Left Hand Position on Violin for Beginners

Left Hand Position on Violin for Beginners
Hi! I’m J- Adam Smith of Fiddle Team USA and Violin from the Heart, talking with Expert Village here about left hand technique. Left hand technique, as you are seeing that my hand is very, very important to play. You want to have balance; you want to have stability while you are playing your instrument. A proper left hand technique is going to allow you to be able to be comfortable and controlled and be able to have the same results. You don’t want to be rolling a dice and saying that every time I hit a six, I am going to be in tune. The other five, I am going to be out of tune. I would rather be 6 out of 6, guarantee to be in tune every time I play. Let me show a few things that I teach my students with my technique to help them do this. When you are looking at a hand, what is very, very important here is that you want to find the nut. The nuts are very, very important place. It’s your location. It’s something to tell you this is the starting point. You find the location on the side of your finger and you want to put your side of your finger right here on the nut. Once you find that nut, you want to tap your thumb comfortably as if you are holding a small fruit in your hand. So you’re going to go next to the nut, tap your thumb, make a circle as if you are grabbing a fruit really softly. Then what you’re going to do is when you find that, you’re going to let that finger just come down naturally, all by itself. Don’t let it squeeze; don’t let your hand squeeze this one. The biggest mistakes that the students make is they start squeezing in and it makes them out of tune. So you find a nut, you find your thumb, you put that finger down by itself, and that’s going to help. Notice, that the position that my hand is in is very circular, very, very circular. This is not a good violin technique. This is not a very good technique either. There are lots of things that you do not want to do when you are playing the violin. Let’s start out good, lets start out with a really good start. So find your nut, find your thumb, circular inside, let your finger come down by itself, and that one gives you a good left hand. I am J-Adam Smith of Violin from the Heart. Catch you later.