Why Your Thinking Must Change

Very curious times we’re living in. So many potent and unfortunate agendas being pursued in the world, and the majority of us caught in the middle just wanting to ‘live, and let live.’

In any case, thanks be to violin playing. It is to me as the harp was to king Solomon.

This morning I realized something on a pretty profound level – over my lifetime of playing I have wasted a great deal of time. Yep, and the reason for this is simple. In the past I did not understand the following concept near fully enough.

One must change one’s thinking in order to change one’s playing.

Bearing this in mind, I shudder to think how common it was for me, in my earlier days, to repeat and repeat passages with little or no change in what was going on between my ears.

Mind you, I did have SOME idea how to do things back then. And my body, being younger, was more willing to deal with what inefficiencies – bad habits – I was blind to. Bottom line, I managed to get along fairly successfully, by most standards.

Yet I always had the sense I was coming up a little short. And my way of addressing this feeling was frequently by turning to more repetition. More practice time.

In recent years I’ve gotten a little smarter. Like surface rainwater filtering through layers of soil to a great under ground aquifer, this concept Milstein raised with me many years ago has slowly but steadily sunk in.

Today I feel as though I’ve reached the aquifer laying deep beneath the parched land.

And it all rests with our power to visualize. Improvement is about casting the net of visualization on new waters. Jesus used much the same metaphor – fishing nets cast on the other side of the boat – when talking to his disciples about their own thinking.

What a teacher can do is give you some useful ideas. Point you in specific directions that are likely to bear fruit.

In my courses this is what I have sought to do – for beginners, intermediate, and advanced players. At the very least they stimulate your thinking. At best they lead the way to quantum leaps in your effectiveness on the instrument.

Here’s where you can find the one exactly right for you.

All the best, Clayton Haslop

P.S. Today I was hip-hopping as I played the 24th Paganini Caprice. Doing this would not be possible were it not for the understanding of technique I teach in ‘Paganini for Violin Virtuosity.’