The Power of Practice: Achieving Mastery in One Note

There's a wonderful thing about these exercises:

They make it very easy to play a note as well as the very best player in the world could. This is simply logical, not a matter of vanity.

An Example Exercise

Consider this exercise from a different perspective. If you can do three things:

1. Draw the bow parallel with the bridge:
   This is a skill that anyone can learn, even if they don't master it immediately.

2. Balance the speed and pressure on one sound point:
   Achieving the right vibration from the string at its widest is something almost anyone can learn.

3. Maintain consistency:
   If you can execute these three aspects evenly, you can confidently say that with this violin, these strings, and this bow, you are playing that one note, D, as well as anyone in the whole world can play it.

The Limitations of Mastery

After all, what more can anyone else do? Sustaining this one note up and down without vibrato.

• If you gave this violin, with these particular strings, and this bow with this specific hair and amount of rosin to a world-class soloist, what more could they do other than:
  • Adjust the speed and pressure
  • Change the distance from the bridge until the balances are appropriate

Of course, if they were to add vibrato or play that same note in the context of a musical phrase, other factors would come into play.

The Mechanics of Sound

However, here we're focused on the simple mechanical fact of how the bow makes the string vibrate.

It's a very short step to making the same sound on a note in a piece and feeling the expression in it.

Making the string vibrate evenly by adjusting the speed and pressure on any sound point has little to do with being a musician or an artist.

It's simply a matter of natural human sensitivity and touch.

A Hidden Potential

This is why so many of us are actually infinitely more talented than we realize.