Qualities of Good Violin Teachers

Music is a learning process and learning any instrument takes time and effort, as well as large dollops of patience. People can spend years learning to play the violin, because like most other artistic education, it only gets better with more practice. So engaging good violin teachers is essential for good progress. Whether a teacher is good or not will depend upon various individuals but there are some basic things that are essential for being a good violin teacher.

Knowledge

In order to impart knowledge to students, it is essential that the teacher have a vast knowledge of the instrument. They must be well versed in how the violin works so that they are able to find out whether the problem is with the student or the instrument. They need to have a large music repertoire to help the student along at different stages in their learning. A violin tutorial is not just about producing music, it is also about showing students how best to hold the violin, what body positions will minimize tension and how to maximize the student’s skill by teaching the right movements.

Creativity

Teachers are required to be more creative than students because each student is different and learns differently. A good violin teacher is able to explain a musical piece in different ways until the student understands it. The teacher should also allow a higher level student to experiment a little and explore every way of the learning process. Learning music can be grueling at times and a creative teacher helps in reducing the tedium by finding ways to make the learning process more fun, such as games or small competitions. These games are more important if the student is a beginner.

Patience

Teaching violin requires a lot of patience on the part of both the teacher and the student. The teacher’s job is to explain the concept to the students, show them what they are doing wrong, and give them exercises and games that would help in developing their skills. Since each student learns at a different pace, patience is essential.

Observation skills

It is important for a violin teacher to have the capacity of hearing a music piece played by the student and immediately understanding where the mistake is. If a person does not possess this innate ability to pinpoint a problem, he or she cannot really make an effective teacher. Students will make different kinds of mistakes in different ways, and the teacher also needs to be able to understand why this is happening as well as what the mistakes are. So good observation and analysis skills are essential.

Experience

Last, but not the least, students tend to learn more by violin lessons given by experienced teachers. A teacher with a degree in violin studies will automatically have more knowledge about music that they can impart to their students. But what is even more important is that the violin teacher has some experience in teaching and should be comfortable handling students of a certain level or age.

While not every violin player can achieve all the above qualities to the highest possible extent, a good violin teacher should have these qualities to some extent. It is far easier to play the violin and give performances than to teach others to play. Keeping this in mind, it is essential that violin teachers work on their various teaching skills as well as their violin playing in order to provide good quality violin classes.