Violin learning should start when you have the desire to learn. Nowadays, many parents enrol their children in hobby classes from a young age to cultivate their hobbies, build their patience and increase their self-confidence by participating in competitions.
What is the best age to start learning violin?
Learning the violin requires a lot of practice, and if you start learning at a young age, you will be able to learn earlier to know if you have the talent. It is generally accepted that the best age to start learning violin is between four and five years old.
What age to start violin lessons: pros and cons.
Suppose the child understands the teacher’s language and has control over their body. In that case, they can start violin lessons.
The advantage of learning the violin at such an early age is that the violin uses the fingers to control the bow and press the strings on the fingerboard, so the younger the child is, the more nimble the fingers will be. When they grow up, their fingers are stiffer and require more effort to practice. The disadvantage is that the child’s understanding is limited, and the progress may need to be faster. After all, the beginning has some problematic sounds, and the stop is an hour, depending on the child’s ability to tolerate them.
Starting violin lessons under 5 years old
Nowadays, many people believe that mothers should teach their babies. At the same time, they are pregnant to guide their babies to be interested in certain things. It is a kind of environmental inculcation, like learning to recognize things naturally as if they were in the mother tongue. Soft music is suitable for soothing restlessness.
Until the age of 5, the child’s intellect is in a developmental stage, so it is possible to play with a small toy violin, imitating the basic movements of an adult, and then, if possible, slowly teaching them to imitate and learn correctly, using their natural senses, so that mastery is like being born with it, and the foundation is better.
Violin lessons for children under 6-12 years old
The 6 to 12-year-old age range is a time of growth when the child’s intellect has developed significantly, and it is the right time to start violin lessons if you are interested in learning. This is when children have an easier time with lessons and can spend more time learning outside school.
Learning the violin at this time, after having learned the basics, the subsequent learning of the violin can be more accessible, and the more difficult stage at the beginning has been passed. Later, you will become more interested in learning the violin.
Violin lessons for children under 12-18 years old
This is the time when children start to cope with more and more school subjects and face more exam periods, which makes it more difficult for them to start learning at this time, as they have to juggle more lessons at the same time. Many parents do not allow their children to develop other hobbies at this time but instead focus on academics.
Starting Violin Lessons as an Adult
Many adults start taking violin lessons when they are older because they love it. Adults understand the violin better than children, and their progress will be more evident in the beginning. However, adults have less free time, so they need to arrange the time for lessons and practice to keep progress. At the same time, adults have more rigid fingers, so they are more limited by their fingers. In other words, going on a professional path is more complex, but it is still suitable as a hobby.
Benefits of starting to learn at the child and teenage stage
Children begin to enter a critical stage of cognitive development, where they learn the basics of language, math concepts, and social rules. Children’s memory skills gradually increase, and they can remember and recall simple events and information. Their memory relies heavily on visual and sound cues and is easily influenced by emotional experiences. So when a child learns the violin at this time, he imitates the teacher’s movements by watching the way he plays the violin. The teacher needs to pay attention to the student’s emotional changes and correct the child’s movements with words.
As children begin formal schooling, learning becomes more systematic and complex. They begin to develop learning skills such as attention, concentration, and organization, which also have the potential for faster development when learning the violin. Start learning the violin as a child. Your lessons and practice will ensure a certain level of efficiency, and you will develop into a teenager who, if the conditions allow, can go on to a professional career in the violin.
The teenage years are a critical time for cognitive development as they develop abstract and critical thinking skills. This means that they can think for themselves about what needs to be improved when learning to play the violin and have the ability to think for themselves and make their judgments. Adolescents’ memory skills develop further; they can memorize more violin repertoire and techniques and apply them to their practice.
How can I tell if my child is ready to learn violin?
When the child understands what the parent is saying and can follow the parent’s instructions on a day-to-day basis, they can understand the teacher’s instructions when taking violin lessons and can initially understand how far they can go in doing this, that is, how far the child can practice at the moment.
interest is the best teacher
Some children are stubborn and must be guided to be interested in the violin. Initially, the child may not understand the passion of Carmen’s Fantasia but only find it beautiful. The piece’s emotion needs to be realized after the child grows older and has experience. Then, it is possible to express it when playing the violin. That’s why we always say that interest is the best teacher.
Happy to communicate with strangers
Many parents will let their children be careful when talking to strangers. People live in groups in society, so if they don’t talk to people, how can they exchange information? Cultivating children to communicate with strangers is a social skill; knowing what can be said and what can not be said is the parents need to continue to educate the child to behave appropriately, which can reflect the family upbringing.
If the child does not communicate with strangers, the teacher will be a stranger at the beginning of the class, which will slow down the progress of the teacher’s class. Let your child be bold enough to talk to strangers, but not about sensitive topics that involve family privacy.
Self-discipline and persistence
Children may be interested in the violin at first. Still, after a while, without the curiosity they had at the beginning, they will slowly slacken off and not want to practice. Parents need to encourage their children appropriately, praise them when they perform well, and help them find ways to solve problems when they encounter difficulties.
He needs to keep practising and get better and better at practising the violin so that he will gradually feel the benefits of self-discipline.
Choose the correct teaching method.
There are five main stages in violin teaching, and different methods are needed at different times. Parents need to find the right teacher for their children because children have their preferences for the teaching style they choose. They may not listen to the teacher’s lessons if they are very rebellious at first.
Finding a violin teacher to start the program
When you have found a teacher, and both students think it is suitable, you will go through the following five stages to start learning.
- Beginner’s stage: Getting familiar with the instrument and learning basic violin music knowledge. Be able to master the basic rhythm and practice essential tunes.
- Left-hand technique: kneading the violin strings, vibrating the fingers, etc.. Bow strokes such as staccato, dot bow, jump bow, and its combination with split bow and continuous bow, as well as master the use of each bow section and its combination. Beginning of complex rhythmic compositions.
- Mastery of violin fingering and hand positions: Improvement of technical speed and musical expressiveness.
- Flexibility: Musical expressiveness has facial expression control in addition to tonal colour variation—scale proficiency to the point of using it flexibly without being too limited by stiff fingers.
- Ability to play solo: Enrichment of artistic cultivation, improvement of appreciation of musical works and analytical ability. Increase the variety of performance and the use of various techniques.
Online Violin Lessons
There are many violin lessons nowadays because of the development of technology and the popularity of cell phones and computers. Online violin lessons are viral, as they are not limited by location, and teachers and students can take lessons by making appointments with each other.
Online courses are divided into two categories: one is the violin teacher has recorded a good teaching video, and students can, according to their progress, choose their own needs of the content, generally from simple to complex order of learning; one is the teacher students have to be online at the same time, similar to the traditional offline courses, you need to face-to-face instruction, but the two sides can not touch each other, so the teacher’s method of teaching can only be transmitted to the students with the expression of language. It is suitable for some primary students because the beginning, how to hold the piano posture still needs to be corrected.
Now is the best place to start!
It is said that the violin is one of the most complex musical instruments to learn; however, it is difficult to understand as long as you insist, do not give up lightly, and finally adhere to success will certainly go. This success may be on a different road to professionalism. Still, the child will acquire some rare qualities through playing the violin.
For children, the study of a year and a half to two years is the most challenging time; a change, the new environment to adapt to the new learning habits, and so on will have a particular impact on the child’s learning of the violin.
Learning to play the violin is not just about learning skills; it’s about exercising your child. For example, learning the violin requires a very fast reading speed at a glance to sweep a line of music; this long time to persist will also exercise the child’s reading ability. For example, if a child is naughty, learning the violin will help him build up his stamina and realize the significance of long-term persistence by practising the violin over and over again. Now is the best time. Some people want to learn violin even after they are old and will hesitate if it is too late; be brave and go for it.
The best time to plant a tree was ten years ago, followed by now.