day this week due to getting confused and busy. Watched a few more videos and tried to emulate what I was seeing. I've been continuing to try to use the whole bow but still finding myself scratching away like a disgruntled cat.

A friend of mine is a violin teacher, and an incredible musician. While my son was hanging out with her two, I mentioned my new learning project.

"Oh, God.", says she.

"What?"

"It's hard enough to learn as a kid when you're relaxed, but as a busy adult...oooft, you're brave."

"Ah", as the crushing realisation rears its head again that I am probably going to be bad at this for a long time. On the upside though, I can maybe claim that my course of study is a mandate for regular professional massages.

She offered to give me a lesson, or some pointers as we arranged for her family to come over for food and board games last night. What a lovely offer, I thought, but there is no way that I can have her see just how bad I am, particularly not in front of her entire family and my son.

A couple of Aperol spritzes and some food later and we got around to the subject of the fiddle. I started talking in the abstract about it, and asked for her to describe some of the exercises to me that she thought would be helpful. We started off that way but unsurprisingly that wasn't particularly successful. Despite a bit of lubrication I was still not keen to share my novice state, but I went and got the fiddle and passed it over to her.

She had a good look over and fine tuned the strings a bit before launching into some fantastic tunes, Scots and then classical. You could almost hear the instrument sigh with delight at being handled by such a professional. She made it sing and brought out the full tone of the fiddle, it was quite lovely to watch and hear.

"This is a good fiddle"

So we discussed what it was that I was struggling with and what she thought would be useful for me to concentrate on. Again, it was me watching without yet picking up the instrument myself. We talked about the action of the bow - perpendicular to the strings, we talked about the pressure and speed to get the maximum vibration from the string and so the best sound.

"Great", say I, "I'm confident I'm getting the bow perpendicular, so I'm ready for the vibration exercise, I'll do that tomorrow."

"Have a go"

"Oh"

So I pick up the fiddle and give it my best shot. Doing a pretty decent D scale, compared to the scales I've been doing so far.

She stops me and looks at the way I'm holding the bow. Contorting my fingers into weird combinations of curled, resting and straight. Relax, but keep the shape, is the key directive. How on earth can I do both of those things simultaneously?

Next she gently breaks it to me that, although I was certain that I was bowing perpendicular to the strings I was sadly mistaken. The secret is to keep fingers contorted around the bow, simultaneously relaxed, and then curl and relax as I'm about to change direction of the bow. This to me seems to be utterly impossible, but she assures me it's the key to getting a halfway pleasant sound from the fiddle.

So I have lots to work on, and lots of what I have to work on is nowhere near the actual fiddle!

While she was helping me, lots of things were going through my head and as the whole point of learning this is to make me a better educator, I'm going to capture these reflections and what I think the day after.

For aspects of practice (instrumental or pedagogical) the theory is important, but theory without the practical application is pretty useless. See Exhibit A - my absolute confidence that I had the perpendicular motion licked and I could move on to other things.

Feeling vulnerable is an aspect of learning for some in certain situations, so how can we reduce this? In order to improve I have to be honest (with myself through effective self-evaluation and with those who have more knowledge than me through demonstration) about my current ability and what would make effective next steps.

For any aspect of practice, the fundamentals are just that, fundamental. If these are shaky or ill formed then the success of the practice is limited. For fiddling, the fundamentals are about sound production through the bow and body position. In practice in the Early Years, those are child development and pedagogy. So if we are able to solidify the foundations we can support excellent practice.

Only watch the video above if minor effin and jeffin don't offend.

New things are hard.