The most basic tip is to take good care of your instrument- this includes wiping down the strings and loosening the bow after practice. I am always surprised at how many students forget to do this after years of study- so it still needs to be said! The other big issue is when the violin is resting in its case somewhere, make sure that the bridge side is facing up or to the side. Unfortunately, a lot of parents will pack the violin case in the car upside down. This position is not good for the bridge. The bridge is the most fragile part of the violin, thus you never want the weight of the violin itself resting on it. Also leaving the violin in the car during hot and cold weather is damaging for the wood of the violin. Just bring it with you, if you are going to a doctor’s appointment or the store.

About the bridge- its best position is perpendicular to the wood of the violin so that the bridge is straight up and straight across. This position allows the string length from the entire fingerboard to the bridge to be equal across the 4 strings which allows you to more easily play in tune. Taking care of the bridge is a bit more advanced than the other factors mentioned above. You can adjust it ever so slightly with your own fingers if you see that it is out of alignment. Bridges will get warped if you neglect them and replacing them can be time-consuming and costly since you will need to take it to the shop for this repair. It cannot be done at home by yourself, like changing strings. Taking care of your violin in these ways will keep it sounding good and save you money.

About practice: There are different goals depending on your mastery of the violin at any point. I’m going to outline some tips for beginners and intermediate players here.

For the absolute beginner, the most important hurdle is getting into a habit of practicing everyday. You want to establish a routine of picking up the instrument at some point during the day. Practicing is a habit, and like all habits, they take effort in the beginning and then before you know it, it’s a part of your life. You know it’s a part of your life when you don’t have emotional reactions or resistance to practicing. You just do it.

After the daily habit has been established, the next big concept is for students to practice the more challenging parts extra times. The majority of early students practice a piece from the beginning to the end a few times and call it a day. What result do you get with this kind of practice? The beginning is excellent and then there will be some funky-sounding parts in the middle or the end. And the piece sounds the same…week after week. And you must have very kind neighbors if you don’t hear anything from them. Nothing in the quality of playing will change unless those spots are worked out with extra practice. It is a big step when students take the initiative to do this, because it means they can hear the discrepancy and care enough to work on something that is hard.

To fix a passage that isn’t smooth, it takes some analysis of why it isn’t working, creativity to try different things, and some maturity to stick with it even if it doesn’t miraculously sound better after two tries. The more advanced you get, the quicker you get at diagnosing and finding a cure for the musical issue. Lessons are one place where you can get immediate answers for your tricky spots, but if you can figure out as much as you can before your lesson, you will advance even quicker. Here are some ways that an intermediate player can work out a tricky violin passage:

Work on it with hands separately. This means playing it pizzicato to get the rhythm and intonation right. Then work on it with just the bow, on open strings. So you would read through the passage and play the ‘note’ but without the left hand, so you are only playing open G, D, A, and E strings. This can help figure out the down and up bows, where you should be in the bow, as well as string crossings. And you can hear whether your basic bowing has a nice tone or is scratchy. Pianists practice hands separately all the time; it’s a good idea for violinists to do so also.
Check for correct rhythm: Rests throw people off. Especially eighth rests. After hearing thousands of skipped rests, I’ve concluded it’s a mentality that’s steeped in our culture, that we have to ‘do’ something all the time. Additionally, most students aren’t trained in rests from the beginning. This makes many students disregard rests and just skip to the next part with ‘notes’. However, rests are like a beautiful frame for the melody, like the negative space on a painting. It gives context to the actual notes, highlighting their importance after silence. In order to not get thrown off by rests, it’s a good idea to put the violin in your lap, count out loud the beats (1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and) and simultaneously clap on the notes that you would play, and still count out loud the beat on the rest (you’re just not clapping). You’ll also learn your rhythm deeper if you practice this way with the metronome. The fastest way to improve your basic rhythm is away from the violin. This is really helpful for understanding orchestra pieces, especially for youth symphony seating auditions.
Correct Notes: Around Suzuki Book 4, just playing the correct notes become a major issue since the pieces are in higher positions and in minor keys. It’s a great idea to practice those higher-position passages in 1st position instead where you are confident of where all the flat/sharp notes are. Then once the melody is in your ear, play it in the higher position. You can also transpose them one octave down to hear the correct pitches. Another option is to play it on the piano if you have one.
Practice similar passages together: You might have noticed that music repeats. A melody often appears many times in a piece, sometimes in a different key. Practicing similar passages is efficient practice because your brain will process the similarities and you will build confidence when you realize you’ve already played it before. So many times I have seen a student nail a passage in the beginning and then totally flounder when it comes up a few lines later- often it’s due to a visual thing- somehow the passage looks different because it’s split up over a couple lines (like a hyphenated word) or it’s right next to a repeat- so it’s a matter of training the eye to read the music, not the passage itself. Or…there are some rests before the similar passage, ha! Anyways, there will be no need to reinvent the wheel all the time if you practice similar passages back to back.
Release Tension: Another important factor when learning a passage is to check how relaxed your body is when performing the action. An action is completely learned when the mind can stay with the motion all the way through and your body is alert but relaxed. In this state of awareness, you can enjoy the music more and it will have a bigger emotional impact on your audience. If you are still tense while playing the passage, most likely it won’t go the way you ‘practiced’ during a performance. The tension that wasn’t worked through during practice will magnify under the pressure of a performance. And then you will be confused as to why it didn’t work out. But the truth is, if you cannot play a passage cleanly every time, you’re still trying to wing it, basically hoping it’s going to sound decent because you don’t know all the physical motions of executing it. It does takes a lot of technical understanding to figure out all the components of a tricky passage- (what the notes are, how your left hand is balanced, how much bow pressure, the speed of the bow, when to release a shift, the intervals involved in a shift, the speed of vibrato and how that affects the bow, the tiny adjustment of the bow during a big shift, string crossings.. the list goes on and on). When we don’t understand something entirely, we will start squeezing various small and big muscle groups. However, the biggest culprits of physical tension are the neck, the shoulders, the thumb and first finger on the left hand, and the thumb on the bow. If you can constantly check that those body parts are released, then that is an advantageous step for figuring out the rest of the passage.
Building Technique:
With scales and etudes, you can get the most out of your practice by doing bowing and rhythmic variations. Since you’ve learned the left hand pattern, why not train your right hand further with it? One key component of mastery is to do something harder than what is required so that the original becomes relatively ‘easy’ . The added benefit of practicing this way is that it fuels your creativity. You want to be able to think outside the box with your practicing- this leads to you becoming a more curious, interesting musician. Because you are used to thinking of the music as more than what’s simply on the page, you will train your interpretative mind also.
To illustrate this point, here is Aya playing the first two lines of Wohlfart op. 45 no. 1 in a few different variations:

Variation 1:

The bowing is slurring 2 notes, half bow per note so the whole bow is used.

Variation 2:

The bowing is slurred staccato, 4 notes to a bow, each getting 1/4 of bow.

Variation 3:

The bowing is 2 groups of 2 notes slurred (1/4 bow for each note)

Variation 4:

Starting up bow, 4 notes are slurred in a bow, 1/4 bow for each note.

It is SO helpful to take an etude like this (and scales) and practice them starting up bow. You will know the left hand 100% if you practice the bowing with the opposite direction. And there are so many more variations you can use- for instance, you could play this etude using only the bottom quarter bow- that will really train your bow changes at the frog.

And finally,

7. Maintaining Basics: No matter what level you are, playing clean open strings is a good way to work on your absolute basics of tone production. Here Aya is playing Sol Re Sol with pizzicato (this checks the left hand/arm/neck/violin position) and then with bow to practice string crossings and contact point of the bow.

We endeavor to learn an instrument because ultimately we want to have fun playing it. Being able to play a piece or improvise to the best of your ability requires that you maintain and expand your basic technique, and work extra on the new or tricky concepts. And know that this is a process, that not everything is meant to be understood right away, but you will master it eventually and then you will be onto the next new challenge.