Change as little as possible: a key to natural violin playing

When you’re standing with your instrument, when you’re sitting with it, notice how you use your body.

Are you doing anything special?

No.

You just stand the way you stand. You sit the way you sit.

It’s not a performance.

Now here’s a powerful key to virtuosity on the violin or viola:

When you go from simply standing or sitting with your instrument to actually playing, change as little as possible.

In fact, barely change anything.

This is more profound than it sounds.

And to really get it, you need to feel what you’re doing at increasingly subtle levels.

The grossest level is what you can simply observe: the actual motions.

Some violinists visibly raise their shoulders when they begin playing. Others extend their chin slightly forward. Some stiffen their knees, change the position of the pelvis, or reorganize the entire upper body.

This level is relatively easy to notice.

Then there is a subtler level: micro-movements. Here, the changes the body makes between not playing and playing are much smaller. They take more time and sensitivity to perceive. I suspect teachers like Dorothy DeLay and Yankelevich were highly adept at noticing this level.

But there is an even subtler level.

And, my friends, this is where the secret is.

At the subtlest level, there is some kind of molecular mind-body fabric that reconfigures itself the moment you take your instrument and prepare to play.

Try to notice it without any expectation of what it should be.

Feel your body as a kind of field or cloud, with various currents moving through it.

Notice what is happening before you play.

When you are doing nothing.

Then notice the first microseconds of playing—or even the moment you simply bring the violin into position.

A small doubt, a little compensation, some tiny psychophysical adjustment that makes you 0.1% less comfortable.

The key is to change as little as possible.

You might hear what a teacher once told you.

You might follow some subconscious idea of what violin playing means—what it has meant throughout your life.

Perhaps your body remembers a certain kind of violin playing and automatically reverts to it.

But try to face the unknown.

Don’t do anything.

Simply place the instrument. Hold it comfortably.

Natural violin playing begins here: with as little interference as possible.

If it feels good, it will sound good.

And every day, when you are about to play, right before you begin, your body will be different.

That’s normal.

Don’t try to change it.

Don’t try to return to where you were with the instrument yesterday, or some other time when playing felt particularly good.

Just go from where you are.

Without censoring.

Without adjusting.

And try to preserve the integrity and totality of that molecular mind-body fabric—the you that was simply standing there, doing nothing—as you cross the almost invisible threshold into playing.

And soon, playing will be as natural as breathing.