The Intelligence of Your Fingers

In the Waldorf philosophy of education – if you haven’t heard about Wardorf, it’s an approach toward education based on the teachings of a brilliant philosopher by the name of Rudolphe Steiner – a great emphasis is placed on developing the young mind through the skilled use of the hands.

In short, clever hands make for clever minds.

I don’t believe this notion stops with children. Increasing your fine motor control at any age is excellent conditioning for the brain.

So I began reflecting on this last night after doing some instructional taping on the second Caprice of Paganini. It’s a piece of music requiring the finest control over the digits of the left hand of anything you are ever likely to do, short of brain surgery perhaps.

Actually, Kreutzer numbers 28 and 29 require a similar kind of finger dexterity and are an excellent warm-up for this Caprice.

In any case, what occurred to me in the exercise of recording was the importance of cultivating this ‘tactile intelligence’ in one’s practice. It’s something you can do, really, any time the violin is in your hand.

Now let me give you a little image to go with it. Image that your fingerboard has little magnets embedded in it at each pitch location you are about to play. Now imagine that each of your fingertips has a bit of iron in it.

My, oh my, the closer you finger gets to the note, the stronger the attractive force. The keys to success, in the proceeding image are 2 things. Your mind must place the magnets in the right places, duh, and you must relax your left hand completely so as not to compete against the attractive force of the magnets.

It’s a win-win situation. Your mind is activated and your hand is relaxed. What a beautiful way to practice the violin.

One last thing, do this SLOWLY until you really get the hang of it.

All the best,
Clayton Haslop

P.S. Volumes 3 and 4 of ”Kreutzer for Violin Mastery”, have many, many important and useful insights and demonstrations on the movements of the left hand and arm. There is no better time to get this dynamite material into your DVD player than today.