Thinking of stopping the violin? You re not alone many adult learners feel stuck at some point. But before you quit, watch this. In this video, I ll break down the # 1 reason people gave up and exactly how to fix it
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Right on! – thanks
Great points. I’m an adult beginner. I’ve had my violin for ten years, but I’ve recently had amazing consistency in the last three months. What caused me the most difficulty was my bow hold. I don’t have access to a teacher in my country, so I rely on online teachers like you. I can’t begin to tell you how frustrating it was to encounter so many variations on how to hold the bow. Thankfully, I overcame this struggle. Now, I’m happily making progress. My neighbors are probably tired of hearing “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star”. š
I started with 69 but still did not give up! But do understand those, who give up due do different reasons. Greetings from Germany!
Some really useful tips thank you Alison. Iām always trying to play faster but need to slow things down. Definitely need to write down a decent practice plan too and it was really interesting to find out even professional players mess up with intonation!
Reason 5: Worried that youāll drive your neighbors crazy. Solution 1, knock on their doors and tell them you want to study the violin and ask what time of the day works for them. I found all my neighbors were very supportive and simply told me not to worry about it, and also told me stories of how they played an instrument in the past.
Solution 2: When you still become too timid to practice, ask your main neighbor again. I stopped for 7 months, ran into my closest neighbor recently and told him Iām starting again. He smiled and practically screamed at me sweetly saying, āJust do it! Anytime, all day even! Stop worrying!ā
That’s my big problem also.
My violin teacher told me in the first few sessions that ā2 minutes of practice is still practiceā and that was very helpful advice for me personally because it put less pressure on me to practice for long periods (which is difficult for various personal reasons) and reinforces the idea that any practice at all is good because it still helps you learn SOMETHING even if itās not very much. I think that accepting that not every practice session is going to be a huge breakthrough is also very helpful for continuing to pursue playing.
Hi Allison – I canāt speak for anyone else, but I havenāt given up on my violin ā and I have no plans ever quitting. Iāll admit, the violin is a difficult instrument to learn; and thatās why after ten years of playing the violin, I only play it in the first position and within the first two octaves and with a so-called finger vibrato. Even with these self-imposing restrictions, I can play all my favorite hymns and lyrical tunes with “feeling, phrasing, “vibrato” and all that good stuff” as the Fiddlerman would say.
Great job! Are you self teaching or do you have a teacher? With proper guidance you would have amazing progress in 10 years. Sometimes your time is more precious than any tuition you could save, and once the years have gone by we can never have them back!
I almost gave up because I had the wrong teacher. It’s hard enough without the teacher looking bored while you are trying to do what was asked of you. I found a new teacher and started from scratch. I’m still sounding terrible but am enjoying the journey and have even started to learn the viola as well.
This is really true. As a Bmus (Australia) classical guitar graduate I took up the violin as a second, really third/fourth instrument and struggled, REALLY struggled past fifth grade AMEB but eventually got through it and now am at about seventh grade but don’t let anyone ANYONE tell you it’s no worries. It’s hard H.A.R.D. and every step took time. Just keep fiddling is all I can say and you will definitely get there. That’s the only way !! Keep fiddling !!
Thank you Alison! šš½ I needed this
I have to admit: the biggest struggle I have is getting myself motivated to pick up my instruments at all.
I have a beautiful violin and a cello and when I practice it is fun but to get there is sometimes very difficult.
There are many doubts that hold me back and make me feel small and not good enough for those instruments…
But thank you for that video. It is good to see that especially other adult beginners are struggling too as I do. š
Thank you. I tried a couple of years ago following you and then I stopped. But I really do want to learn. So thank you for this ššš¤ā„ļø
I love this. I am in my 40s and started lessons for the first time almost a year ago. I did not connect well with my first two teachers, but finally landed on the right one for me. One of my main struggles has been just allowing myself to sound terrible. I think we all so often expect to be great immediately, and that is not how life works.
I learned to play piano first (more or less as a 5-6 year old) and actually struggled with lessons because if I knew how something was supposed to sound I glazed over and played it that way vs learning the timing of notes and things like that while reading notes. Sometimes that playing by ear was so automatic I didn’t know I was doing it before my instructor would stop me and scold me. Then we moved away and I stopped lessons while continuing to play piano completely for myself. Which I did – and that even went into playing more difficult pieces over the years. On the downside it means that if I didn’t know how a piece went, it meant that I was basically unable to play that piece right. Playing by ear I think comes down to being a very good mimic. Leaning violin, some of the enormous draws of the instrument to me very early was the emphasis on playing by ear by some of the online instructors. So once I “broke the code” as far as how to find the right notes (sounds) on the violin, my world of playing violin opened up.
My habit right now is search youtube for different soloist performances of different things and listen to that with one earbud while playing along with and listening to what I’m playing with my other ear. Basically mimicking. There’s very easy things I practice where I’m not focused on hitting the right notes, but getting the right emotion into the notes I play. There’s more frustrating things I practice where I’m gradually learning “portions” of a bigger piece where I’m still struggling a little with memorizing how the piece goes and getting up to speed. And playing on the e string which is hard for me because it’s so easy to make it squeaky because I’m not bowing right. I’m trying to limit myself to practicing for 1-2 hours straight, but have gone to practicing like 5 hours in a row before putting my violin away. As I’m able to get through a piece very quickly because I know how it goes and am either playing very well with the soloist/performer or getting ahead of them,, I look for something new and harder to play. <= That is what I'm doing while forcing myself to keep improving vs settling on just being able to play the instrument in a basic sense... Tough things for me right now are chords, ornaments, and speed. My fingers are not yet as fast as they would be on the piano.... but I force myself to work on these things. It's still hard, but I think in the 2 months that I've been learning violin I've gotten to a point where I can give it a try and come close to getting it right sort of where before it was TOO HARD. o_O Basically, I'm saying I agree with your video - these are things that helped me not quit after a month. š But I would add that people need to keep challenging themselves while also giving themselves easy things to practice every day just so they get used to playing some things very nicely while struggling on whatever they are learning (and improving on).
Great advice iam a 78 year old just started to taking lessons . all you said super help full. They say it a journey hope I live long enough to sound half good . having s great teacher is the way to go. some teacher did not want to take the time to teach a old dog how to play Ha Ha . great videos watched a lot of your videos always helpfull keep up with the great work !!!
I started learning 1 year ago when I was 74. My playing is beginning to sound much better and more in tune.
I love Alisonās videos and her song book 1 is just right for me now. They give my fingers a real workout but in doing so I have become very familiar
with where the notes are. I also have a lesson once a fortnight which is also very helpful and my teacher is quite happy for me to work through the song book. All the best with your violin journey!
Hello teacher! I’ve been practicing vibrato since the last 2 years, and I simply cannot do vibrato with my index finger because it feels locked. You never discussed about vibrato in your 1-30 course. So, maybe you should consider adding vibrato course!
Its not included in the course as it cant really be written down into words. Instead i have 3 videos that teach vibrato – just in different ways to suit the individual as its quite hard to teach:
HERE ARE all 3 of my vibrato videos:
1. March 2012: https://youtu.be/KMvj9RIrvrQ
2. Jan 2013: https://youtu.be/CH1L5gfBGYU
3. Sept 2017: https://youtu.be/v8KkCViYq2c
I think people give up because even after several years of practice, it doesn’t sound pretty. The more you learn, the more you realize that there is so much you don’t know. My church has an orchestra and I watch the violinists and try to imitate their arm movements.
This video topic was very encouraging. Thank you. Structuring your practices is a very good idea and adjusting expectations!
In my case because of intencse pressure from my mother to practice. The second reason was because i couldnt tune the blame thing! The gut was allways letting me down. And.yet i loved gut tone! I was belittled by my teachers.
Two years in (almost 40 yo) to learning violin and really having a hard time with left hand. I get a beautiful sound on open strings but scratchy sounds as soon as I put a finger down, especially on the D string. Iāve been struggling with this for a few months and getting discouraged but I did find this video helpful!