Online Teachers: The good, the meh, and the out of tune.

I’ve been playing for about 2 and a half weeks now, and I found a website (www.superprof.com) that offers online teaching for the violin. The first one was okay. I’m giving her a second chance tomorrow. The next one I tried was awesome. We worked for about 45 minutes on my bow hand, doing exercises to teach my fingers independence, and I left the lesson feeling encouraged and wanting to play more. I had another one I tried that was meh, not great. She spent most of the lesson correcting me without encouragement. She was a no. The guy I saw yesterday was a joke. He was extremely critical, and I played a scale for him, and he literally said, “Wow, that sounded better than I expected!” Not sure if it was just me, but it was quite offensive. Not to mention his violin was horribly out of tune.

I’m meeting with an in-person instructor a week from this Monday, and I’m ridiculously excited. YouTube can only take me so far, and it’s the same for online teachers. I'm definitely making progress by myself and feel like the violin is something I’m going to adore.

On a side note, is there a secret to spider-walking down the bow? I’m referring to the exercise where you creep your bow fingers up and down the bow. I think I’ve got going up down, but my thumb refuses to move on the way down.

Anyway, thanks for listening to me ramble!