Don’t Be Shifty When You Shift

One of the things I’ve seen a lot of over the years are shifts that are, well, shifty, for lack of a better word.

Think of a person. A shifty person is an uneasy person. They move nervously about because they aren’t comfortable in their own skin. They don’t feel supported by the ground they’re standing on.

Now, think of Kreutzer #9. Some of the shifts are tricky, are they not? Especially when you’re, say, way up high holding a G half-note knowing the next note is that hard-to-find C second position on the G string.

If you remember, I strongly urge you to hold out the G Full value. I also demand that the C be exactly on one of the next measure.

In order to accomplish this in a masterful way – and that’s what its all about, folks – you hold the G, steady as an ancient redwood, while a mental image of C takes solid form in your mind.

Meanwhile your count moves from 3 to 4. After you say ‘four’, however, suddenly vertigo grips you. Your feel yourself beginning to swoon; you feel a strong urge to drop to your knees and let your hand slither its way down four positions and over three strings.

But wait a minute, we’re only talking about a distance of 5 inches. How can we feel ‘shifty’ about 5 measly inches?

Exactly.

It is an irrational fear that was implanted in our mind the first time we took, ‘You’re C is not in tune’ to mean, ‘You’re no good.’

So that’s what we’re really dealing with. The fear of judgment.

OK, knowing that let’s pick up where we were after beat four. Instead of deforming your hand, starting the bow toward the G string, and allowing your mental image to dissipate like a desert mirage, you smile and see yourself – eight feet tall, mind you – playing the perfect C, exactly with the count of one, and with not a molecule of space separating them. You execute. You Score.

That’s mastery.

All the best,

Clayton Haslop

P.S. Now, I left out a few details. What moves the hand, how it moves; what accomplishes the change of string in the bow arm; these are all things you see and hear me address in the course of Vol. 1 of ”Kreutzer