The Patience Threshold
For those who are not as familiar with violin repertoire, there is a book of etudes for beginners written by Franz Wohlfahrt. These are quite famous in the string world, although some students might consider them infamous. I had been resistant to use them when I first started teaching since most students I assigned them to wouldn't practice them anyways. I have recently started to be more insistent that they spend time with them, to the point where we may spend half a lesson on just a Wohlfahrt etude. A colleague of mine who teaches piano has a similar set of etudes that he uses, and which many students may peg in the "infamous" category: the Hanon book (etudes by Charles-Louise Hanon). As I mentioned in the discussion on acquiring new skills and my Skill Acquisition Hierarchy , technique - the "how you do it" of any skill - is the foundation you build upon before you can become a true artist or even just get better at anything. Since this is the case,