Shifting positions on violin

Currently I’ve been learning violin and I’m going through the same books that my orchestra students go through; Essential Elements.

I’m in the third book and that’s where they start to teach 3rd position. There are a lot of position shifting activities to learn where the correct hand placement is for switching positions. A lot of them involve using the same finger to play a note in first position and in third position. If you’re practicing on the D string that’d be playing E with the first finger and shifting up to third position and playing G with the first finger.

This practices the correct position and where to hold your hand on the violin to get to third position.

You want to practice that small shift in hand position because that’s what will help you stay in tune.

You need to know that hand position as opposed to first position.

When you learn first position you don’t need to learn it in relation to anything else.

Once you start learning other positions you need to learn them to be different from each other. You want to learn to “feel” them and know where the correct position is without having to play or without having to look at your hand.

This is why skilled musicians can play so easily with their eyes closed. Once you’re skilled enough on your instrument, it feels the same as playing with eyes open.

It always amazes my students if I play with my eyes closed, but it doesn’t feel any different once you’re used to it.

And it doesn’t even take much practice.

I’ve never practiced without my eyes closed, but I’ve practiced enough that I can “feel” where everything is.

Knowing which piano keys are under your hands, or knowing where third position is, or knowing what frets are under your fingers isn’t an easy thing to learn, but it’s not magical. All those different keys, frets, and positions are different postures and different placements of your hand. They don’t feel the same. At first they might feel too similar to be able to distinguish them. After some practice they’ll begin to feel more and more different and you’ll be able to tell them apart.

One of my students had a great idea during a lesson. He struggled with “feeling” where different strings were on the guitar, in his right hand; his picking hand. So he practiced playing two different strings without looking at them. That way he doesn’t have to always look at his picking hand, and he can focus on his fretting hand.

I’ve never practiced that way myself, but it was a really good idea. He was practicing exactly the thing that was difficult for him.

That’s an efficient way to practice.

On violin, just practice switching between the two positions. Practice that in a bunch of different ways, but that’s what you want to practice to learn to switch to third position.

Just practice shifting positions.

ISJ