This week in our technique class we focused on reestablishing (or perhaps establishing) a balanced left hand.

As I discussed with my violin professors, Susan Waterbury and Carrie Reuning-Hummel, in preparation for this class, balance is absolutely essential for a technically proficient left hand.

Compare, as an extreme example, these two videos.

 

The adorable, and very musical young girl struggles with shifting, intonation and vibrato. Issues in the left hand keep her from communicating her musical ideas with the expressive ease that Gil Shaham has.

When we see a hint of this left hand struggle instead of Shaham’s ease in our own students, I think we can trace the issues back to one problem: a misunderstanding of the way weight can shift to the third and fourth fingers.

If, when the fourth finger is pressed down to the string, the weight of the arm is not reorganized through the elbow to the bridge side of the hand, then the hand feels it must compensate for that weight by using a variety of tactics. The left hand will attempt to weigh down the string by…

• squeezing the thumb,
• pressing down with a straight 3 and 4
• supporting the violin with the palm of the hand
• thrusting the wrist forward
• curling the thumb over the top of the fingerboard
• fingers rolling toward the bridge
• the hand pulling underneath the violin
• the fingers collapsing onto each other for support
• the fourth finger hanging underneath the instrument

I’m sure you’ve seen all of these common issues in the performances of well intentioned violinist.

A way to get avoid these symptoms, and the sickness of unbalanced third and fourth fingers to begin with, is to use the clothes hanger trick.

I first saw Carrie Reuning-Hummel perform this ‘magic trick’ at the Greater Austin Suzuki Institute four years ago. Way before I ever began studying with her, I stepped in on one of her Book 1 master classes as a part of my 10 hours of observations in Book 2 training. She had whipped out a clothes hanger in order to teach a young student currently performing Minuet 2 the basics of left hand movement.

I saw Carrie work with him completely away from his violin and bow — I believe she had instructed him to keep it under the care of his practice partner. She held a firm clothes hanger about her eye level, and allowed the student to drape is left hand fingers over the bar and to just dangle down.

With the left hand fingers wrapped around the hanger she checked to make sure EVERY muscle in his small arm was released and jiggly. Most importantly, he wasn’t doing any ‘work’ with his shoulder or thumb. In fact the thumb wasn’t even touching the hanger, it was completely released.

The next step was asking him to move the tips of the fingers onto the clothes hanger so that his fingers were aligned in the ‘table-top’ position. Now, requiring only strength from the first knuckle of each finger, she required once again that the rest of the arm was completely relaxed. At this point weight of the entire arm was evenly balanced on each of his fingers.

Next, she asked him to begin supporting that released arm weight between combinations of fingers such as 2 and 3, 1 and 4, 1 and 2, and 2 and 4.

The most difficult step was asking him to balance on just one finger AND THEN seamlessly shift that weight to another finger. In other words, she would have him travel from 1 to 2, 2 to 3, and 3 to 4 without using any arm muscles.

What one finds in doing performing exercise is that supporting the weight of the arm in the third and fourth finger is not impossible, but very awkward. By working to normalize a balance through the third and fourth fingers (acknowledging that they are, in fact, strong enough to support arm weight) playing with 3 and 4 can become effortless.

The strange hand contortions required to PRESS DOWN three and four from a hand only balanced on one and two are no longer useful when the weight of the arm can actually travel to the backside of the hand.

As was the case for the freshmen and sophomores in my technique class, merely experiencing weight in 3 and 4 while on the coat hanger is enough to encourage a change in left hand playing when back on the violin.

So here, distilled, is a list of what to do to perform the ‘coat hanger magic trick.’

1. away from the instrument, curl fingers over a clothes hanger supported by teacher, and dangle all arm weight
2. dangle all arm weight while balancing on the tips of all fingers
3. dangle all arm weight while balancing on the tips finger combos (1+2, 3+4, 1+4, etc.)
4. dangle all arm weight while balancing on just one finger
5. dangle all arm weight while traveling from one finger to the next
6. finally, play a descending scale on the violin while maintaining the feeling of balance in the hand

I will write a future post on how to encourage these mechanics from the beginning with a new student, but these techniques are best used to create massive amounts of change in left hand with a developed student in a remedial sort of way.

I know it’s hard to believe that a little, plastic coat hanger can change so much in the life of your students’ left hands, but I’d encourage you to give it a try right away.

Profound balance shifts are indeed possible with even a brief kinesthetic glimpse. This is the intuitive learning power of our human bodies, and something we as teachers should look to unlock more often.