Practice Tips
Besides the lead tips for beginners to accelerate their progress in learning more about violin, practicing the violin itself is the main tool in mastering the violin as soon as possible. However, many people still fail in mastering the violin even with excessive practicing.
Why is this so? This is because many beginners do not know where, when and how to start practicing. Thus it leads to unproductive practice, which will end up in poorer results.
These useful practice tips are here to help beginners to learn how to practice much efficiently. :)
1) Where to Practice?
It is advisable to find a quiet room for your practice so you will not be disturbed in the process of learning. Things like hand phones, laptop, television, radio etc. are a form of distraction, thus one should stay away from those things when practicing. This is essential as focused learning is very important when learning violin.
2) When to Practice?
The best time to practice varies for everybody. The best time is always the time you feel the most energetic and freshest. Some people are most fresh in the morning, while others are fresh at other times of the day. The practice time can be also separated into two sessions so you need not rush your practice in one whole morning, for example.
Practice is not a one or
two days thing, thus it is important for you to be consistent with your
practice at your scheduled time at least 5 or 6 times a week.
3) How to Practice
This is the most important aspect during your practice. Even with the tips above, you will not succeed in your learning if the way you are practicing is incorrect. Some people have consistent practices, but they might be actually practicing their mistakes over and over again only. Below are some tips that will help you progress in your practice session:
Warming up at the start of the session
Do not belittle the warm up session. It is an extremely important exercise to help increase your flexibility as well as the rapidity in your fingers. This aids in improving in the different violin techniques practiced later on. Not only that, warming up helps to avoid or reduce injuries too.
Warm up exercises to strengthen your fingers can be done through scales, arpeggios, and other exercises that help in stretching your fingers.
Purpose(s) of the practice session
It is important to set some goals to accomplish in your practice session. If there aren’t goals and you are only practicing for the sake of practicing, the practice session is deemed as unproductive. Examples of goals are like aiming to fix some problem in holding the bow, aiming to master part of a technique etc.
If there are still difficulties in solving the problems, it is good to check online after your practice, or ask your violin teacher for advices.
Spot your problems in the session
During and after the practice session, start to analyse where are your weak points in playing the violin. This is important as solving these problems should be the your goals the next day in your practice session.
Enjoy the process of practicing
During the practice, always stay relaxed. Stressful practices would not get you anywhere; instead it will lead to more mistakes, making you less motivated to learn.
Besides practicing to solve your mistakes in violin playing, practicing music is also a time to feel the music and enjoy it when you play. Do not fret if you fail to accomplish your goal. Spotting out and trying to solve the problem already plays a part in improving your skills!
If you have been learning the violin for a while on your own but feel that you would like to have a violin teacher to guide you to improve your skills, our agency is happy to help you find one through our Student-to-Violin Teacher matching service that is free of charge!
Feel free to contact us if you are interested!
Hope these tips helps and have fun in your practice! :)