Position of the shoulders.

Now let’s learn or review it. This course is a review for you the way we plays the violin. Here is the theory part. It’s very important to have relaxed shoulders when we play the violin because if the shoulders are up and tight they stop the momentum created in the whole body. And playing the violin is a movement of the whole body not just the arms the movement of the arms in violin playing is very similar to the arm swing in walking. It is the natural motion that occurs when we bring each arm to the opposing leg. We don’t have to think about this. It is natural to do it when we walk and we don’t have to move the arms really. They just carry on the momentum created in our body. Try to watch for this next time you walk see how arms are naturally swinging around your body without any effort. We’ll be using this swing when we start playing the violin. If the movement of the arms is generated in the whole body then the arms are free and the sound of the violin is ringing and beautiful. If the body is tight then the sound is scratchy and not so pleasant. I said that when we walk we coordinate our arms with the opposing light without thinking about it. But if you look at babies when they make for their first attempts to walk you’ll be surprised how complicated the coordination of this motion is. Same as violin playing. But they both get much easier with practice that’s for sure. And there’s one more thing we can learn from babies. They just don’t give up. They keep falling and getting up falling again and getting out until they start running around and this is exactly what we should do in learning to play the violin. If something looks difficult at the beginning just keep doing it until it becomes easy. So let’s focus on the shoulders. When we introduce the bullet hole we talked about the importance of thinking about the arms in their entirety. Shoulderblade at the back and colorable in the different or essential parts of the arms hidden from our eyes. Here we definitely need to have that picture in mind to make sure that we are using the whole potential of our body. So without that instrument lift your shoulders to the ears then roll them back and lower them down. Let’s repeat this a few times up back and down. Back and down picture of the shoulder blades and the collarbones active actively working to do this motion again. Lift rather than back down. Relax now. Very slowly start lifting the arms to the side keep the shoulders low. Just leave the arms actually think of lifting the elbows keep lifting onto the elbows are higher than the shoulders. Very very very slowly when the elbows are higher than shoulders hold them there for a moment and drop them down let’s stood one more time. Very slowly start lifting the arms to the side. It should take you between 20 and 30 seconds to go up keep the shoulders low lift only the arms picture the shoulder blade the back and the collarbone to the front active when you go out hold for a moment and then drop down these two exercises. Very good for warming up before you start playing. So keep them in your repertoire.