E D D Y C H E N

EFFECTIVE VIOLIN

PRACTICE
GUIDE
Effective Violin Practice Guide
Eddy Chen
 Copyright Notice

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Copyright 2016 Eddy Chen Violin

 TABLE OF

CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION

1 A Word from Eddy Chen

QUALITY VS. QUANTITY

1 The Ultimate Practice Formula

The importance of Setting Specific Goals
Eliminating Mindless Repetition
Learning From Others

BEST PRACTICE STRATEGIES

4 Slow Practice
Immersion
Small Chunking
Recording Yourself
Performance
Visualization

SETTING THE RIGHT GOALS

6 80/20 Principle
Categories of Goals
Technique-Building
Repertoire-Building
Musicality/Interpretation
Performance Experience
Ensemble Experience
Prioritizing the Right Goals

WHAT GOOD PRACTICE SHOULD

11 FEEL LIKE
Distractions
Flow State - The Final Stage of Goal-Setting
Motivation
A Final Word...
Introduction

Legendary violinist Jascha Heifetz practiced less than three hours a day. And wait, it

gets better. He didn't practice on Sundays.

Are you telling me that three hours a day is all that it takes to become one of the

world's best violinists (feel free to replace the word 'violinist' with whichever musical

instrument you play)?

I know musicians who have practiced five to six hours every day for years. Despite

this, improvement was painstakingly slow, confidence was undermined and,

tragically, some of those musicians ended up burning out and quitting.

Why is this? Is it a question of talent? Access (or lack of access) to the best violin

teachers? Both could contribute to a lack of progress. But, the primary reason why

some violinists improve faster than others, is the quality of their practice.

Good practice is an art form in and of itself. I’ve had the privilege of watching world-

class musicians practice, and it is always mesmerizing.

In this short book, I've provided an in-depth guide to achieving quality practice and

developing healthy practice habits. Because, when it comes to practice... quality

trumps quantity, any day.

Quality Vs. Quantity

The Ultimate Practice Formula

This is the ultimate formula I use to achieve success. It applies as much to mastering

the violin as finding love, losing weight or learning a new language.

The formula contains four steps:

1. Clearly define your goal or purpose.

2. Choose a strategy, commit, and EXECUTE it.
3. Notice the results (good or bad). Change strategy if needed.
4. Model and learn from those that are already successful, which will shorten the

time it takes to master your instrument.

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The importance of Setting Specific Goals

Having clear goals is the foundation of effective practice. The more specific your

goal, the better. Take, for example, these goals:

1. I'm going to master this piece of music

2. My goal is to play this piece through with accurate intonation and rhythm three

times in a row by the end of today's practice session.

The problem with the first goal is that it is far too vague. How will you know if you

have 'mastered' the piece? The second goal is much more specific. The focus is on

intonation, speed/rhythm and consistency. With those clear targets in mind, you can

formulate an effective strategy.

Keep the following in mind when setting specific goals:

1. Clearly define what it is you are focusing on. Don’t just think 'good sound', think

'good tonal resonance', or 'even contact', or 'minimal scratchy noise between bow

changes'.
2. Make it measurable. For intonation, know whether you are sharp or flat. If it's

tone, know whether you are using too much or not enough bow speed/weight

etc.
3. Give yourself a time limit. Time limits, or deadlines, force you to focus your

attention. You'll likely find that the majority of students don't do their homework

assignments until the night before the due date (often with terrible results).

Given too long or vague of a deadline, you will naturally become distracted. The

more you procrastinate, the harder it is to get back into the habit of practicing.

Eliminating Mindless Repetition

The beauty of keeping a clear, specific goal in mind is that you will eliminate

mindless repetition. Mindless repetition is one of the worst habits one can develop

during practice. Practice makes permanent, not perfect. If you repeat something the

wrong way over and over again, you will develop bad habits. Unlearning bad habits is

much more difficult than learning new, productive habits.

A specific goal helps you to focus on whether you have met the necessary criteria. It

also focuses your senses so that you are present and aware of how you are playing.

Otherwise, you stand the risk of not paying full attention to the sound that you are

making.

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Here are two examples of how practice styles can affect progress:

John is trying to learn a difficult passage. It doesn't sound quite right, so he repeats it

over and over again, trying to 'get the feel' of the shifts and string crossings. After a

few repetitions, he feels vaguely satisfied and continues on to the next passage. After

one month, although he feels that he has tried his best, the piece still sounds

inaccurate and sloppy.

Sarah, on the other hand, pauses every time she encounters a difficult passage. She

identifies the problem areas and what is lacking in her playing (eg. intonation and

clarity). She then focuses on a few notes that she identifies as the cause of the

problem, before practicing that section of the piece in different ways. After each

attempt, she listens very carefully, to determine what needs to be changed (i.e. the A

was flat and the third finger was too late to lift). Very soon, the passage begins to

sound clear and in tune. She proceeds to repeat it a few times to consolidate it until

it feels natural and then moves on to tackle the next difficult passage.

Shortcut the process by learning from others

Learning a skill or achieving success involves picking a specific goal, executing a

strategy and then re-evaluating based on the results that you are getting.

That said, it's sometimes hard to know which goal to pick (discussed below), which

strategies are more effective and whether you should change strategies or persevere

(some techniques require a long learning period and patience even when it seems

like you are getting no results).

You can figure these things out for yourself, but learning from a teacher will cut your

learning time down significantly.

Additionally, watching great violinists perform, listening to recordings and learning

from books and other resources are also great ways to speed up your progress

dramatically.

The aim, here, is to eliminate wasted time because time is your most precious

resource.

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Best Practice Strategies
Many practice strategies are relevant to the specific problem that you are trying to

solve. One of the traits of a great teacher is the ability not just to diagnose a problem,

but to quickly provide a solution - be it an exercise, change in finger position or shift

in mindset.

However, there are some broader 'best practices' for practicing. To fully appreciate

how these strategies work, you might first want to grasp a basic understanding of

how the human mind learns and retains skills.

Slow Practice

When practicing something in performance tempo, your mind does not have time to

process all the individual movements, positions and sounds. By slowing difficult

passages down - sometimes to less than 50% of the performance tempo - you allow

yourself time to consciously execute each of the movements correctly. As you

repeatedly executed these movements correctly (conscious competence), they begin

to feel easy and natural (unconscious competence). At this point, take the tempo up a

notch. Resist the temptation to speed up too much, losing precision and control. If
done correctly, you should feel a sense of ease and grace when eventually playing up

to speed.

Regarding slow practice, violinist Hilary Hahn once wrote an excellent article

explaining slow practice ('Slow Practice for String Players')

In summary, there are three types of slow practice.

1. Everything is played as if in slow motion. Take all the time necessary for your mind

to register every detail (what position you are in, the spaces between fingers, the

angle of your fingers, the amount of bow used, the distance of hair from bridge and

so on). Notably, with slow practice, you should use movements that are applicable to

a fast tempo. For example, if you are practicing a sautillé passage slowly, don't use

half-bow detaché.

2. Play slowly, but make fast transitions - play the note slowly so that your mind has

time to register your movements, but make the changes and transitions quickly

(often the difficult bit). These transitions will include shifts and string crossings.

3. Play slowly, but with all your musical and phrasing intentions clearly expressed.

Think about the vibrato, bow speed, dynamic and articulation you want for each

note.
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Immersion - focus on one technical aspect at a time

On your journey to learning the violin, you will encounter useful nuggets of

information. Don't try and implement all of these tips at the same time. Trying to

improve all areas of your playing at the same time will become overwhelming. Rather

focus on one aspect of your playing at a time, while putting the other areas into

'maintenance mode'.

This is called 'Immersion'. Studies have shown that immersing oneself in a task for 5

hours a day (150 hours total) will produce far better results than 3 hours once a week,

spread out over an entire year (150 hours total). In order to choose what to focus on,

refer to the section: The 80/20 principle on page 6.

Small Chunking

'Small chunking' works by breaking down a complicated passage or movement into

its individual components. It is like zooming in with a microscope. Then, give each of

these movements your full conscious attention and master them individually.

If you do this, it becomes much easier to piece it all together. When 'small chunking',

it helps to keep in mind the prior and subsequent 'chunks' to understand how what

you're working on fits into the whole.

Interestingly, the famous DOTTED RHYTHM practice method is a form of 'small

chunking'. By playing a straight passage in dotted rhythms (turning quavers into a

dotted quaver followed by a semiquaver, or vice versa), you are effectively grouping

the notes into pairs. Each pair is executed in quick succession giving time for the

mind to prepare the next pair.

The same applies to ACCENT PRACTICE, which accustoms the mind to grouping a

passage of notes into different arranged groups, or 'chunks'. For example, you may

want to accent the first note of every four semiquavers, then repeat the passage

accenting every second semiquaver, then the third, then the fourth.

Finally, a really great way of utilizing 'small chunking' is to practice a chunk until it is

perfect and then add one note at a time, until you play the whole passage as a unit.

Page 5
 Recording yourself and getting lessons

Have you ever thought you sounded amazing, then recorded yourself, listened to the

recording and were severely shocked?

One of the benefits of recording yourself is that it allows you to pick up on mistakes

you weren't aware of while practicing (unconscious incompetence). Likewise, having

a good teacher is probably the fastest way to identify errors. It is not enough to just

look out for the mistakes you are aware of. You have to take into account the

mistakes that you are NOT aware of.

Performance

Performing is the ultimate test of the areas in which you have achieved

'unconscious competence'. How often have you thought that you could play

something only to have the pressure of a live audience reveal tensions and

weaknesses? Performing is a great way to identify areas that need improvement.

Visualization

Research shows that visualization training is effective, especially when combined

with real-life practice. My belief is that visualization forces you to become

consciously aware of the goal or end product that you are trying to achieve.

Setting the Right Goals

80/20 Principle

Let’s delve deeper. How does one set the right goals?

Those who study productivity will have heard of the Pareto Law, also known as the

80/20 law. In simple terms, and by way of example, it's often the case that 80% of a

business’s revenue comes from 20% of its customers, or 80% of fruit comes from

20% of the trees planted.

In other words, not all efforts produce equal returns. The same applies to violin

practice. Practice the things that will give you proportionate returns. At the same

time, make sure that you stay focused so that you don't end up practicing things

that only give marginal returns for effort.

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For example. a violinist who spends hours practicing left-hand pizzicato will get very

good at a technique that is rarely used in the violin repertoire, while a violinist who

spends the same amount of time practicing bow control and tone production will

have better tone - something which benefits his playing more broadly.

So, unless you are performing a piece with left-hand pizzicato and can already do

everything else in the piece, it is probably not worth your time to focus just on left-

hand pizzicato. What this example illustrates is that prioritising the wrong things can

have overarching consequences.

Take the following examples:

1. John suffers from performance anxiety and often plays terribly on stage, even

though he sounds fine in a practice room. However, instead of performing frequently

to desensitize himself to stage nerves, John believes he can compensate for nerves

by thoroughly over-practicing his pieces. He ends up spending double the amount of

time he needs to learn each piece just so he can feel comfortable playing it on stage.

2. Sarah has very good intonation, but it is not quite perfect. The rhythm of her

Mozart Concerto is not very accurate. Instead of focusing on the rhythm, she feels

more comfortable practicing what she is good at. She continues to try and perfect

the final 1% of her intonation accuracy and procrastinates on fixing her rhythm.

Focussing only on something that you are already competent in can be a form of

procrastination. It might feel like you're practicing (and in some ways you are), but

you won't improve unless you prioritise what's important.

Categories of Goals

It's extremely important to keep in mind that your practice strategy will differ

depending on your larger, mid/long-term goals. In general, your goals can fall into

the following five categories...

Technique-building

This refers to the time spent focussing on building fundamental violin technique. It

typically involves scales, exercises, etudes and an awareness of your physical

sensation and movements in correlation with the sound being produced.

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Repertoire-building

This is the part of your practice dedicated to learning a piece of music. It consists of
learning a completely new piece of music and preparing it until it is ready for
performance (This often includes memorizing the piece of music).

During this period of your practice, you want to focus on:

• Intonation
• Rhythm
• Tempo
• Dynamics
• Bow Distribution
• Clarity
• Articulation
• Shifts
• String Crossings
• Vibrato

Musicality/Interpretation

This is an extension of repertoire-building that emphasizes the interpretational

aspects of performing a piece. While repertoire-building is focused on practicing a

piece of music until it is 'correct', this element of practice focuses more on the

’subjective’ side of music. So, style, personal expression and so on. This would

normally be included in the repertoire-building phase, as the two often go hand in

hand. However, it's useful to separate the musical aspects from the technical. This

aspect of practicing also includes hands-off actions such as listening to recordings.

Things to focus on here include:

• Phrasing
• Style
• Articulation
• Vibrato
• Character
• Contrast
• Narrative/Story-telling
• Listening to recordings
• Studying the Score

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Performance Experience

As the name implies, performance practice refers to performing the piece/program

as a whole (or in large sections). This may be in front of an audience, or even by

yourself (But playing as if you were performing).

Ensemble Experience

This refers to time spend in rehearsals - either in an orchestra or in chamber music.

The latter is especially important for developing a mature, nuanced musicianship.

Learning to lead, follow and blend with other musicians is a hugely beneficial skill to

have. Ensemble playing also emphasizes different aspects of music - most notably,

rhythm, balancing dynamics and the blending of tone and articulation.

It's important to note that these areas refer more to the state of your mental

awareness, as opposed to the exact piece of music that you are playing.

For example, you could work on your vibrato technique in a violin concerto and that

would still be a technique-building practice. Likewise, you could play a scale

musically from beginning to end with flare and that could resemble 'performance

practice'.

This is why some musicians will say they never do scales, despite having great

technique, because those musicians are able to practice their technique in their

pieces. However, if you do this you run the risk of making the piece of music dry and

unpleasant.

If you keep these broader areas of focus in mind you will become a well-balanced

musician.

Someone who focuses primarily on learning new pieces (repertoire-focused) will not

have invested enough time in learning how to actually play their instrument

effortlessly. they will likely struggle more and more as the pieces they try to learn

become more difficult. Alternately, someone who focuses too much on technique

risks learning the technique outside of its musical context and will lack the

understanding to apply these technical tools in a musical context.

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Prioritizing the Right Goals

This is why there is no such thing as a 'perfect practice routine'. You must choose

the area you want to focus on depending on your needs. The time you spend on each

area will depend on the progress that you want to make.

If your technique is making it difficult to learn new pieces, you may need to prioritize

technical goals for a while. It is not uncommon for violinists to go through periods

where they dedicate the majority of their practice to technique and scales.

Or, if you have a performance in a week's time, the last thing you want to do is spend

all of your time on technique. Ideally, you will be polishing up your repertoire-

building. You should be well into your performance-practice and musicality-building

phases (as well as ensemble rehearsals if performing with other musicians).

In general, you have to judge what to prioritize depending on:

1. Identifying areas that are holding you back - weaknesses that, if fixed, will most

drastically improve your general playing. Often, what needs the most work is the

thing you are most resistant to fixing - that one nasty bad habit that is so difficult to

change.

2. Your schedule and needs - this applies to whether you are preparing for a

competition/concert, or if you have a lot of spare time without pressure. What you

are practicing for will affect your practice schedule and what you focus on.

3. Try to set your goals so they are challenging, but not too challenging. The ideal

goal allows you to hit the 'flow state' (see below).

Famous violin pedagogues such as Carl Flesch and Ivan Galamian have recommended

splitting your priorities into sections of, roughly, 40% technique, 40% repertoire (and

interpretation), and 20% performing/ensemble.

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What good practice should feel like

All of this is meant as a guideline - things for you to think about, not a strict set of

rules to follow religiously. Good practice is intuitive. It should be fluid, constantly

adapting to the feedback you are getting during your practice. The irony is that if you

expend too much conscious energy thinking about how to practice, you won't have

enough attention to focus on the problems that you're trying to fix by practicing! It

is, therefore, important to learn to recognize what is feels like to achieve deep,

quality practice. Some people call this feeling 'being in the flow state, 'mindfulness',

or 'deliberate practice'. Whatever you call it, most of us have experienced this

sensation at some stage.

Here's how to tell if you've experienced being in a 'flow state':

1. An expression of rapt attention.

2. Silences in practice when you are thinking about and analyzing your playing.
3. Calm, effortless focus and concentration, where hours can feel like minutes and

minutes can feel like hours.

4. Deep enjoyment (even if the task is difficult).
5. Feeling as though all the worries of your daily life temporary fade away, as all of

your consciousness focuses on the task at hand.

Distractions

Needless to say, to enter this space of deep concentration, you need to remove all

distractions. Even if you don't pick up your phone or check your messages, just

having your phone go off, or Facebook open nearby will affect your ability to block

those distractions out. Save yourself the mental effort of ignoring distractions by

simply removing them from your practice space.

(I always try to practice with my phone on silent, facing down, so that I don't get

distracted by messages).

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Flow State - The Final Stage of Goal-setting

Research shows that we learn best when we push ourselves to the limits of our

abilities.

In choosing a goal that demands all of your attention, you learn to approach it with

undivided attention. These are also the goals that amount to the highest levels of

satisfaction and confidence when they are achieved.

Working on goals that are too easy will induce a feeling of boredom and boredom

created an environment in which you can become easily distracted. At the same time

setting goals that are too high will amount to feelings of anxiety, which in turn can

amount to bad habits as you try to overcome these obstacles. It's important to be
mindful of the goals that you choose.

If you are feeling distracted or frustrated, ask yourself - what goals have I set for

myself? And are these goals challenging me just enough, but without pushing past

the limits of my abilities? To use an extreme example: trying to play Sibelius' Violin

Concerto in D minor when you've only just mastered Twinkle Twinkle Little Star will

only cause frustration and ultimately take the joy out of playing.

Motivation

There are a number of 'tactics' you could use to enhance motivation, but ultimately,

the only way to ensure self-sustaining motivation is to learn to enter the flow state

during practice. Flow state is the epitome of intrinsic, process-orientated motivation.

You shouldn't be practicing because your parents or teachers told you to. You do not

need to rely on an upcoming competition to practice. Practice because you love the

feeling of applying 100% of your focus on overcoming technical and musical

challenges. The journey is always more important than the destination.

The reason why flow state is self-sustaining is because the moment you improve, you

are forced to increase the intensity of the challenge - otherwise, you fall out of flow

state and enter 'boredom'. Likewise, if you encounter a challenge that is too difficult,

you are forced to improve your skill level, to rid yourself of anxiety. The point of

reaching a flow state is never static and it is, therefore and by definition, impossible

to become stagnant.

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 A Final Word...

HAVE FUN
Lastly, I want to reiterate that while good practice should be challenging, it should

also be enjoyable. Getting stressed or frustrated when you aren't improving won't

help you to become a better musician. It will only provide you with more mental and

emotional distractions.

It is equally dangerous to misinterpret this as a license to be lazy and 'take it easy'. If

you find yourself getting too stressed while practicing - try this: Think of practice as

a game.

The game has serious rules. These are the rules of Violin Playing. Your job is to learn

and practice these rules.

The game has challenging levels (your goals!), and as you progress through the game,

the boss fights get harder and harder. As your playing improves, you or your teacher

should set more challenging goals (bigger bosses).

But, at the end of the day, it's a game and you play it to have fun.

We must never forget that we practice because we

enjoy playing the violin and making music.

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