Learning by touch
♫ Monday, May 18th, 2009
An adult Fiddling Demystified class
We fiddlers speak a lot of learning by ear. But what about our other senses? What about sight, sound and very important for the musician but often overlooked in favor of hearing, the sense of touch?
I have a new student, a chiropractor who’s never played a instrument and is learning the fiddle as an adult. I am challenged to break down and analyze movement in order to build on her knowledge of the body. For the first time in teaching, I am putting touch before hearing, separating it in fact from the sound being made by putting it first. So, will her sound be influenced from the first by touch, and if so, how? We’ll have to wait and see how things develop.
The first lessons are about integrating the instrument into her body. What is too hard a hold and how much is a grip and how much is simply the bow resting on the string? How hard should she grab the fiddle? And what else should call it besides grabbing? At what angle does the instrument fit easily under her chin? We’re filming each lesson to provide her with an archive of what it needs to look like so she can use it as a learning aid when I’m not there.
Then there is the language used to describe her movements. I draw from Alexander Technique thinking, using passive descriptions such as ‘weight’ rather than ‘pushing,’ or ‘pressure’ when talking about using the bow. We adapt her body to the instrument and bow in the most non-interfering way, which is essentially the most efficient. Tension is the enemy here, sought out and released passively by non-verbal cues when found and isolated. Softly, softly, we move in tiny steps toward an ease that will ideally grow into a complete comfort between her, the fiddle and the bow.
All this comes before we even talk about making music. Without her willingness to take on this kinesthetic and scientific approach and her patience with the learning experience, our work wouldn’t be possible. Her intellectual curiosity about the process and for the music yet to come is as deep as mine is as a fiddle pedagogue to explore the possibilities inherent in teaching a gifted and intuitive chiropractor to fiddle.
Now I realize this sounds like the ultimate in music nerd-dom to some folks, but this is how I define FUN!
Donna Hébert
Amherst MA
