Violin Video Lesson: Understanding where to look when playing your violin

So you see, I once had a student that whenever they were playing, they would look at the ground or at the ceiling or to the left or to the right, but never at what they were doing, where they were doing it. I became so exasperated by this that I drew a little drawing. Something like this. Looking at the drawing, I asked the students where does the sound come from? And they pointed to here.

I said, "That's true." And then posed the following question, "If that's where the sound comes from, then why are you looking at the ceiling or at the floor?" Why aren't you looking at where you produce the sound?

And with that question, I would like to welcome you to VirtualSheetMusic.com's Meet The Expert. My name is William Fitzpatrick, and I am the Henry Tamianka Professor of Violin at the Hull-Musco Conservatory of Music, which is located on the campus of Chapman University. I am, as well, Director of MusiShare and the MusiShare Young Artist Program.

I remember once with Ms. DeLay at Juilliard that I was playing this passage from a concerto and I closed my eyes to feel the music better. Well, Ms. DeLay looked at me and said the following, "Billy. Billy, you can't close your eyes while you play." I responded by saying to Ms. DeLay, "But this is how I feel the music better. When I close my eyes and play I can see inside of myself what it is I want to play with more clarity."

But Ms. DeLay was not touched by what I said and adamantly responded, "But Billy, if you don't look at what you're doing you don't know what you did. And if you don't know what you did, you can't do it again." Well I argued with her about this but as usual I didn't win. It took me quite a while to understand her point of view but eventually I did. I then understood why she was right.

Okay, so let me try to explain it. Think about it, how many senses do we have? Well, we have five. Okay. How many of these senses do we use to play the violin? Well, certainly we use sight, hearing, and touching. Obviously, we don't need to taste or smell the violin to play. Well, each one of us has a sense which is more important than another. For me it's hearing. This is my prominent or dominant sense. You see, it's important that we understand which one is dominant so that we can develop ways to augment the others.

For example, if hearing is our strong suit then we should probably work on sight and touch. Or if sight is the strongest then we should probably work on hearing and touch. You see we need to do this to develop the strongest possible awareness of how we play the violin. What we do to make the music happen. So looking away or closing one's eyes could certainly run contrary to this purpose. In principle, it would certainly not help us to practice in what we are doing.

So once I was looking at a video of a very famous violinist with a student and they played this passage. Or something like this. As you just saw, before they played the octaves they suddenly stopped, moved their fingers like that, and then continued to play. And it was in tune. Well, it seems obvious that they knew the octave was out of tune, that they saw that the octave was out of tune.

So before they heard it they fixed it. And then they played it and it was in tune. I believe that this opens the door towards understanding why we need to explore our senses, heighten our awareness. For example, on the left side we can explore how we touch the strings on a particular passage. Or what we do with our wrist or with our elbow. Or we could look at our right side and explore how the finger weight is distributed through our bow grip. Or look at whether or not our wrist is free, or try to explore the cause or causes as to why it isn't.

I'm sure you could imagine other possibilities. All right. So if we need to be aware then you might ask, "How can I look at the music at the same time?" Well, it's precisely for this reason that I ask, insist, that my students memorize their concertos and solo pieces as quickly as possible. Doing this, memorizing, enables us to use this awareness to produce that which we wish to express. And so consequently we need to have the music memorized to be able to clearly feel, see, and hear what we want to produce so that we can do it again.

Now my students ask me, "Where exactly do I look when performing?" Well, I look at where the bow touches the string. You see for me the music comes from there. From here I can see what my bow is doing, where it's landing, how it's going to feel. What's happening in my bow grip? I can feel all of those things. If I need to I can even look at what's happening with my fingers.

Now, what about you? Where should you look? Well as we are all different it will not nor should it ever be exactly where I look. But my hope is that this discussion will act as a model, a guide to helping you discover your place. That spot that works for you. Oh, yes and by the way, some very famous violinist don't look all the time at what they're doing. My students constantly are reminding me of this. Okay, this is true. But check them out when it gets to be tricky, when there's a tricky passage, follow their eyes.

I bet you, you'll see that they are looking at what they're doing. So that's it for this discussion. If you have a comment or a question to ask me, please feel free to post it below. And as always, do take care and here's hoping that your practicing is becoming more and more efficient. And that it is leading you to even better performances.

Automatic video-to-text transcription by DaDaScribe.com

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