Violin Video Lesson: My FingeringBoard Journey: Chunk it … To know it!

According to the American Psychological Association, chunking is defined as the process by which the brain divides significant details into smaller units, or chunks, making them easier to retain in short -term memory.

For us as violinists, discovering these chunks or patterns makes it easier to combine them into larger blocks which makes them easier to understand and remember.

So one could say that learning and memorizing are connected.

Well, Masha, a Russian cellist that I played with a lot in France, once said to me in a Khodai duo rehearsal, Billchick, if it isn't memorized, you don't know it.

Well, what I've decided to do in this video is to practice some Bach and record the sessions, as I think that this would best illustrate what I mean.

Though I've taught this many, many times, what I've decided to practice is the Ligig from the third Bach partita, from bar 17 to the end.

Okay, but before starting these practice sessions, I needed clarity on where I was going. I needed to define my goals.

I've always told my students that when starting a new piece, it needs to be partially memorized after two to four days of work, which will give it a solid foundation.

So I decided to do the same, four days of 25 minutes for each session.

As you can see, I've taken the time to write it all down.

Writing it down is very important as this is a part of the learning process.

Doing this helps to define parameters, organize things, see the issues more clearly, which helps in the process of finding a solution, problem solving.

So the night before, I mapped out the part like this.

This kind of thinking comes from using my fingering board.

It's become a way that I think, a way that I visually organize.

So the first day I started my practice sessions by playing through it really slowly and paying attention to my mapped areas, checking the notes of course.

Now I put on the metronome and did two clicks to a note, very, very slowly.

After having played through it again using bowings, I looked at parts that seemed problematic for me. This work will help me structure tomorrow's practice session. Because I took the time to look at some problem areas yesterday, I felt that today I needed to do a general sweep of the problem areas. So I devised the following schedule.

Doing this will give me a stronger understanding of the whole excerpt and help me to better determine which areas I need to concentrate on for tomorrow's session.

Oh yes, I noticed in my first session that I really needed to be calm and to not physically try too hard. Trying too hard, or in this case pushing with my fingers, really pushing to the string like that, made me force things, get tight, which took me further away from where I wanted to be.

So before starting the third day's session, I looked at my day two notes and decided on the areas to work on.

I will then take these areas that were troublesome and put them into larger contexts. From this I will be able to determine, as I did in my last session, which areas I need to focus on for tomorrow's session.

So this is the last day of my first day's practicing routine that I'm using to create my foundation.

I've used a lot of repetitive practicing.

A byproduct of practicing this way is that focusing like this puts you in a state of mind where reacting, not thinking, occurs.

So let's look at what these four days of practicing has produced.

As you can see, it's partially memorized and with that I have a solid foundation to make new schedules for intonation work, getting things clean, etc.

in preparation for any coming performance. One could say that by working this way, learning is memorizing and memorizing is learning.

It's connecting these chunks to create larger blocks that makes them easier to retrieve, easier to recall. You know what? Perhaps Steve Jobs was right when he said, creativity is just connecting things.

I guess there's a lot to be said about how you connect what you know.

So with that, do take care and if you haven't done so already, please subscribe to my channel. Oh yes, don't forget to click on the notification bell so you can choose how to be notified when new videos have been published. Again, take care.

Automatic video-to-text transcription by DaDaScribe.com

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