I recently discovered that hordes and hordes of Japanese violin students (especially very young children) start out on violin by simply practicing holding the violin under their chins...sometimes for several months! I've seen kids do this as a kind of add-on to big brother or sister's lessons, before they started having a lesson to themselves when a bit older, but didn't know that kids came to lessons and practiced chin-hold ONLY for months.

Then they learn to play pizzicato on open strings, and finally the bow is introduced.

This seems to be a popular (but not universal) Suzuki approach to the first lessons.

As far as I recall, sons Viohazard and Airman started out playing the simple open-string tunes at the beginning of Suzuki book one, with their bows. They went back to do the Twinkle variations later, and also didn't learn pizzicato first off either.

So now I'm curious! What did you or your child do in the first weeks or months of learning violin? It would be interesting to know if teachers generally take a different approach with very young children (say 3-7) or not.

Oh gosh I'll be no help here but what I did, at the grand old age of 39, was stick a book of Scottish fiddle music on a music stand and pick out the notes (bowing) one by one. After six weeks I was dragged along to our local fiddle orchestra even though I could only play one note per bar to keep up.

But I could already read music, knew what each string was on the stave, and had listened/watched violinists for years.

It was only after a few months that I found a teacher who gave me some basic music and corrected my squint bowing

But thinking way back (I'd forgotton all about this!!!).. I played the violin for 8months at the age of 6 and the teacher started me plucking the strings and then bowing the open strings. But she was a horrid old woman and prodded me hard with her finger and made me hold the violin in a strange way, straight out in front of me. I used to cry because it hurt my shoulder so much. I think that's why my parents stopped the lessons but they were extremely angry with me (It didn't occur to them to find a different teacher ) And can you believe I had to practice when I came home from school at lunchtime and if I didn't I wouldn't get any lunch!... all at the grand age of six! No wonder I hated violins with a passion back then!!!

I had forgotton all about that!!!

(sorry about the long rambling post )

This is quite interesting.

I went straight into bow hold and playing open strings and first position first lesson.

In the first month we did all the notes in first position and then there was a huge amount of practicing bowing really. We went right through a tutor book in the first lesson and then started playing easy music.

But I did start as an adult and I could already read music when I started so though violin was new I was ahead in other ways.

I'm sure my teacher recognised that I would be very bored just playing pizz and wouldn't really feel like I was playing the violin as such.

I started when I was 23, so not a child, but I started with pizzicato on the open strings for a few weeks, then bowing open strings for a bit, and then onto using my fingers on the strings

I know you want to know mainly about young children experiences, sorry I only have the example of my son, who started at 11, a girl who started at 9 and myself started at 38.
Myself, I got started on day one with bowing and open strings plus 1st and maybe (can't remember) 2nd finger, my teacher knew I would have hated it to stick to open strings only or pizzicato only, I was eager to learn and could read music already, I kept saying: ok, so what's next???

My son got started on open strings and bowing on his first lesson

The girl (not my daughter, and this is NOT due to her age, she just found it difficult) was doing pizzicato on open strings.

My viola lessons were quite similar to Claudia's, only when I started, we did pizz, but not just on open strings - I also learned D string notes=: E, F# and G. I was bowing by week 3, I think.

When I re-started with a new teacher, she said my left hand was well ahead of my right and we went back to a lot of good owing techniques exercises.

Again, an adult learner's experience, but relevant I daresay.

Oh Claudia, your last lesson tonight!

I started on my 16th birthday (almost 2 years ago now!! feels like i started yesterday ) but as it was in June and i was gonna have lessons in school i had a few months by myself... never a good idea i know... so i just learnt where the notes were and bought the grade 3 book and attempted them and then in my first lesson in September i played some scales and some grade 3 pieces and then my teacher told me to get the grade 4 book She corrected my bow hold and everything but it was very much straight into playing which is a bit weird

I started aged about 8 with left-hand pizzicato open strings using the little finger. I certainly didn't spend months just holding the instrument, but my teacher used to spend a bit of time at the beginning of lessons doing things like having us march round the room holding the (empty!) violin cases above our heads to strengthen our shoulders.

In one of my earliest lessons the teacher set us homework to write down as many words as we could, made up of only the letters G, D, A and E, then we played our words, open string pizzicato the following week. Ah, those were the days! Oh hang on, no they weren't, I couldn't play Bach then.

I have a four year old who's learning Suzuki violin and he's been doing a bit of everything. He's learning how to hold his violin, but has also been learning finger positions and doing a bit of bowing as well. I think they'd get bored if they were just doing one thing for months on end.

I started aged 8 1/2 with pizzicato only. I can't remember when bows were introduced, but it must have been fairly quickly. We certainly weren't made to just hold the violins without playing: I would have quit if that's all we'd done!

Well... I had a few lessons when was 5 and i think all I did was open strings pizz and bowing
I then started again at 6 after we had moved. but i can't remember much because i was only 6
I do know that you have to use your wrist to bow with after my parents tried to make me practice with my right arm in a cast!! (they thought it was only the elbow that was needed to bow)

Like Ffliwt, I went straight into playing pieces, but I don't have lessons and I'm not doing exams.
It's probably not the recommended way to start, but I already played other instruments including a little bit of 'cello and bass, and violin is a "just for fun" instrument for me.

I started just over a year ago, at 28 years old. First thing I did, after bowing the first note, was play Hot Crossed Buns with the bow in very short movements (I recorded it for posterity!). Since then, the temptation has always been to learn songs, and occasionally force myself to do exercises. I've had one lesson, and am self taught other than that. I put my stuff on youtube in the hope of getting constructive criticism in the place of lessons.

I haven't posted here before, as I am not learning atm, but am tempted to take violin up again.
I often read though.

My daughter is 7 and started learning in October. She started with learning the correct position to hold hte violin, stance etc and spent maybe whole lesson on that, and frequently revisits it.

She started plucking open strings, and spent what seemed like a lifetime doing that. But it really built her confidence. Bowing was then introduced on open strings, and she spent a long time ont hat too.

She started with 3rd finger, because her teacher felt that it is easier to learn intonation that way. Although she didn't actually play any pieces with 3finger. She quickly moved to playing pieces with 1st finger, then 2nd finger and now will move on to incorporating 3rd finger in her playing. She learnt 1st finger on all strings, then 2nd etc.

At the same time she was learning different notes and rhythms, starting with crotchets, quavers, minims, semi-brieves and now semi quavers. Also the equivalent rests.

As well as learning the names of notes, she has also learned to recognise them as doh, ray, mi etc.

We are hoping to finish the year, with her being able to play to D major scale.

This may seem like slow progress, but at the end of her first year, and she is only 7, she can play all lengths of notes, on all strings, with 1st, 2nd and 3rd fingers. She is able to move through her pieces very quickly and her ability to sight read is great.

We are hoping she will be ready to join her little school orchestra in September.

Her teacher has put great emphasis on creating a rounded player, with good position, confidence etc. She also puts a lot of emphasis on caring for the instrument and music herself etc. She only does 10-15 mins practice a night, and is doing really well.

I take it honeyb that you are objecting to people who started the violin as adults responding on this thread?

For what it's worth, I appreciate that there can be differences between the ways in which adults and children learn - but are you wanting to imply that there cannot be any similarities, and that the basic principles taught to adults cannot be of any relevance to children who are learning? Yes, different people suit different learning/teaching approaches (and these vary among both children and adults, as well as between them) but the basic principles which need to be taught (violin hold, fingering, bow hold, bowing etc) are the same.

Edit: Okay you've now removed the contents of the post you made above and written a completely different comment. The post above had originally quoted the OP and bob1purpleviolin's post, as if it was trying to make a point that the OP has asked about children and bob1purpleviolin had responded as an adult learner - hence my comment above. .

Flossie, sorry, I am totally lost, maybe because like you have said a post has been edited??

Yes, the entire contents of the post were changed and bear absolutely no resemblance to the previous version... That's why I came back and added the edit to the post that I'd written in response.

I think I'll give up trying to understand then

I'm an adult learner so not sure this is relevent as the musicianship is already there I suppose.

My first viola lesson consisted of holding viola correctly, bowing open bows and first position, G major and D major scales, lots of pieces in Abracadbra.

I started the violin when I was about seven. I was taught how to hold the violin, and then after the first week my parents were told they had to buy me a shoulder rest as the violin didn't come with one and we didn't know that one was needed! I played pizzicato open strings for the first few weeks then moved on to bowing, again with open strings, and then just plodded through A Tune A Day for Violin very, very, very slowly.

Then again, I was truly terrible at the violin - I was so awful that my (completely un-musical) parents would tell me off every time I tried to practice as they were "sure it shouldn't sound that bad"! I had lessons for about three or four years from the nun at my prep school - I promise I'm not making this up - who kept trying and failing to teach me vibrato despite me still being nowhere near Grade 1 standard. I was still on about Lesson Ten of the A Tune A Day book after three years!

I just had my first violin lesson today. So I can comment a little. I had been teaching myself to play for a week and a half (when I got my very first working violin) and had my 1st lesson which was quite fast paced. My teacher wanted to hear what I could play so we did a couple of duets from abracadabra Eidlewiz (correct spelling?) she then skipped though several pages and had me sight read a piece which I managed just fine.

She asked me to play one of the harder exam pieces with piano. I managed to get though the first few lines. We also did scales and arpegios. She asked me to practice making longer and firmer strokes with the bow as my bowing technique was too small.

She then said she thought I'd be ready for grade 1 at christmas and that she wants me to practice my exam pieces for the week and she will play with the piano for me next week. She gave me one piece to work on in my learning book and told me to practice scales and arpegios with longer bow strokes.

So mainly we went over bowing, scales and exam pieces. But I had a genrally good lesson. If she had asked me to practice open strings or piz I'd of been quite board. But I have learned an instriment before when I was 9 and understand grade 1 theory so that might help.

With my youngest beginners I teach violin hold, bow hold and then we do lots of work copying rhythms on open string E followed by A some time later. We have many games to work on posture issues and bow control. I love teaching little kids!

I was just the same. I was 10 when I started though, so used "Red Parrot, Green Parrot" and was obliged to do the actions and colour in the pictures...

In my first lesson (I was 7) I learnt position, bowing and open strings. Then I added notes gradually and did my grade 1 after a year.

Ellie, it sounds similar to my friend's daughter's experience of being taught by a nun in a prep school north of Manchester. The said nun also had bad breath and the poor child almost passed out everytime the nun breathed on her.

I feel short-changed - I was not offered colouring. If only I had had actions and colouring in I know I would be a better player.
N

I'm sorry if I have cause some controversy here.

When I first tried to reply, I accidentally hit the wrong reply button - ie the one at the bottom of the actual post, rather than the one to add a new reply - does that make sense? I then became confused and hit add rep;y thinking it would fix it, somehow. I inadvertently posted the OP. I then edited the post, to try and fix my mistake, and post the reply I intended to post.

I have no objection to anything anyone said. The forum is just quite different to any I have used before and I made a posting mistake. I simply wanted to offer what way my daughter has learned, and share it withthe OP.

Hi honeyb, and welcome to the forums!

Since I live a bit off the beaten track compared to most forum members, I'm particularly interested in what's "normal" in different parts of the world...I'm just as interested, regardless of age.

I think there are more adult beginners in violin in Japan, as in other well-off countries, but there must still be many more child beginners, some very young indeed.

As a parent, having young children start violin meant that these were about the first lessons of any kind that my kids had received (I think they'd just started swimming lessons, as there was no way to use the pool without enrolling in a class), so I had no preconceived ideas about how lessons should be - certainly remember more about the plants in my piano teacher's garden than my own lessons, which started around age 7!