Today, I'm going to tackle one of the great debates in the violin world: the shoulder rest. Whether to use a shoulder rest, a sponge, a cloth, or nothing is an incredibly personal choice. It's something that inspires heated and sometimes nasty debates between violinists.

In my own playing, I've switched my setup many times. For many years, I used a Wolf Forte Primo, and after about 3 years switched to the Wolf Forte Secondo, shown at left.

During my last semester of graduate school, during a particularly intense orchestral rotation, I started having some intense pain in my left shoulder. Having been through a repetitive strain injury before, I had no desire to repeat it. I had been thinking about making a change to a shoulder rest free setup for some time, since my own teacher used nothing and my Paul Rolland-influenced pedagogy professor also taught a shoulder rest free way of playing. However, in the middle of such a busy playing schedule, I wasn't able to take the time I needed to make such a dramatic change, which would have required major adjustments to every aspect of my technique. I used this contoured sponge, pictured at right, as a wonderful transition step. My shoulder pain went away in a day. This contoured sponge provided wonderful support while not restricting my shoulder in any way.

Last month, I attended a pedagogy workshop at Indiana University led by Mimi Zweig. Mimi greatly believes in not using a shoulder rest. I was curious, so I took off even the contoured sponge. I was amazed at how much more connected I felt to my instrument.

I've struggled throughout the years with many tension problems in my playing. Thanks to some wonderful teachers, I've made great progress. However, making this dramatic change to my setup is forcing me to relate to my body in a different way and has transformed my sound in many positive ways. 

I'm now using a Huber shoulder pad - not for support, but to help keep the violin from slipping.

I think it's important for everyone to realize that there is not only one right way to set up the violin. It may take several configurations before you find out what's right for you. Teachers have a tendency to teach the way they play, so a teacher who uses a shoulder rest may not be familiar with the techniques used in playing without one, and vice versa. I was fortunate to have teachers in both schools of thought over the years.

In your search for the right setup, it's important to be honest and open with your teacher. Your teacher, as amazing as they are, is not you. They are not in your body, holding your violin and experiencing it the way you are. It's critical that as you experiment with different setups that you tell your teacher how it feels to you - what feels like it's working, what feels uncomfortable, etc. 

There have been many great violinists throughout the years who have played with all different kinds of setups.  Let's take a look at four of them.

The violinist Nathan Milstein played with no shoulder rest at all. Take a listen to his gorgeous performance of the Beethoven Kreutzer Sonata - which, by the way, he performed on his very last public recital along with the Bach Chaconne when he was in his early eighties.

Gil Shaham, a soloist currently active today, is shown below playing Sarasate's Carmen Fantasy. He is using a shoulder rest - the camera angle doesn't allow me to see which model it is, but you can see that he is playing beautifully, and with a shoulder rest.

Anne-Sophie Mutter, another modern soloist, plays with no shoulder rest, no pad, no cloth, and on a bare shoulder. Nathan Milstein was wearing a suit and possibly could have had a pad under his jacket. Not so here - this violinist has found a way to completely balance her instrument without any additional aid.

And finally, the violinist Midori is shown playing here with a shoulder rest and a cloth over her chin rest for additional comfort.

In conclusion, there is no universal "right way" of supporting the violin. It's essential for all of us, as teachers and players, to keep an open mind. What could be uncomfortable and even painful for one of us might be a perfect and healthy fit for someone else. It's part of each violinist's unique journey to physical freedom while playing their instrument.

The saying goes, "Practice makes perfect." I forget which of my colleagues told me a great twist on this classic phrase: "Practice makes permanent."

Or, here's another common saying in the music world: "Amateurs practice until they get it right. Professionals practice until they can't get it wrong."

What do all these sayings mean when you take them to your practice room? It means, as one of my students put it, that you're looking for precision. 

Let's say you play a passage five times. Let's say that you're only doing it because your teacher told you to, and that you're spacing out, thinking about checking your phone for texts and what you're going to have for dinner that night. Chances are, four of those five times are sloppy. And finally, the fifth time is solid. You breathe a sigh of relief, put your fiddle down, and pick up your phone.

The next day, you go to your lesson, and you blow the passage. Your teacher says,"Why didn't you practice that spot?" "But I did!" you protest. "I played it five times every day, just like you told me. I practiced really hard."

Yes, you did practice, but not effectively. Do the math. If you practiced every day for seven days, you played passage correctly 7 times and incorrectly 28 times. What do you think your brain and fingers remembered out of that experience? What has happened is that your practice has made your mistakes permanent. If you practice sloppy, you play sloppy - it's as simple as that.

Effective practicing isn't about the number of repetitions or the number of hours you put in. It's about quality, focused repetitions. There isn't a shortcut. Rather, the shortcut is to do it right, and to do it right over and over again until you can't do it wrong.

So, how to put this into practice? Pick a passage you're struggling with. Create one, very specific goal. Say this goal out loud. "My goal is to play the D Major scale with whole bows and to get completely to the frog and the tip so that I really use the whole bow."

Now, find a way to monitor your goal. For something like this bow division, a mirror might be helpful. Other ways to monitor your playing are to ask a practice buddy to watch you and stop you if you don't achieve your goal, or to video yourself and watch it back.

Next, try to achieve your goal three times in a row. Here's the catch: If you do it two times in a row, and are doing really well on the third time but don't quite get all the way to the frog on the last bow? You start over again from one. As my student said, the goal is precision. Not approximation. Our goal is excellence, not "pretty good."

Your goal can be anything. It can be standing up tall with a flat violin. It can be having a beautiful, ringing sound on each note. It can be playing a phrase with a joyful character. It can be remembering the right bowing. It can be just playing one shift accurately. Or using vibrato on every note. Saving enough bow for all the notes in a slur. For playing from memory. ANYTHING. 

That's where your creative self comes in. Your creative self is the one with the vision of the music you want to produce, with the image of the sound you're striving for in your mind's ear. Your creative self articulates your goals, and then your conscious repetitions kick in.

My friend Scott Anderson, a wonderful musician who used to be the principal clarinetist
in the Honolulu Symphony, gave me some advice when I was applying for my master's degree and was struggling to stay focused. He said, "Discipline is remembering what you want."

Remember how much you love your instrument and how well you want to play. And start practicing the art of conscious repetition. I'd love to hear how this is working in your practicing, so feel free to leave comments on your work process below!

The process of learning - not just in violin, but in most things - looks something like this, as described to me by researchers and psychologists:

Stage 1: Unconscious incompetence
Ignorance is bliss - the student is unaware of their mistakes. 

Stage 2: Conscious incompetence
The student receives feedback that makes them aware of the things that need improvement. They may attend a concert that makes them realize they don't play as well as the performers, or a teacher might point out things that need work in the lesson. This is often a very frustrating stage. It's crucial for parents and teachers to be supportive of their student and to be aware of the frustration while urging them to stay the course, because soon they'll get to...

Stage 3: Conscious competence
The student has practiced in a focused and intentional manner, and they can now produce the results they desire with a lot of mental focus and attention. 

Stage 4: Unconscious competence
The student has worked for some time on how to play well and can now produce their desired result without thinking about it.

Let's take the piece "O Come, Little Children" in Suzuki Book 1 as a case study. This piece presents the challenges to a student of having to use their full bow, and having to start each musical sentence on an up bow for the first time.

Stage 1: The student plays "O Come, Little Children" with any bowing they want, unaware of up bows and down bows and their bow distribution.

Stage 2: The student learns the difference between up bows and down bows and realizes how frequently they go the wrong direction. They may also be aware that their bow hold doesn't allow them to go all the way to the frog, which means that they can't play with their whole bow.

Stage 3: The student now thinks to him/herself "Middle, up" as they place the bow in the middle and start each musical sentence in the piece with an upbow.

Stage 4: The student plays the piece with perfect bowings and bow distribution without having to think about it. Now it's ready to perform!

A side note: as a teacher, my goal is to start the students at stage 3, by carefully explaining and demonstrating the goals of each piece. I have specific "preview" spots that students learn before they learn the whole piece and many ways to practice their skills so that they can stay confident in the whole learning process and not have to go through the pain of conscious incompetence.

Creating a healthy foundation is one of the most important and crucial aspects of learning to play the violin. In the first years of a student's lessons with me, my goal is to build fundamental musical skills as my students learn how to listen to music critically and to discern what makes a good sound and to build fundamental technical skills, which means that I focus a lot on how to hold the instrument and bow. Even as a student reaches the intermediate and advanced levels of playing, I am constantly monitoring their fundamental skills. Often, I find that simple changes to the angle of the violin or hands and arms can make a dramatic change in the quality of the sound and the ease of the playing.

Playing the violin doesn't involve motions that are inherently natural or easy for the human body. It's not symmetrical at all, which means that we have to do different things with the right and left sides of our bodies. It takes years to feel completely natural with the violin, and that's why a student's first lesson with me, regardless of their level of playing, will almost always include some changes to their basic setup. Even as students grow and develop, I'm always keeping an eye on those basic technique things, seeking to refine their skills to an ever-higher playing level and finding easier and more efficient ways for them to play.

Without a healthy foundation for their playing, a student will inevitably run into problems. It might be immediately, if they are struggling to make a sound or reach a certain note on the violin. Sometimes it will take years for it to catch up to them, but it does. Even a mostly healthy foundation with just a few cracks can be cause for a visit back to basic technique.  The simplest problem a student will run into as they advance is that they'll hit a piece they can't play with their current setup.  A student may not be able to play in all parts of the bow because of their bowhold, or they'll struggle to play fast enough with their fingers because of an incorrect angle in their left hand. 

If a student plays and practices for years with an inefficient setup, they can develop tendonitis, repetitive strain syndrome, or carpal tunnel syndrome. Too much strain and tension on the wrong muscles can cause these injuries, which are physically and emotionally painful and and can require months of physical therapy to recover from.

The positive benefits of having a healthy playing foundation are many! They include but are not limited to: feeling physically free when playing, not having to worry about how to create a certain sound, having a natural, ringing, and free sound, and being able to solely focus on the creative process of bringing their music to life.