I played the piano when I was younger (grade 7 standard) and got up to grade 2 on the violin before I went to university and gave up music. Now I'm trying to get back into music after a 5 year break, I've recently started violin lessons. But I'm so terrible with rhythms and counting. I just can't count and bow at the same time! I've completely lost the plot! I can't seem to get back into it. With a piano there's less to concentrate on, you just sit down and press the keys, and you're in a comfortable position. But with a violin you have to think about bowing, wrists, hands, fingers and elbow. I find that I have no sense of time, I'm just holding my breath and whizzing through a piece of music to get it over and done with. I just can't count and play at the same time cos there's so much going on. Does anyone have the same problem? Any advice much appreciated. I'm really struggling and my teacher is probably losing patience with me! Every lesson he spends the hour clapping, stamping his feet and saying " 1, 2, 3, 4" and I still can't keep to the beat. He must be exhausted after teaching me! !

Seriously? It's the complete opposite for me. After I stopped piano for about 2 years and started up violin, when I try to play piano again, it's SO HARD for me! 1; I've gotten terrible at reading bass clef now, 2; reading two clefs at a time!? My hands get all tangled now.
I think that maybe you'll gradually get used to it more, and you probably won't have to even think about wrists, fingers, elbows, etc. anymore.

how funny, it's the same for me too! I am USELESS at counting whilst playing piano (although I can't be that bad as I am almost at grade 2 level after 5 months of learning), and have NO PROBLEM with the violin whatsoever!
I agree with DuoMusician, must be a matter or time and practice. In fact I don't think about wrists/elbows/bow as much anymore, only at time when I am learning a new piece.

How complicated are the pieces you are playing?
I started learning the oboe about three and a half years ago and I went through a stage where I felt I could either get a complicated rhythm right or play the correct notes or do dynamics. Like you I had played the piano for years and had no trouble reading music and my teacher just kept producing more and more complicated things. In the end I said to him I just wanted to play studies and technical exercices for a while(where I could just concentrate on one thing at a time). After a couple of months when I went back to "real" music, I had gained enough familiarity with the instrument to be able to count again.

My daughter's solution on the cello (when she was about seven) was to associate each note-length with a certain amount of bow. Full bow for a minim, half bow for a crotchet, quarter bow for a quaver. This is of limited use (it works for "minim, crotchet, crotchet, minim" but not for "minim, crotchet, minim, crotchet"), although her first books all had the first sort of rhythm and I think she relied on bow lengths rather than counting for about two years.

One last (more adult solution) would be to play with a metronome at home. Get one of those where you can have a different beep on the first beat of each bar and practice a couple of bars at a time, making sure each one is perfectly in time before you add the next one.

You probably hit the nail on the head when you said there is too much going on. Violin is a complicated thing at first. I suggest two things.

Firstly start your practise every day with a warm up firstly bowing open strings then plucking using fingerings. Using a metronome (60 will do for bowing at first, then change the speed about a bit when you get better):-

Do a set of bowing exercises on open strings. Do it in time with a metronome. Play open A focusing on straight bow, good tone, then do each string in turn.

If this is easy do string crossings play G,D,A,E,A,D,G etc - bow straight clean changes of string and bow direction etc. First start with a downbow, then switch to starting upbow.

Then do slurred string crossings, same pattern of notes but two to a bow.

Then make the metronome a bit faster and try on A string doing minim, crotchet, crotchet, minim, crotchet,crotchet etc. Mark the half way point of the bow with a little sticker or something and do full length on the minims and half bow on the crotchets so it goes full length down bow minim then two crotchets in the top half, then two beat full length up bow followed by two half length bows in the lower half. Then try on the other strings

There are 101 silly different things you can do getting more complicated but the point is that by removing complications of fingering and rhythm you get the brain into the habit of bowing correctly and also changing dirrection exactly when required to a metronome so that that basic technique becomes subconscious and is not a distraction whien other things are more complicated. Make sure all these are done with top quality bow action - straight, at right angles to the string, good clean tone with no squeeks or scrapes. Vary the dynamic from pp to ff.

Then do similar pizzicato exercises to try to get some of the left hand things into the subconscious. Set metronome a bit faster for this. On each string pluck O,1,2, 1,2,3, 2,3,4, 3,2,1,0 concentrate on being exactly in tune, lifting and dropping the fingers quickly and having a good left hand position relaxing the left hand and not squeezing the neck of the violin.

If you know scales then play scales to the metronome.

I hope these excercises help I know they seem simple but I suspect that you have too many things on your mind while playing and practising doing simple excercises well will remove some of the problems.


The second thing is on a similar idea of making it simple. On any piece you have a problem with do three things.

Clap the rhythm alone while counting
Bow the rhythm on an open string without worrying about the notes but focusing on good straight bows and correct up, down bows and slurring.
Pluck the tune

Then put it all together. Also try practising the piece very slowly to give yourself time to count and think

As you get better and do harder tunes always do a bit in each practise where you go back to a simpler tune you have done in the past and try to play it really well - see how great and musical you can make it sound now you have got better as a player.

I hope this isn't all too simple and/or patronising, if so my apologies, but it's the only reason I can think of why somebody who can basically play rhythms on a piano couldn't do it on a violin.

Earplugs is absolutely right. I would also say they are the kind of exercises to do.

You worry that your teacher is losing patience, but it should not come to that. Surely if you are struggling as much as you say you are (sometimes things aren't as bad as we think them to be), then your teacher should stop letting you play entire pieces whilst you hold your breath and he taps and counts. Sounds like a recipe for disaster. Back to basics, work at one or a few bars at a time, and do excercises. Is your teacher someone who is open to discussing this?

Hi Panda

I know what you mean about counting and bowing. What I have found helpful is if you go to www.practicespot.com and select rhythm gym, there you will be able to print out rhythms in stages 1 to 21 in quarter notes of eight notes. I practice these with a metronome at varous speeds.

Sounds to me as if your teacher has been trying to teach you too much at once, rather than letting you absorb one point at a time, slowly. You're right, there's a lot to take in - left arm, left hand, right arm, bow speeds, bow lengths - it really can be too much trying to figure it all out at once.

I was seduced into trying to teach bowing on all strings first followed by 1st finger, then 2nd finger etc etc, but have now gone back to my long tried-and-tested original method, which is: sitting down plucking, learning all notes of the D scale by way of simple tunes. The standing up, still plucking. Then learn bow hold. Then bring in bow, upper half only, just open D and A strings. Then mix whole and half bows (different speeds). Then go back and play all the pieces you've already plucked. That way you get to where you want to get with while slowly absorbing one point at a time.

So don't beat yourself up for getting confused - your teacher needs to slow right down with you and make sure you've absorbed each point fully before moving on to the next one - violin is really tricky in the beginning, and you're only human!

Violinia

How about getting yourself a 'fun' book of easy tunes - say, Making the Grade grade 1 or 2 (have a look in your music shop to see which you fancy having a go at to start with) with really simple tunes which you already know by ear. Have a go a playing them fairly slowly - plucking first to find the feel of the notes under your fingers, then bowing.

Are you using enough bow - or too much?

Try to keep the bow as relaxed as you can and concentrate on the melody. Relax and enjoy the music!

Hope this helps.

What's this beeping metronome? I've never heard of one. Are they electronic? Who makes them?
Rhythm has always been my weakest point - maybe this is what I'm lacking?

You can get an electronic one (which really does beep) and you set the beep for 2,3,4 or 6 beats in the bar. The one I have got at the moment will also let you set it for rhythm like quavers, semi-quavers and triplets (although I don't find this particularly useful). I can't remember what brand it is (and it's downstairs and I'm upstairs) but it wasn't very expensive. I actually bought it because I wanted a tuner and there weren't any which didn't have a metronome incorporated.

I also have an old-fashioned wind-up metronome which has a bell on it which again you can set for 2,3,4 or 6 beats. It goes "Ting, tick, tick" for 3 time or "Ting, tick, tick, tick" for 4 time etc. This is the one I usually use as I find the electronic tick is not always easy to hear with certain notes on the oboe.

Thanks a lot for this info - beeps, bells, tings! I'm going to check it out. It's all new to me. No wonder I'm not up to speed