Tip for Practicing the Violin

Transcripts

Slavica Ilic: My name is Slavica Ilic and we are today in the International School of Music in Bethesda, Maryland and in my next clip I will give you a couple of tips for practicing.

If you are a beginner you have to remember one thing that practicing violin on daily basis is very important. So we have to practice instrument everyday. The best thing for that is to have your timeframe set up everyday from what time to what time you would like to practice your violin.

You have to decide that the place, the room that you are practicing your violin needs to be away from a TV, needs to be away from the phone. When you are practicing, prefer it, if you can stand up because by standing up you can get a better position. Either if you choose to stand up or sit down, your back, remember needs to be straight. You should never sit on the soft chair or a sofa-bed or your bed. The chair that you are sitting down needs to be the hard surface and the best thing is to sit at the end of the chair, so you can have your back straight and you can freely move your bow up and down, specially down without hitting your legs and your knees.

Before you start practicing, you have to make sure that you understand what do you want to do , what do you want to accomplish for that day, what do you want to fix?

For the moment that you are practicing you have to have your mind focused on what you are doing. If your mind is somewhere else in your daydreams, you should stop practicing and try to pick up the instrument later on.

When you set up the time for practicing, try not to look on the clock and count your minutes. Try to have your mind on your music, and before you start practicing you have to understand that you have to decide, what do you want to accomplish for that day? What do you want to fix that day? Find out if you are practicing a passage of the sixteenth notes or anything. If the passage is not coming along very well you have to know the reason why is that happening and then you have to know the way how to fix that.

If you have whole concerto or the movement of the concerto or the short piece to learn, try not to play the whole song from the beginning up to the end over-and-over. Work on the small sections and practice the small sections until you really perfect them, until you brush them out and then go back and try to put the whole song together.

The quantity of the time that you put in your practicing is not as important like quality of the time. Please remember that practice makes perfect, and it will come through only with a little hard work and a lot of concentration.