A violin teacher’s advice for adult beginners

This blog post accompanies Episode 36: A Violin Teacher’s Advice for Adult Beginners, from the Violin Class Podcast.

Listen via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeartRadio, or wherever you get your podcasts.

In this episode, I share my advice for adult violin beginners from the perspective of a violin teacher. I discuss realistic goals, the importance of regular practice, choosing the right resources, and the benefits of active listening.

A Violin Teacher’s Advice for Adult Beginners

I’ve had the privilege to work with hundreds of violin students during my career as a violin teacher, and many of them have been adult beginners. Here is the advice I would share to anyone who is starting out on the violin.

Set Realistic Goals and Expectations

Learning violin is a life long endeavor, and you’ve heard that it’s important to practice a lot. That’s true, and ideally you’d practice a bit every day. But that’s not realistic for most adult students— we’re all juggling work, family, and other

If you’re in a busier season of life and have less time to practice, that’s okay! In fact, that’s the case for most of my students— I'‘ve worked with ER doctors, new moms, college students, and even people who travel for work full-time. They’ve all been able to figure out how to balance the practice time needed into their busy schedule. Although my violin students all practice regularly, most don’t practice every day.

It’s more important to stay consistent in your practicing over time than to practice in irregular, longer spurts. Even 5 minutes a day, every day, will equal progress in the long run. If your schedule only allows for 2 practice sessions a week, you’ll still make progress, just not as fast as if you had more time. But those 2 sessions a week over the course of a year adds up to over a hundred violin practice sessions, and you will see progress if you can do that consistently.

If you want some practical ideas for balancing violin practice with a busy schedule, my student Olivia shared how she figured out how to practice on the bus ride between her university and work (listen to that episode here)

Guidance Matters

Here’s the truth: if you’re serious about learning violin, it’s ideal to start learning with a teacher from day one. This will help you set a strong technical foundation, improve faster, and know what you should be practicing each week. Self-teaching can lead to learning bad technical habits, so if you have the choice, it’s better to start with a teacher first and then self-teach rather than the other way around. Your teacher will keep you accountable as you improve, and help to motivate you when the going gets tough (and trust me, it will).

Violin lessons are an investment— it’s another monthly bill to pay, and requires an investment of your time week after week. That’s not possible for everybody, and I understand that. If you’re committed to self-teaching, read on.

Advice for violinists self-teaching

Here’s my number one piece of advice for self-teachers: pick one primary instructor or source, and stick with them. This will help you to avoid contradictory advice, which is really confusing for beginners. Every teacher has their own way of doing things, a certain order they introduce topics, and if you’re following multiple online instructors, those can sometimes clash. So do your research and choose a primary instructor to follow, and then you can supplement with other instructors if you want to get another person’s explanation.

Another thing I recommend is to use method books (like the Suzuki method) and structured courses. This will give you a more systematic learning approach, rather than searching for random Youtube videos whenever you run into a problem. Youtube is incredibly handy, and is amazing for troubleshooting technical problems, listening to your piece, and a host of other things. However, there is so much content that it’s easy to get lost when trying to figure out your next step. A method book will help keep you on track when figuring out your violin “curriculum” in absence of a

Getting the Right Instrument

When you’re just starting out as a beginner on violin, I highly recommend renting a violin from a reputable shop over buying a cheap instrument.

A luthier can help you figure out the proper setup for your body and instrument, and will be your go-to source for any maintenance and repairs in the future. Even if you live a few hours from a violin shop, it might still be worth it to make a special trip out as you won’t need to go back regularly.

More on how to choose an instrument here.

The Importance of Active Listening

Active listening to violin music develops your ear, rhythm, and intonation. Watching performances helps in understanding the relationships between technique and expression, and gives you a model for what good posture should look like.

Here are some brilliantly creative violinists to get you started. The violinists combine their incredible technique to create a very expressive performance.

To learn more about active listening and how it can help your violin playing, listen to VC Episode 21: How to use active listening to improve your playing