THOMAS - Violin tutor - New York
1st lesson free
THOMAS - Violin tutor - New York

THOMAS's email address and phone number have been validated.

THOMAS

  • Rate £36
  • Response 9h
  • Students

    Number of students THOMAS has accompanied since arriving at Superprof

    5

    Number of students THOMAS has accompanied since arriving at Superprof

THOMAS - Violin tutor - New York
  • 5 (6 reviews)

£36/hr

1st lesson free

Contact

1st lesson free

1st lesson free

  • Violin
  • Viola
  • Cello
  • Erhu

Learn Violin with Thomas: Lessons for Every Age and Every Level, Beginner to Advanced

  • Violin
  • Viola
  • Cello
  • Erhu

Lesson location

Recommended

THOMAS is a respected member of our tutor community. He is highly recommended for his commitment and the quality of his lessons. An excellent choice to progress with confidence.

About THOMAS

I treat the violin as a sound problem before it is a finger problem. Most of what goes wrong shows up first as a scratch, a wobble, or a note that sits a little off, so my first question in a lesson is usually "what did that just tell you?" I rarely accept a verdict from either of us, so I teach through comparison. If a note scratches near the frog, we play the same stroke at the middle of the bow, then near the tip, then with the bow slightly closer to the bridge, and we listen for which version rings. That shows you that bow speed, weight, and contact point are three separate controls, and that a scratch usually means one of them is out of balance with the others. A beginner often hears the difference after two tries. An advanced player sometimes discovers they have been pressing harder than they thought while believing they were balancing the bow, and that discovery changes the rest of their practice.

I am fairly direct in lessons, and I ask a lot of questions. I won't call something good if I didn't hear it clearly, and I won't let a mistake pass because the piece sounds fine overall. I also stop often to ask what you noticed, because you usually hear more than you expect. When an explanation doesn't land, I change the tool rather than repeating myself louder. If a shift isn't working, I might have you slide a finger along the string with no bow at all, then sing the destination note while you move, then play only the landing note from a stop. If the left hand is locking up, I might ask you to hold the violin with just the thumb and index finger for a moment, so you can feel what the hand does when it isn't gripping. Children often respond to a simple picture, like a ladder the finger climbs one rung at a time. Adults often respond best to being told exactly which muscle to stop using. The goal is the same in each case. Only the route changes.

Here is a frustration I hear constantly. You can play a passage slowly, but the moment you speed up, the same three notes fall apart. I won't tell you to play the whole passage more slowly. Instead, we find the exact moment it breaks. Usually it is a string crossing or a shift, so we isolate that transition alone, the last note of one position and the first note of the next, with the bow resting between attempts. Then I change the rhythm on purpose, playing it dotted, then reversed-dotted, so the gap between the left hand and the bow becomes audible instead of hidden inside a smooth tempo. After that, I often add a sustained open string underneath as a drone so you can check whether each new note is actually in tune. A returning student who has been away for years usually needs to start from the bow hold and the open strings, because the old habits tend to live there. A beginner gets a simpler version of the same idea: one note, one bow, one string, held until it is clean before a second note is added.

What I want most is for you to leave each lesson able to diagnose your own playing. Within a few months, you should be able to tell me where a passage is failing and why before I say a word, something like "my bow is drifting toward the bridge when I go up" or "my fourth finger collapses on the E string." I give you small tools for this: a short listening checklist, a timer set to one measure, and a rule that you stop as soon as the same error happens three times instead of playing through it. Advanced students use the same habits on demanding repertoire, such as a Bach movement or a concerto passage, but the questions get finer. Teenagers who want to learn a particular song get to learn it, and I'll build the technique they need into it along the way. Younger students get short sound games that feel like play, with the technique hidden inside them. In every case, the lesson serves real music, and you should be playing something recognizable by the end of the session.

See more

About the lesson

  • All Levels
  • English

All languages in which the lesson is available :

English

I teach violin mostly through comparison. Almost every problem on this instrument shows up as a difference between two versions of the same motion, and I would rather you hear and feel that difference than take my word for it. A child in her first lesson might draw the bow on an open A string once near the tip and once near the middle, and then decide which one sounds more like a singing voice. A returning adult who has not touched a violin in twenty years might find that the bow scratches the moment the stroke goes past the middle. In both cases we do not start by repeating the stroke more carefully. We set up two versions side by side, change only one thing, and listen. Usually the cause becomes obvious within a minute: too much weight from the index finger, a bow that is tilting, or a contact point that has drifted toward the fingerboard without you noticing. Once you can name the difference, you can fix it yourself, and that is the real goal of the lessons.

Left-hand intonation is where many students feel most lost, because the violin gives you no frets and no visible marks. My approach is to use the open strings as landmarks. Every note you play can be checked against a ringing open string, so you are never guessing whether a note is in tune. If you can play a note slowly and it is fine, but the same three notes fall apart as soon as the tempo rises, I want to know exactly where the collapse begins. Often it is not the whole passage at all. It is the single shift from the second finger to the fourth, or the moment the hand has to leave the first position before the next note has been prepared. We isolate only that transition, practice the landing on its own, and then put it back into the passage at the same speed. Rhythm gets the same treatment. I will often have you play the rhythm of a difficult passage on one open string, so the bowing and the timing can be worked on without the left hand competing for attention. Beginners use the same idea with a single note and a simple pattern, and advanced players use it on a concerto or a Kreutzer study; the principle is identical, only the material changes.

I also believe that a lesson should leave you with a way of practicing that works when I am not in the room. So I teach you to listen for the particular kind of mistake you are making. Is the note flat because the finger is placed too low, or because the bow speed is dropping at the tip? Is the tone thin because the arm is tense, or because the bow is not balanced across the string? I will ask you to make these decisions yourself, and I will show you how to record a short passage on your phone and compare two takes, one from before you changed something and one from after. Over a few weeks most students stop asking, "Why does this sound wrong?" and start saying, "I think the bow is too fast near the frog." That shift matters more to me than any single piece you learn.

These lessons suit a wide range of people, and I want to be specific about how the same method adapts. For a child who gets restless after five minutes, the comparisons become a small game: which bow sounds like a train, which one sounds like a cat. For a teenager who wants to know why a passage in a film score or a school piece sounds so much better when a friend plays it, we work backward from the recording and find the bowing and shifting decisions that produce that sound. For an adult beginner, I focus on building a steady bow arm and a reliable ear before asking for quick passages, and I explain each step so that the reasons make sense as well as the movements. For an advanced student, the comparisons become finer: a shift that is fractionally late, a vibrato that changes speed at the top of the phrase, a double stop where one note always speaks slower than the other. If you are not sure where you fit, the first lesson is a good place to start. I will listen to you play, ask you to try two small things, and tell you honestly what I hear and what I would work on first.

See more

Rates

Rate

  • £36

Pack prices

  • 5h: £180
  • 10h: £360

free lessons

The first free lesson with THOMAS will allow you to get to know each other and clearly specify your needs for your next lessons.

  • 1hr

online

  • £36/h

Similar Violin teachers in New York

SuperprofPrivate lessonsPrivate Violin tutor Private Viola tutor Private Cello tutor Private Erhu tutor
See more tutors

Tutor profile verified

THOMAS's email address and phone number have been validated.

levels

All Levels

All languages in which the lesson is available

English

Review

All of our reviews are collected by us and are 100% reliable. They correspond to a real experience lived by the students of THOMAS.

Reviews

The ratings include all certified reviews

as well as the recommendations left on THOMAS

Recommendations

Recommendations come from relatives, friends and acquaintances of the teacher

free lessons

The first free lesson with THOMAS will allow you to get to know each other and clearly specify your needs for your next lessons.

Report this ad

Describe the problem encountered on this ad

About
All subjects
Cities
Blogs & Help
google playstore icon apple itunes icon