5 Things We Wish We Knew Learning the Violin

_______________________________________

S N A P C H A T: Brettybang | Eddy.Chen

[ctthes]

“24 years for me!” “22 years for me!” “A total of 50 years!”
*Ladies and gentleman, the boys who met at math tutoring.*

[dammma]

me, a non-musician: *ah yes i need this **_for my next life_*

[BlairCoron]

Not going to lie, I was expecting:

1. Go Practice
2. Go Practice
3. Be Chloe Chua
4. Go Practice
5. Go Practice

[lily]

Time stamps!

2:38 1. Resonance
7:43 2. Good Teachers for good foundations
11:09 3. No correct posture for everyone
15:18 4. Centre of gravity in left hand

[pppp-zpvo]

when they’ve played violin longer than you’ve existed..

[flawnel]

Who also thinks they should do a "Serious Saturday" series, this video is a mine of gold for me who wants to learn violin and I'm sure there are many more persons like me!

[heyyitsnikkiii]

who was here when the title was still “The 5 Secret Shortcuts To Make You Sound Like Lingling”

[Naokirii_]

Twosetviolin having famous violinists subscribing to their YouTube channel is really a flex😂

[yang]

Twoset: we are adults.
Also Twoset: waving like sea grass for no reason in the beginning of the video 0:06

[etc]

eddy: professional violinists that played in professional orchestras-
brett: *oonga boonga-ing with his bow to the left*
ah yes, peak professionalism

[ViolinNoobie]

Aaah! 😲The center of gravity thing XD Tried to change it now and I think thats been a part of my vibrato tension issue. Gonna practice!💃🎻🎶🎵

[felixishere]

"When you have a bad day, we're here to wipe your screen." Can't say how grateful I was to hear that, Brett. Love y'all.

[yamiashigaru]

Am I the only one who was impressed by the fact that Eddy got Hilary to teach him Sibelius concerto?!

[sabrinai]

"We are Twoset Violin and this is our Masterclass!"

[ninjaaron]

Regarding thing number six (i.e. practice), one thing twoset never mentions is that *frequency* of practice is more important than the raw number of hours. It's better to practice twenty minutes a day than to practice for three hours twice a week. If you're already doing long practice sessions every day, it is helpful to break it up into smaller chunks. People tend to learn and grow through cycles of work and rest, so getting in as many work-rest cycles as possible makes a huge difference.

That's not to say you should never have long practice sessions (there are benefits for sure), but don't go into a practice session with the idea that you have to play for hours. Just pick up your instrument every day and play for at least few minutes. Once you start, there is a good chance you will want to keep going!

Another thing with this is, if you're already practicing every day, it is good to occasionally take a break from playing for a few days or even weeks. If you play at a high level, you will notice that your technique gets a little worse after this, but it will come back quickly, and taking occasional vacations can be really helpful in feeling more inspired to play and breaking out of old ruts.

[damshek]

General rules for practicing I've discovered way too late that I wish someone told me earlier:

1. Treat learning how to play a piece as if it were a riddle to solve, or a code to break- rather than a practicing task to perform.
It's about exploration, not repetition. Experiment constantly. Don't just pay attention, pay *microscopic* attention to the body, instrument, and the mechanics and physics that shape your sound and what happens when you change things. Get exited about discovering new ways of playing.

2. Have notes for more pieces than you can play in one sitting and shuffle them.
If you play the same thing over and over, your brain gets saturated and progress stops. Get a good book of etudes (or three) and play a random different one every day. Play a different scale every day (As recommended by Flesch himself, btw).

3. 40 minutes play, 20 minutes rest. Give your brain time to regroup.
Then 2 days play, 1 day rest. If that's too extreme for you, at least a day off once a week, just don't obsess about playing every day. Every athlete will confirm how crucial rest and days off are, this is the same- more practice isn't always better, you can fry your brain.

4. Always start a playing session with something slow and quiet with a lot of long notes and fragile bow changes. It gets you in the zone and you are less likely to rush through things later.

5. Playing the violin is an eternal pursuit of reducing tension. If it doesn’t sound good, something somewhere is clenched. Notice, relax, listen again.

Sometimes the biggest leaps in your progress will happen after you don't touch the violin for a while. Like if you practice a nasty passage or shift 50 times a day for a week, and it still doesn't work, then you don't touch that piece for a month, play it again and boom, it's perfect. It really happens. Allow yourself that flexibility, give your brain time to rest and regroup. Occasional breaks is also how you don't get sick of playing, btw.

[abigail]

the only thing they got from math tutoring was each other
but becuz of that this entire fandom exists <3

[notvs]

Ling Ling’s identity is hidden. Nobody can achieve their level of greatness...

[justary_]

i lost it at 3:54 😂😂 Eddy wanted Brett to approve his Tchaik 🥺

[elum]

Petition to make this a series with their other musician friends. For example, I would love to hear Sophie Oui oui's thoughts for playing the piano.