My Twinkling Star

On my birthday I gave Bea her first lesson on how to hold a violin and bow. Her face lit up when she saw it. She was very eager to try...


She used my very first violin, which, if I remember correctly is a 1/16 size. It desperately needs to be re-stringed, but did the job for the time being. At first she wanted to hold it directly in front of her and clutched the neck rather like she was wringing the life out of a chicken. So we did a few exercises.Here she is doing an exercise to practice the body mechanics--tilt your head to the side, put your left arm down, and hold the violin up with your chin.

She also wanted to hold her arm over the neck of the instrument (with her elbow up and her hand facing down). So we worked on putting her elbow down and relaxing her hand to mold it ently around the neck. Here she is as I try and shape her hand.

Then I had to show her how to hold the bow and move the bow without grinding and scratching the strings.

Lastly, I had to keep reminding her to move the bow between the bridge and the finger board. (Not on the fingerboard or behind the bridge.) Here she is watching where on the instrument she should move the bow.

She eventually played a few open strings doing all of these things and showed her mama. She looked beautiful. Pretty freakin' good!

Then I played Twinkle Twinkle on a tiny tiny violin and she sang along. Teaching a little one the basics reminded me of the joy in music, something that is so easy to forget when you get to a highly competitive level.

I thought teaching a little one would be hard because they are not as far in their development but she was easy to teach and I really enjoyed it. It all felt and went very naturally (that might be because she is family). She was my little star!!

Sorry if this was boring for you to read about, but I had such a good time with it that I wanted to share the process and what I did.

If you want, please take a look at all the pictures!