After practicing for three or four weeks from the first day I touched my violin in twenty years it became abundantly clear that I needed some professional help.   It took me another couple weeks at least to get the nerve up to ask our orchestra teacher if she would be willing to give me a few lessons.  I was so nervous when asking, “do you think you could give me some lessons.”  Why would anybody want to teach an adult with little hope of achieving anything?  Wouldn’t it just be an exercise in frustration trying to get my stubborn, set in their ways, totally inflexible hands and arms to do what they’re supposed to do.  Don’t teachers just want to teach kids with the prospects that they become virtuoso concert musicians or at least professional.  What hope did I have of even approaching that level.

So, after I finally got the nerve to ask I was a little surprised when the teacher said she was hoping I would ask for some lessons.  Phew!  At least THAT hurdle was out of the way.  Obviously SHE recognized my need for professional help as well.

Fortunately, I had lessons twenty years ago and my progress in the first months was very quick.  Not that it wasn’t a lot of work, and not that I didn’t sweat and groan and get frustrated at my apparent lack of progress, but looking back on it I see how quickly I progressed in the first six to eight months.

My first problem, right off the bat was my bow hold and getting a proper, straight long bow stroke.  My bow hand was too tight and my down bow angled too much.  I put a considerable amount of effort into getting my hand to relax.  This, as it sounds, is somewhat counter-intuitive.  When you’re trying to do something really really hard, you tend to tense when what you need to do is relax.  Over time, though, you find that your muscles start to get used to what they’re supposed to be doing and relaxing becomes easier.

One of my difficulties in trying to achieve an acceptable bow hold and bow stroke was in understanding what my hand was supposed to be doing in my mind.  I knew my hand was supposed to be relaxed and the position of the hand was to be just so over the frog but the thing that gave me a considerable challenge was conceptualizing how that was supposed to happen and be maintained throughout the course of a bow stroke.

One of the advantages of being an adult beginner is that you can and do apply some intellect, critical thinking and understanding to the particular task at hand.  When I was younger, I would often do exercises without really considering what I was trying to achieve, or I would play what the teacher said as much because she said to do this or that than to achieve a particular result.  As an adult I find that I want, no need, to understand what I am trying to achieve in a particular exercise.  If I can have a clear understanding of the result then hopefully I can self correct, because, lets face it, we spend much more time on the violin without a teacher or someone looking over our shoulder, correcting our mistakes, than we do under the teachers watchful eye.  The better we can understand what we’re trying to do, the better we can self-correct, and the less we will practice and reinforce our mistakes.

I remember having an aha moment with the bow hold after trying very hard to understand what I was supposed to be doing conceptually, and it came when I watched my teacher play in a small group performance.  I watched how her hand and arm moved on those long up and down bow strokes, and all of a sudden I had a conceptual framework in how to proceed.  I don’t know if this is the best way to explain it, but this is what I saw.

I was always bowing with my hand coming into the side of the frog (if that makes any sense)  but when I watched my teacher, she was more above the bow, holding it up.  With the hand to the side, the bow tended to lay on top of the strings, but with the idea that you are above it you are holding the bow all the time and controlling its position and weight purposefully.  This is not to say that my hand went on top of the frog, physically, but that when I watched the teacher bow in her performance I saw a holding of the bow that incorporated a vertical control of the bow relative to the strings along with the perpendicular control.   Getting this conceptually gave me a place to go and a goal to achieve and my bowing immediately began to improve.

I probably started out after this with my hand a little too high over top the frog and I have since adjusted its position as I have become more comfortable.   I occasionally experiment with my hand position on the bow, and ultimately I am trying to keep it loose and natural and flexible.  If you watch good players with a lot of experience you will notice that their hands are not only loose, but they move with the varying conditions.  This is only possible when our hands our loose, but we should be comfortable to make adjustments in our hands and fingers, flexing the fingers on a particular stroke, or adjusting slightly the position of the forefinger on top of the bow.

Here I am a rank amateur speaking as if I know what I am talking about, but this is how I see it.  I would love somebody to comment on this in the comments section and correct any of my gross errors!

For me, I have run into this problem again and again as I have tried to develop or refine a new skill.  It is one thing to listen to the teacher’s explanation of what I am supposed to do but so often I found that I didn’t exactly understand and so I would go off and practice what I thought I was supposed to do and find I wasn’t making much progress.  Then something would tweak in my mind or I would watch and it would begin to make sense.  Then I had a path to try to achieve it.  It still takes much effort, practice and refining, but knowing when I’m not doing something correctly, and why, is so important to making progress.

Still, I have so far to go.  I have so much admiration for people who can really play the violin and make it seem so effortless.  Behind all that effortless playing is years of practicing, developing and refining, and some insightful and at times merciless teachers who always push towards perfection.  There is so much complexity in making the violin sing.  It is so much easier to play it out of tune and scratchy and flat, but when I have those brief moments when the tone is clear, the note is in tune and everything clicks for a second it is so rewarding.  When you have that brief moment when you aren’t trying with all your might to keep all the elements you know how working in the manner you know they’re supposed, and they just do it, it is such an exhilarating experience.

Lessons are just so invaluable for so many reasons.  They keep you in line, motivate you to practice just a bit more and help to minimize all that practicing of mistakes.  If you are an adult beginner struggling away on your own, and you can afford to do it I highly recommend finding a teacher.  Don’t worry that they’re not going to want to teach an adult.  At least you WANT to play and learn and while I’m sure my teacher wanted to smack me over the head countless times for playing the way I did (her poor ears!)  I’m sure she appreciated a student who really wanted to be able to do it and was willing to put in the effort to make it happen.  That’s one thing us adults have over many younger students.

Now if I could just figure out how to get those fingers to go where they’re supposed to… every time!