JAVS Spring 2024

At the same time, I had to respond to what I heard so I could course-correct in the moment. As the pedagogue, Eleanor Schoenfeld relayed, a musician must learn to live in 3 times zones at the same time. 6 They must have a vision for how they want to sound (future), they listen to what is just happened (past), and they respond to what they hear, knowing how to spontaneously fix an error (present). They make infinitesimal changes so that what they hear aligns with what they imagine, developing the muscle memory to be able to produce that sound in an environment where there is significant pressure and many possible distractions from all sides. The influence of these coaches guided me to become a more attuned teacher to myself at home, focusing on how to feel an unwaveringly straight bow and to hear pristine intonation. Each of them suggested slow practice with the regular use of a mirror and a tuning app to give me time to process both visual and aural feedback. I found a cheap, lightweight, 8.5x11” mirror in the wedding decorations of a craft store that could sit on my stand. By watching my bow strokes in a mirror, I could feel what my fingers, forearm, elbow, and shoulders felt like as I changed contact points and bow directions, where the points of stress shifted as I moved my bow. I began to record sound bites of myself no longer than 10-20 seconds at a time, always aiming for the resonance of my strings change with each miniscule intonation adjustment. I was creating a feedback loop where it became a thrill to begin recognizing when the acoustic message told me that I had gotten something right. Taking the time to work on something slowly allowed me to learn to release tension in the body at the exact moment, which helped me reframe the problematic term and concept of relaxation. Bassoonist and Alexander Technique teacher, Ben Kamins notes that there is nothing relaxing about playing an instrument, which is the opposite of taking a nap on the beach or reading a book. 7 Playing the viola is a full-body experience: although the hand guides the bow, one’s core allows the instrument to reach its full potential. Through coordinating my breathing with bow changes, I could learn to release my core muscles so that my upper body could release the tension that was disrupting bow changes and the fluidity of the phrase, inhibiting full contact with the string. I started to learn to recognize the feeling of the bow when I could let the bow do what it wanted to do. By using

flatter bow hair, playing with a straighter bow, paying attention to the continuation of sound despite a change in bow direction, I was able to generate enough tug in the string without pressing the life out of the sound: more resonance with less physical force. After a certain point, I cared less about what these coaches thought of me; I was so intent on trying to figure out this process of learning to recognize what more resonance sounded like under my ear. I was in the learning zone of listening with the intent to learn, not to hold forth with my opinions that had become so banal and uninspiring. These teachers were there to help me learn a skill that I already wanted to learn. By walking me through the process of learning how to see my bow and learn to feel my body in response to what I could hear, they taught me how to see beyond verbal praise or criticism. This objectivity ended up creating more room for learning and became an unexpected antidote to burnout, echoing the sentiment attributed to William Butler Yeats that “happiness is neither virtue nor pleasure nor this thing nor that, but simply growth. We are happy when we are growing.” 8 Curious about the transition between guiding the skill development that happens in regular lessons at intermediate and advanced levels, and the ownership for one’s own progress that occurs as one embarks on a professional career—whether in teaching or in performing—I wanted to develop a more systematic approach for my lessons and to become a more effective influencer. I wanted to help my students to recognize what they needed to do and how they could learn to do it on their own without making them feel worse about themselves. Educational psychologist Lev Vygotsky called this the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD), describing the space between what a learner can do with guidance or in collaboration with more capable peers and what a learner can do without assistance, where instruction is the most beneficial. 9 He formulated that student needed: • the presence of someone with knowledge and skills beyond that of the learner, a more knowledgeable other • social interactions with a skillful educator that allow the learner to observe and practice their skills, called collaborative dialogue Discussion: Translating what I am learning to what I am teaching in the viola studio

Journal of the American Viola Society / Vol. 40, No. 1, Spring 2024

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