Congratulations
on your decision to learn to play violin or
viola
(even if you decided and started already years
ago). It is a beautiful
thing, although a lot
of people think it's very hard, you can only start very young,
you
have to suffer months of horrible screeching noises... I'm
happy to reassure you that all this is not true. Like any
other activity, as long as you really want to learn to play and enjoy
it, you can start at any
age. It may take longer or not, you may be come more or
less skilled, but you can start.
Also
another myth is about very difficult initial times. Everything
"everybody knows" about horrible noises that family and neighbors (not
to mention
the learner) have to suffer for months if not years is not
true, it doesn't necessarily have to be so. This fear of
horribly hard times is what discourages
people from starting to learn to play violin or viola. Also, since many
do experience hard times at the beginning, due to lack of correct
information on how to play, a lot of those who actually start then give
up soon because can't see much progress.
All this can be avoided! If you
learn to play with the New Approach developed by Kató Havas
When
you want to learn
to play violin or viola, it's necessary to realize that the
difficulty is
not physical, it is in the concentration,
in
the ability to focus
that is required. In today's society we are so used to doing many
things
at the same time (I myself am a sinner with this respect,
in many
cases) such as making a phone call while writing at your pc and surfing
Internet and having a tea and... more, that it's really
difficult
to fix our attention on one thing at a time for some longer
time.
The
cause of bad sound
and
a lot of other problems too
The
horrible sound, or rather noise, that beginners think they have to
endure is caused by tensions in the body, by the right hand gripping
the bow and pressing on the strings, by the left hand clamping the
instrument between shoulder and head for fear of dropping it and
pressing the fingers down on the
fingerboard.
All this not only causes
physical tension that produces horrible noises (especially at
the beginning, but not only), faulty
intonation, inability to play fast and to play double stops and
chords, but in more serious cases it causes physical injuries
(tendonitis etc.) following which some players have to completely give
up
playing, after maybe undergoing surgical operations.
It
also causes more or less pain
in the back, neck, arms, thumbs and causes nerves,
stage fright, the fear of playing in front of an audience. Pain is
nothing else than a message your body is sending
you, it's telling you that you are doing something wrong, you are
mistreating it.
You
can have a beautiful tone from the beginning
And if
you are not a beginner you can also have a better quality tone. A
beautiful tone is a rich and warm tone, not squeaky, and this depends
both on intonation and the way the tone is produced by the bow friction
(not pressure) on the strings and by the softness of your left hand,
that remains supple and able to play fast, play chords, so
that
the player can focus on expressing himself or herself rather than on
the technical problems.
What is really important to
learn
to play (or to improve if you already play) and
achieve results
quickly is the ability to control
every single movement of your body and to do this you need to focus your
mind on one thing at a time, one movement at a time and
then, once you can control individual movements, put them together.
It's
important to train our inner ear, to learn to recognise the pitch of
each note to improve intonation
and develop a good tone
from the beginning. Also, the first important thing to develop is the
ability to have and follow a steady
rhythm, indispensable to play with other people.
Learn
to play with the
New
Approach
"A
new approach to violin playing" (and it applies to viola too) is the
title of a book written in 1961 by the famous violin and viola
teacher Kato
Havas.
Now I hope you don't think I'm a
fanatic! I'm writing this page because I myself have experienced the
success of
the new approach, I had got to a point where I was really
terribly nervous playing solo for an
audience, not happy at all. Then I studied with Kató Havas
and I
completely got rid of
all those fears, playing "difficult" things is much easier and I
really enjoy playing for an audience (and, incidentally, my listeners
say they like my playing).
If you want to read more
on how to learn to play with the new approach, I recommend you to visit
this page where you can also watch videos from a workshop with Kato Havas explaining the new
approach, and
read Kato Havas's books. I've
seen
a
complete difference
between the way I used to play and what I've learned from her.
Now
I teach the new approach and I see that my pupils have a nice
tone from the very beginning, the advanced ones improve very quickly,
all enjoy themselves much more, learn more
quickly and overcome nerves.
Go to Kato Havas and the New Approach
Go from Learn to play to Home
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