Whatever thier age or experience level, string students may find certain pieces just out of range. But as string educator Marla Mutschler points out, sometimes the hardest notes are just a quarter-inch away. “Students will come to me and say, ‘I want to play a hard piece up high’—like the Mendelssohn concerto— but they don’t even know how to get the violin up there,” Mutschler says. “They can’t even slide one fi nger up the violin.”

To remedy this, Mutschler shows violinists how to fix their shifting by simply moving an arm, replacing a foot, or changing where the thumb is placed on the bow or neck. That, in essence, is the Paul Rolland approach, of which Mutschler has been a practitioner ever since Rolland himself changed Mutschler’s foot placement during graduate school.

Th e Rolland approach emphasizes players’ physical habits—ways of standing, holding the instrument, and moving while playing—all based on how the body Improve Playing Through These Simple Posture Pointers moves naturally. It makes playing more natural, but also more deep, as players can shift more easily, hit more notes, and find difficult pieces, like the Mendelssohn, within their grasp.

All of these steps lead toward the ultimate goal: playing free from tension with good posture that helps avoid injuries.

Focus on One Problem at a Time

In a private lesson, a teacher will pick one aspect of a student’s physical habits to fix per lesson or per week. For example, a student with pigeon-toed posture and stiff awkward arm placement will receive attention in just one of these areas at the start. Similarly with group lessons, an instructor might not have the time to correct each individual student’s posture, but can initiate group exercises that fix foot placement, posture, or a misplaced thumb.

“It’s a matter of emphasis,” Mutschler says. “Traditionally, students were asked to learn to read music, hold their instrument and bow correctly, and produce a good sound—all simultaneously. But [with the Rolland approach], they concentrate on one thing at a time.”

Try it with Alt-Style Players

Th e Rolland approach can be applied to any style. Mutschler uses country music fiddling as an example. “[Fiddlers] hold their upper arms on their ribs because it’s very comfortable, but the more centered their arms are, the more their arms have to twist to reach the strings,” Mutschler says. “Now move the arm over to the left: it doesn’t have to twist nearly as much. As Paul used to say, the joint is most relaxed when it’s in the middle of its range.”

It's Good for All Ages

Some teachers maintain that the Rolland approach is better suited to students with experience rather than raw beginners, but Mutschler disagrees. She argues that it’s much easier to get young children to change their stance, put their instrument in a different position, and change how they bow than it is to change the playing habits of people entrenched in their ways. Mutschler adds that Rolland had thought of this when he wrote his textbook The Teaching of Action in String Playing. Unlike Suzuki, who Mutschler says “was a genius in knowing how small children learned,” Rolland found techniques and exercises that could be applied both early and late in a musician’s string education to make playing more healthy and comfortable at any stage.

As an example, children might be asked to play “The Statue of Liberty Game,” in which the teacher will ask them to hold their instrument in one hand and lift their free hand up over their heads, which in turn causes them to stand up straight. Students in high school or college will be asked to do the same thing, but “of course, if they’re 18 years old you don’t call it a game, you call it a posture exercise,” Mutschler says, with a laugh.

Flexibility is the Key

What may be most notable about the Rolland approach is its flexibility. Teachers can learn the whole method through a workshop, pick up its techniques through one of the books and accompanying DVD, or simply extract a chapter that fi ts into their students’ lesson plans. Many teachers might go straight for the spiccato chapter, while others consult the vibrato chapter. Whatever the focus and dose needed, the approach is about improving one aspect at a time, Mutschler says.

“You may stop spreading your fingers too far,” she says, “or you might stop caving out your thumb on your bow hold.”

Either way, students will figure out how to play their instrument as their bodies intended—naturally and pain free.