Once upon a time I was having tea in the middle of one of my coachings with Nathan Milstein, and the talk turned to the issue of scratch.

No, not what chickens do whilst in the pursuit of nourishment; what too many violinists do when putting bow to string.

Anyway, Milstein told me about a time Perlman visited. He, himself, had asked about this very thing, feeling he ‘scratched’ more than he would like.

Milstein told me he said to him, ‘you scratch because you scratch.’

Pretty funny, as I think back on it.

What the master was really trying to say was that on some level an inattention to detail had become habitual.

Fortunately there is a way out of this, and I’ll tell you about it. But not before I add that Itzhak Perlman is definitely NOT a scratchy violinist. In fact, at the time I was quite surprised that he would have had any concerns whatsoever on the subject.

Now, scratch happens when the amount of pressure on the string is not matched by an appropriate amount of horizontal bow movement. Most often it occurs at changes of bow direction, particularly at the frog.

One of the things I stress from the first months of my ‘Beginners Circle’ course and through every course I have produced on playing the violin, is the importance of keeping the bow moving horizontally and evenly.

It’s one of those things you just cannot take for granted. And I myself find that I must slow down and go back to school on the specifics of doing this, from time to time, to keep my bow arm scratch free.

Yet there is another big producer of scratch. It’s the kind of splatting scratch heard when the bow is brought down too forcefully from above the string to create an accent.

I call this a ‘Hack-cent.’

The problem here is one of timing and control. The timing is in getting the arrival at the string to coincide exactly with the horizontal movement of the arm; of transferring the downward force into what I’d call ‘horizontalized’ force.

In other words, the energy makes an immediate 90 degree turn, the bow stays glued to the string, and the amount of vertical pressure arriving on the string matches the bow speed perfectly.

Now, again, this can be broken down and practiced quite slowly and easily. But one has to hear there is a problem before a problem can be fixed on the violin. And unfortunately, many players have come to accept certain ‘mannerisms’ in their playing to the point they no longer register consciously.

If and when they do wake up, however, I’ve got a good place for them to go to get back on track.

All the best,
Clayton Haslop

P.S. Want this kind of instruction, but aren’t quite up to Kreutzer yet? Here’s your ticket.

Beautiful day outside, yet here I am, banging away at my laptop to bring you the latest and greatest of my violin musings.

For the past week I’ve been getting myself prepared to film the lessons I send out to my Allegro Players subscribers each month.

Every edition tends to have a theme, which is usually some or other aspect of violin technique. I carry the theme through the scales, etudes and repertoire that make up each month’s learning materials.

During the past couple months I’ve focused a lot on getting around the violin. Most of us would say shifting, yet for me it is quite a bit more. It’s about coming to understand the fingerboard as a continuum. Appreciating the subtle movements in the shoulder, upper arm, and forearm as they travel along the fingerboard – providing a stable, consistent base for the fingers to operate from.

It’s about hand/ear coordination. And it’s about relaxation.

Today I want to focus on the fingers themselves and the 3 most important things you can do to keep them in time and on target.

Number 1 – the right position they hold relative to the string. You must have those little sausages out over, and close to, the strings, virtually all the time. Yes, there are some exceptional situations where, for a specific purpose, I will extend fingers high over the string – usually as a way to stretch, relax, or maximize a feeling of legato in slow music.

Yet MOST of the time fingers are right out poised over the strings ready to boogey – especially the fourth finger.

Number 2 – lightness. Many folks use far too much muscle to retain fingers on the string. Heck, most of the time I’m not even pressing the strings down to the fingerboard, even in first position.

Number 3 – considering ALL the fingering choices. Again, most folks – and I was guilty of this for years – don’t take the time to find the easier way. Instead, they either accept the often second rate fingerings provided by the editor or their teacher of 20 years ago, or limit themselves to ones born of laziness or fear.

I was quite lazy about fingerings for many years, until finally certain physical realities set in to rule out inefficient ones for me.

Now I look for every opportunity to go with the flow of my fingers instead of using my will to overpower them. And it’s amazing how many choices start popping up where I saw only one or two previously.

And there you have it: the 3 most important tools to make your fingers’ job as easy as possible.

If you’re an intermediate player and want to REALLY explore these concepts and a whole lot more up close and personal with me, then click on over to the website and take a good look at the Allegro Players program.

It may be just the ticket for you to break through the bad habits and misconceptions that are holding you back from reaching your playing goals.

All the best,
Clayton Haslop

P.S. Think you might not be far enough along for an intermediate program? Then go ahead and “take it from the top” with my Beginners Circle monthly program. This course is also a great way to take a step back and correct the bad habits of earlier years.

Something struck me as a practiced yesterday afternoon. No, it didn’t come flying at me through the air.

It was, rather, a sudden moment of appreciation racing through my brain. And it was quite dizzying, to be honest.

As many of you know, lately I’ve had to ease up and slow down to rehab my left side. Appears I pushed myself too hard too soon after dislocating my shoulder last June; this an added insult to the effects of focal dystonia already challenging my left hand for the past decade or so.

And this brings me to the point of my appreciation. You see, I was playing Kreutzer #2, you know, the one Jack Benny made famous.

And I was playing it real slow and real light.

My goal was to bring every movement within my hand under the conscious control of my mind – one’s muscles and nerves can get to acting quite ‘funny’ after the kinds of trauma I’ve experienced.

Not only that, I wanted my left hand to be absolutely still, relaxed, and well-formed – that is, wrist pretty much straight, fingers curved and out over the string, yes, even the 4th finger.

Then, I asked my fingers to reach to the notes, even when separated by two or three strings.

And that’s when it struck me. The number of finger movement possibilities that exist, in even a relatively simple etude, are mind boggling.

Think about it, let’s say you’re on 1st finger ‘B’ on the ‘A’ string. Now consider the location of every note your fingers might be called to reach from that ‘B’. Then consider the same number of possibilities that would extend from the next note you do choose to take.

So in just four notes of music, one beat of time, perhaps, there must be tens of thousands of possible finger arrangements that can arise – I’ll leave to my father, a mathematician, to do the math.

The point is, the control and flexibility we ask of our hands are extraordinary. It’s a wonder anybody can play in tune or play with any kind of velocity when viewed at such a level.

But we do.

So the question is, how best to assist our body in accomplishing this amazing feat.

This is, in fact, what intelligent practice is all about. So you can forget about the Nike slogan, ‘just do it.’ I mean, that may be fine for a weekend warrior, but it’s not going to do a thing for a real, honest-to-god ‘Yehudi wanna be.’

No to develop real technique you’ve got to get Principled.

And I’m not talking about micro-managing every movement of every muscle forever and ever either. Yet at certain times – say, beginning stages of violin study; and under certain conditions – recovering from injury, or inability to play in tune with velocity – you’ve got to slow down, get clear about what’s what, and put your house in order.

The good news, as I’ve said many times before, is there is nothing quite as rewarding, or feels so good, as making this investment in your musical development. No matter what stage you’re at in the scheme of things.

In a real sense we don’t practice to be perfect. We must practice BEING perfect in order to improve.

Now if you think you might need a little assistance figuring out what ‘practice being perfect’ is all about I might be able to help you. After all, it’s kinda what I’ve spent the past several decades looking into. And what, in the past 3 years, I’ve poured into quite a number of instructional DVD programs geared to all different levels and abilities.

So come, take a look at the whole list ofone-of-kind instructional DVD programs I offer. Then, go get on with practicing.

All the best,

Clayton Haslop

P.S. And don’t forget about the Violin Mastery Masterclass/Seminar. This is a great time to come and get some ‘up close and personal’ time with me in awesome surroundings.

Just got home from a 3-day spell in Tinseltown, where my colleagues and I put the finishing touches on Michael Giacchino’s wonderful new score for the movie ‘Up’. The score truly is delightful, a throwback to the era of Paul Whiteman and the tuneful music of the ‘30s. Violin solos sprinkled throughout.

Pixar’s ‘Up’ will be coming to theaters near you on May 29.

Speaking of Paul Whiteman. His orchestra gave the world premiere of ‘Rhapsody in Blue’, back in 1924. Fifty years later I was privileged to play a recreation of that premier at the Ambassador Auditorium in Pasadena, CA. Would you believe, the concertmaster, Curt Diterle, fulfilled the same roll at both performances.

Anyway, let’s talk about spiccato. The secret of this bow stroke lies with timing and form. All too often folks try to force the bow to jump from the string before the real basics are in place.

As you might imagine, the results are less than spictacular.

The ‘jump’ of a spiccato must happen as a natural result of 2 elements – amount of bow and amount of pressure. When the amount of these reach the right proportion, bingo, the bow jumps as if by magic.

If you’re having trouble producing a spiccato you can do nothing better than practice on the string – right around the middle of the bow where you expect it will ultimately bounce the best – with a very concentrated, purely horizontal, detache stroke. The bow should travel the minimum possible distance in each direction to get a clear tone.

Do this practice until the strokes are absolutely even and dependable. Once you are there you may begin to experiment with the amount of arm weight you are providing, the amount of bow used, and the location of the stroke within the bow.

Once you find the happy intersect of these three elements, the bow will do the rest for you.

Now, it’s one thing to get the bow bouncing on one note. It’s another to do it while moving around the violin. Yet the underlying mechanics are the same; bow speed, pressure, even-ness.

An excellent and challenging etude for this is Kreutzer #2. Just remember, you must begin with a spot-on, dead-accurate, detache. The kind you will learn in Vol. 1 my course Kreutzer for Violin Mastery.

And one further thing. Once you’ve got the feel for spiccato you’ll find that you can get it going either from the string or by dropping the bow down to the string. In either case the jump will be maintained by doing what I’ve outlined above.

All the best,
Clayton Haslop

P.S. There are yet a couple of spots available to the Violin Mastery Masterclass/Seminar at the reduced tuition. This is a terrific opportunity to greatly improve your playing in the company of other violin doers.

Just spent an hour going back to basics. And I DO mean basics. Open strings, slow scales without vibrato, etc.

Now, before you think, ‘I don’t need this sort of thing, I’m beyond it,’ I’d listen to what you’re going to hear in this newsletter.

99% of violinists playing today would benefit from this kind of review on a regular basis. And I’ll give you an example of why.

In the world of recording for film, ask any concertmaster how to make even whole notes difficult and he or she will say, ‘write ‘solo’ over them.’

Yep, when adrenaline is pumping through your veins, something you’ve taken for granted for years can reach out and bite you, big time. I’ve seen otherwise extraordinary violinists develop ‘the shakes’ over such things.

Now, I can’t tell you how many inquiries I get the have to do with tension, and the results of tension – it’s the over tensing of muscles that gives one the shakes as well as all other many of difficulties on the violin.

In fact, I’d go so far as to say that the violin has 30% to do with learning how to flex muscle and 70% with how to relax muscle.

So if you want to improve, no matter what age you are, concern yourself with relaxation.

This being said let me try to give you some ideas – by the way, these are for my friend asking about ‘the shakes’ during shifts as well the gentleman asking about tremors in his up bow stroke. And, as I’ve said, 99% of anyone else reading this.

Number one, use the power of your breath. Yea, I know, you’ve read this before here. But I’ll bet most of you reading this forget to do it, or haven’t taken the time to master ‘belly-breathing’ away from the violin to the point it is easy to do while playing. Here’s where you can get some specific info on the technique if you need it. http://www.violinmastery.com/order_breathcontrol.htm

Number 2, slow down. Way down. Today I spent most of my session playing 16th notes as if they were half-notes.

Number 3 – and this is a big one – once you’re in motion on a note and breathing from your diaphragm, be alert for muscle contractions that ANTICIPATE your next move. This is the greatest single obstacle you must overcome as you progress.

There are two reasons this is so. Let’s say your first challenge on the violin is to draw open strings with a good tone. The greatest challenge to doing this is at the extremes of the bow, one finds.
And as a result there is a certain amount of apprehension that develops over it.

Apprehension breeds tension. Yet most of us, in the impatience to move forward, find a way to relegate that fear to the unconscious. The tension and poor habit that result for it remain, but the conscious marker of fear has been dismissed.

Then comes string crossing. Again, there is apprehension, which gets sublimated, and the adoption of poor habits, which form as the body compensates for something not fully mastered.

And this process, continued over years of study, in some cases, leads to where you are today. What I see in the form of ‘mannerisms’ in many professionals, even, are the artifacts of missed opportunities, really; that is, missed opportunities to fully ‘listen to’ and address apprehensions fully as we go about learning.

The good news is, it’s never too late to go back and address the effects of ‘bodily apprehensions’, if you will.

As I said above, the first step is getting into a relaxed state to begin with. Hence the breathing.

Then play slowly, and evenly. Yes, my counting technique can be used to excellent effect here. It’s a way of getting yourself focused ‘on the now’ – a rather clichéd expression, but true nonetheless.

Once you’re in this space you can open your feeling sense to the ‘anticipations’ that lead you into tension. Even in attempting to hold a note steady you may find unwanted muscles turning on, especially if you’ve begun entertaining the note to follow.

And there is your opportunity, handed to you as if on a platter. Now you can breathe and exercise the power of your mind to let go.

Be patient, sometimes the offending muscle(s) will come back at you after you initially direct it to relax. This is VERY common.

Once this process becomes a hallmark of your practice your results will skyrocket. And if you’d like a good companion in the process I can’t think of anything better than a review of my Beginners Circle course which, by the way, has just been reduced 11% to make it even more of a value in these challenging times.

All the best,