“A lot of students think it’s their teacher’s job to mark things in their music,” Baldwin sighs. “Students don’t feel they have the right to change teachers’ fingerings or bowings, which probably is not a bad instinct. But there’s nothing wrong with marking a reminder bowing, or clarifying a direction. I have to tell my youth orchestra to write in ‘staccato’ or circle ‘piano’; if I don’t train them to do that, they won’t do it. Maybe it’s something about the sanctity of this beautiful page of music. If I have a nice edition I don’t want to get sloppy with, I photocopy a page and do all my messy erasing on the copy; then when I get it to what I want it to be, I transfer the final marks to the original.”

Clear the Way
To learn notes efficiently, Baldwin advocates what he calls the “Zamboni Effect.” Zamboni is the make of the machine that cleans the ice at a skating rink.

“It eliminates all the grooves,” Baldwin explains. “In music, the grooves are the mistakes or the miscoordinations that we make when we play. By completely reorganizing the way the music is practiced, your brain can learn in new ways; it’s not stuck in its old ruts.”

To achieve the Zamboni Effect, take a passage you need to practice; rewrite it, eliminating the printed rhythm; and play the notes one at a time. Example 1 is an excerpt drawn from the opening of Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 5 in A major.

Example 2 is the first sweep of the Zamboni: removing the rhythms. Examples 3 through 5 take the process further.

“The most evident problems,” says Baldwin, “are rhythm and bow control. The rhythm is primarily a left-hand problem, while the bow control is obviously a right-hand problem. The best way to conquer this passage is to separate the functions of the hands and to learn each independently.

“To learn the left hand, first, remove the rhythm and practice the notes as equal quarter notes or half notes, using a drone pitch wherever possible.” (See Example 2.)

Then, says Baldwin, apply one of the useful rhythms shown in Example 3 to the pitch collection of the passage. Example 4 illustrates applying rhythm No. 3 to the Mozart excerpt. Experiment with other rhythmic patterns, or even try alternating patterns, to keep your practicing fresh.

“I also find that changing the metric grouping helps a great deal,” says Baldwin. “For instance, regroup patterns of fours into triplets or quintuplets, or shift the metric accent to the second, third, and fourth note of a group.” (See Example 5.)

Once you’ve mastered the notes, you can address the right-hand problems.

Train Your Ear
Baldwin also advocates using practice time to train your ear. Take a high passage down an octave. Sing through a passage for pitch and musical contour. Close your eyes and just listen to a passage in your head. Sing and play at the same time.

Having a good ear is essential to working on good intonation. Baldwin suggests that you use drone pitches to check the harmonic integrity of your intonation; you could even record a series of drones with a metronome pulse, and play back to the recording.

“Intentionally miss a note or shift sharp or flat,” Baldwin says. “If you can miss it, you know where it is.” And practice something called “visual intonation”—visualize the spaces between notes with the various fingers, so you can create each note accurately in your head before moving your finger on the string.

There are many ways to work on coordination between the left and right hands while making practice less repetitive. “If you assume the problem is in one hand,” says Baldwin, “check the other for the solution.”

He suggests that you play a slow passage quickly, or a fast passage slowly. Practice the hands separately.

Change the tempo, but never go faster than you can play perfectly. Try a musical version of sprinting—practice short segments, and then join them. Use light left-hand fingers and keep them close to the strings. Release the thumb pressure of either hand. If you’re playing notes in groups of four, say “one-two-three-four” as you play. Group notes into units and think only of the unit, not of the individual notes. And if an open string follows a fingered note under a slur, use a mild left-hand pizz to help rhythmize the bow.