If you want to learn to play violin, you may be asking yourself, “Can I teach myself to play violin?” “Do I need a private teacher to play violin?” I’ve been a violin teacher for over 15 years and my opinion on this subject has drastically changed in that amount of time.
If you had asked me 15 years ago if you can teach yourself violin, I would have said an immediate no. But the technology (and my mindset) has changed so much over the last decade that I now firmly believe you can teach yourself to play violin and be successful at it!
Fifteen years ago I would also have said that you must have IN-PERSON violin lessons to be successful. Well, that was before I started teaching exclusively online violin lessons. I learned very quickly that a good violin teacher can see, hear, understand, and teach a student just as well in an online setting as in an in-person lesson.Then I began to realize a couple things that made me understand how students could teach themselves the violin with the resources available online.
But perhaps the biggest reason I changed my mind on this subject was the realization of how I truly learned to play the violin…read on to find out more!
3 Reasons You Can Teach Yourself Violin
Everyone is unique, but everyone also deals with the same common problems.
As I taught more and more students I began to see the same problems and bad habits arising with every student, whether they were 8 or 80. I realized I could record a few lessons about these common bad habits that all violin students face, send them out to my students, and then have more time to spend on other topics in their private violin lessons. (Here’s an example)
This worked tremendously well. First off, I was spending less time teaching the same thing over and over again. Secondly, students were able to realize what bad habits might creep up BEFORE those bad habits even developed. Win win for everyone.
2. Technology Makes it Possible to Teach Yourself Violin
This is a pretty obvious statement, but with my experience recording lessons for students to watch on their own time, I realized the possibilities technology offered in violin instruction.
In private violin lessons, there is never enough time to teach a student absolutely everything they need to know about a subject. Learning violin involves not only learning how to place the fingers and bow, but understanding music theory, ear training, relaxation, posture, motivation, practicing, and so many other topics.
There was never enough time to teach students all the required information. I finished every 30 minute lesson trying to cram as much information in as possible, always feeling like I had never explained everything to the degree it needed to be explained.
Here’s where technology came in again and made learning violin by yourself possible.
With private violin lessons, I often spent the first lesson talking about the same things: how to tune the violin, how to put on the shoulder rest, what the names of the violin strings were, the parts of the violin ,etc. That usually took up an entire 30 minutes (and $40 of the students’ money). These lessons were usually pretty one-sided, with me doing most of the explaining and the students occasionally asking questions.
What if I could record all of those topics, send them to my students, and have them show up for the first lesson with their violin tuned, their shoulder rest on the violin, and ready to learn their first song? I would save them $40 and I would get to spend more time teaching them new things and saving more time for their questions. Another win for everyone around!
I began recording song tutorials with this same method and I realized I could take as much time as I needed to explain every aspect, every measure, every rhythm, every intonation problem, every “gotcha,” ever slur, every dynamic, everything a student would need to be successful learning that song.
Suddenly, private violin lessons didn’t seem that necessary when my collection of recordings covered every topic a beginner violin student would deal with, and in much more detail than any private lesson could provide.
Okay, time to rethink my staunch opinion on whether or not you can teach yourself to play violin. But there was one other reason that made me see it all in a new light.