Violins, violins, and more violins

After ranting about the rain, I realized that I COMPLETELY forgot that I had to link things and stuff. So, I've decided to write another post on practicing the violin.

Violin has been a major thing for me in the past ten years. But I'm not here to tell my story, mainly because it's really boring and there's nothing to it. I'm here to talk to those violinists about how to *hopefully* efficiently practice violin.

To start off practicing, you must begin with scales and exercises. Not only does this help your fingers get warmed up for what you need to work on solo-wise, but it is helpful for ear-training. Start off by playing one scale, and play it twice. Listen very carefully to the intonation and the intervals between the two notes. Try to get that scale perfectly in tune. After that, you should work on thirds, octaves, arpeggios, and all that jazz. An scale book that I recommend is the Scales for Advanced Violinists by Barbara Barber. It is excellent for scales and exercises pertaining to scales. It contains all 12 major scales and minor scales, plus arpeggios, chromatic scales, octaves, tenths, fingered octaves, and much much more.

Don't start off playing all the scales. Instead, start doing one scale per day and really listen to how you're playing. Just playing the scale without listening gets you nowhere. Afterwards, you can play the scale with a slurred bowing, or you can do different bowings while practicing scales. Patience and disciplinary ear work will pay off in the future. After a while, you can gradually build up to two scales a day.

After practicing your daily dose of scales, you need to work on technical exercises, like thirds or bowing exercises. Another book I recommend is the Rode 24 Caprices. These little songs include difficult techniques such as thirty-second slurs and lots of bowings that need practicing on, such as staccato and hooks. Another good technique artist is Fritz Kreisler, and a lot of his techniques focus on intonation. There are some exercises, however that do puts a lot of stress on the fingers, such as fingered octaves and tenths. In order to efficiently practice these before your hand starts to hurt, you should practice playing the bottom note only, then playing the top note, and then putting it both together. It's frustrating, I know.

After practicing, you should be able to comfortably practice your solo piece. If you are starting a solo piece, try to get down some fingerings that are really comfortable to you. Don't change your fingerings every time you practice, because you will get confused. Try to get a solid base on your fingerings and bowings. After that, look for dynamics. If the composer tells you to play piano, don't play forte. There's a reason why the composer made that part the dynamic he wanted, so do it like the composer says. Also, you should have an idea of what part of the bow to play in if, for example, a composer gives you music that has staccato notes. If the composer has sixteenths notees that are supposed to be soft, play from the tip to the middle of the bow. If there's staccato, play from the middle of the bow till the end, around 3/4 of the way to the bow. You'll know where to play staccato off the string with the bow when you feel comfortable with your bow bouncing off the string and you're able to control it.

So, that's the basics for practicing violin. I know at times, practicing can get frustrating, or you just don't feel like you want to practice at all. But it all eventually works out in the end. Hope this goes well for all you violin players out there! :D