Nervousness on violin lesson.

i am adult and just started to learn violin. when I practice at home I am fine and doing 99% perfect but when I visit to my violin teacher to show how I done, I feel so nervousness that I can’t even play 50% as good as i played at home. I feel like suck. How can I over come this? I really need to over come this problem.

Try to play in front of other people as much as you can - even if it means playing while the washingmachine repair man is there. Now the warmer days are coming open all the windows or play in the garden and imagine there are a few neighbours listening. What this will do is help you get over mistakes without them affecting the rest of your performance. We all make mistakes but the skill is to carry on - most of the time no one will notice unless they have the score.

For a more critical appraisal and a chance to play more like in you lesson try recording yourself. The extra stress of having one shot at is good practice, and you can also listen critically to the recording.

Don't worry, it is natural for you to feel nervous and exposed when you are playing for someone else especially as an adult just starting out on a musical instrument. Remember that your teacher is there to act as a guide and mentor, not as a harsh critic! Remember, too, that the violin is a very physical instrument so it is bound to be more difficult to get a good sound if you are feeling tense - this is true whatever standard you are, not just in the early stages!

You will almost certainly find that as you get to know your teacher better you will begin to feel more relaxed about your lessons which will then help you to play for your teacher more like when you do when you are at home.

Welcome to the forums, too! You've come to the right place, there are many like you her who are learning to enjoy their violin playing.

I used to have this a lot (and I'm sure I still would if I started leesons with a new teacher!) and now I come accross it with some of my students.

There are a few things you can try that I have found really really help.

Firstly, remember that when you learn your pieces, you are not just remembering how to play them (the notes, dynamics, movements, etc) but your memory is also absorbing your surroundings at the same time. This means that when you play in relatively unfamiliar surroundings, your memory isn't as strong and as you are already nervous, your playing suffers.

So next time you practice, try some creative visualisation. I suggest that you prepare to play each piece, hold your violin ready, make sure you are in a position as if about to play. Then take a moment to close your eyes, relax your muscles slightly, and imagine that you're surroundings are where you have your lesson. Really try to feel it - it should be a very sensory image - so sense that there is someone else in the room with you (if this is difficult, ask a family member to sit nearby so you can feel their presence and imagine it is your teacher), if the light in your teacher's studio is harsher than the light in your house, imagine that. In the room where I teach, you can hear the air conditioning/heating in the vents in the ceiling so I tell them to imagine they can hear that when they practise at home. If the music stand at home is black and the one in your lesson is silver, project that colour change. Think about the colour of the walls, whether there ae windows, maybe the room is a different sze. Also feel the difference in atmosphere between the 2 different places. As I said - you need to reallly visualise that you are in the lesson environment.

The next step is hard for some people, but you can achieve it with practice. (it helps if you have a lot of imagination!). You need to start playing your piece whilst still holding that visualisation in your mind and project it into the room around you. This is difficult when you are playing, because it is hard to concentrate on your playing and have your mind focusing on something else. It may be that you can hold the image for 4 bars and then it starts to fade.

What all this achieves, is to focus your mind to be comfortable playing in the lesson environment. Because if you are practising at home wth this visualisation, your pieces will be learnt with that image of the other environment, which will affect how you remember them in your lesson.

Even better, maybe once you are getting the hang of doing it at home, is do this the other way around - so use it in your lesson and just before you start to play, close your eyes for a few seconds and visualise your home practice environment in the way I have explained above.

Once you are familiar with using this kind of visualisation, you can use it anywhere, which really helped me on the way to overcoming my fear of performing (I'm still not completely there yet, but I can control it so no-one is aware of my fear when I perform - which means that I've managed to eliminate/reduce the outward symptoms like shaking and my playing doesn't mess up. Next stage is to actually not be afraid!)

I hope this helps. If you're interested, I know a couple of books on the subject and would be happy to talk to you more about it.

C x

If you do a search on past posts you will find that you are not alone in feeling nervous when playing for your teacher. I used to literally shake for about the first two months and it has taken me five years to feel relaxed in my lessons most of the time (I still have the odd "panic" moment but they are getting less and less frequent).

Things that have helped were:
- sufficent time to warm up by playing long notes and "easy" scales before tackling pieces.
- my teacher letting me play something twice before he made any comments - the first time was usually absymal but would get some of the nerves out of my system.
- my teacher playing the same piece at the same time as me.
- talking about it with my teacher rather than trying to pretend the problem didn't exist. (I only did this this year and wish I had done it much earlier).

As others have said, your teacher is there to help you and as mine said to me, if I could already play perfectly there would be no point in having lessons and would be very boring for him as a teacher.

I practice lots then usually. Each day about 4 to 5 hrs. I never stop for one day. Violin becomes my every day meals. It is more then enough to learn violin. Even before I go to teacher, on that day I practice lots until I leave the house. So I feel there is nothings lack of my practicing. I never need to see the score. I play from my memory very well. I even can play previous many pages without to see it. But when I go to teacher, I feel I am very nervous and tend to doing wrong. Last was my second lesson. I was so sad that my nervousness makes me so badly play. May be my teacher realized it. He then says its ok you played well But I know that I didn’t play as I suppose to. Now I am preparing my next lesson. I don’t know how I will play in front of my teacher. Often I am trying to doing video so its may be will help.

I just had my second music lesson last week (after a gap of 17 years) so I am in a sort of similar position to you.
The first lesson I was nervous for a bit, but his approach was 'right play me something' so no pre-amble, just trying to play something while being a bit shaky. I started on the wrong note but it improved a bit from there!
Now the second lesson, I thought I'd be fine. I'd now met the teacher, overheard the end of the lesson before me (a proper beginner student - albeit a child - so at least I didn't feel like I was his most basic student), knew how to find the place, and so on. All the normal worrying things should no longer be an issue.
BUT, I found I was getting nervous beforehand. Not as bad as the first lesson, but still quite nervous. And I worked out it was because that at the second lesson, I had no idea whether the work I had put in all week woudl be OK. Would I have improved? (I was fairly sure I had) Would I have improved enough? (I have no idea). Would I have inadvertantly been practising something wrong all week? (obviously I'd have no idea, as I wouldn't be doing something deliberately wrong).

Well, no comment was made regarding my improvement, though I think it was obvious from when we went on from the bit I'd worked on to the next bit which was all new because I was rubbish at the new bit! But then I realised that nothing was said about how I clearly hadn't practised or hadn't done enough or had been doing it wrong. So I strongly suspect that I will be less nervous this week fo rmy third lesson, as I am more confident that I am doing the right thing.

Unfortunately I have found it is not quite as simple as that. I am actually most relaxed when I have been away for work-related reasons and not had time to practise properly. I always know in advance when I'm going to be away and so tell my teacher the lesson before that I won't have time to practise much. I have (eventually) come to the conclusion that when I have practised a lot I feel I ought to be able to play well and I feel nervous because I know I probably won't play as well as I was playing at home. If I know I can't play it properly anyway, there is nothing to feel nervous about. (If that makes sense).

This could sound like a justification for not practising but it isn't - I don't like going to lessons when I haven't practised and feel I don't get so much out of them but I don't feel nervous about them.

Makes perfect sense to me. I'm sure I will continue to be nervous for some time, I just can see it reducing as I get more accustomed to doing this. Or, the nervousness will remain, and I just have to work around it - much like I do with so many other things that cause me to be nervy or panic!

I feel the same way and have discussed this with my teacher who understands. I have suggested that I record a peice that I am doing and e-mailing it to them; they then can hear how I actully play.

Its a very good idea to record pieces and i already thought about it but only i didn't go this way. now should i talk to my teacher about it? so i can record my pieces in my mp3 player and let him to listen how i played, so he can comment on my playing where ever i made mistake. i only have 1/3 hr for lesson.

May be i will need more time to be comfortable with him.

Hi I've recently joined forums, and like yourself i play the violin 1-5 hours per day. My violin teacher is really good. I have been having lessons for 1 year now, and it has taken me about 9-10 months before i feel really comfortable with playing to her. My lessons are one hour long every two weeks. I find having a loner lesson helps as, you "settle" into the lesson. But, i am still nervous a bit at times! Also i took my very first violin exam recently, and was very nervous! My teacher says its just experience. I start my grade 3 this week. Anyway, i think longer lessons are better. I also find that on the day of a lesson i usually do 2-3 hours practise in the morning, then have a good rest before my lesson late afternoon, i find this helps, to have a break in the middle of at least 2 hours. Also, my teacher and myself have a great sense of humour---which helps alot! 

I started violin lesons a couple of months ago, and have exactly the same problem, as soon as i'm in the lesson the bow starts bouncing, and on the up bows the hair ends up on the fingerboard!

But each week its slowly getting better!

I have the same problem - but maybe even worse. When I'm playing at home (the piano, in my case), I'm completely calm and still before I start the piece and I am able to imagine the first couple of bars in my head before I play. But at my lesson my head is simply full of blind panic. The same is true at home when anyone is listening. I have tried recording what I play - and I can now even produce some recordings that sound almost acceptable, which I couldn't do before - and I've tried playing when my cleaner is around. I've also tried practicing 10-15% faster than the speed at which I want to play the piece, and then eliminating all the additional errors that creep in. All these things helped quite a bit, but they haven't really solved the problem. I would love to be able to get more out of my lessons, to take grade 8, to play with my friend who plays the clarinet, and to play to other people who come to stay.

I'm now trying Cadence's technique:



I can do Step 1 - which creates a mild but manageable feeling of panic. But I struggle when I get to Step 2 as I can't really play properly unless I am totally focussed on the music and have a clear 'image' of the sound I want to create in my head. So there isn't the bandwidth for visualising anything else. I would be very, very grateful for any further tips, Cadence, and any information on the books you referred to.