Left-hand evenness, each finger landing with consistent weight and timing, is something I work on with online students just as much as in-person students. It’s what makes fast passages sound clean instead of muddy, and keeps intonation steady from note to note. A phrase played with even fingers also has a settled, controlled quality, rather than sounding rushed or uneven.
I’ve been offering online violin instruction since 2014, and it’s mostly something you catch by ear rather than by eye, whether teaching in person or online, so the online setting doesn’t change how I diagnose unevenness in a student’s hand. What it does change is how I coach a student through fixing it without being able to physically adjust their hand.
Using Harmonics to Find a Relaxed Starting Point
Harmonics are another tool I use, lightly touching the string to find a relaxed starting point before gradually adding the finger weight needed for evenness across all four fingers. I’ve written more about how harmonics help relax the hand in my general post on left-hand evenness.
Separate Bows for Left-Hand Articulation
Another technique I use is having students play with separate bows, one bow stroke per note, since this changes how the left hand articulates each note and makes unevenness easier to hear and correct.
Rhythmic Practice for Evenness
Rhythmic variation is one of the most effective tools I use for evenness, though it’s genuinely time-consuming and involves technical work. It works because varying which note in a group gets held out forces each finger to land independently and deliberately, rather than relying on the habitual motion of playing the passage the same way every time.
The concept isolates each note in a group by holding it long while the others are played with a short duration, which supports the fingers landing with more precision and control.
For slur groupings, I’ll have a student hold the first note of the slur while playing the remaining notes with a much shorter, lighter touch, almost clipped. Then I’ll repeat holding the second note long, then the third, and so on through every note in the slur. I recently worked through this with an online student preparing for a Greater Twin Cities Youth Symphonies (GTCYS) audition on Scène de Ballet, which had a six-note slur on the down bow followed by a nine-note slur on the up bow. The usual four-note rhythm patterns I typically use didn’t apply directly to six- and nine-note groupings, but the same underlying principle, isolating and holding each note in turn, still worked.
For four-note groupings, I use a set sequence of rhythms: dotted-eighth followed by sixteenth, then reversed as sixteenth followed by dotted-eighth. The second group of rhythms consists of a quarter note followed by a triplet, then reversed as a triplet followed by a quarter note. The final group of rhythms comprises two quarter notes followed by two eighth notes, then reversed as two eighth notes followed by two quarter notes.
For these rhythms to actually help, they need to eventually be practiced at full tempo, not just slowly. If a student isn’t sure how to execute a rhythm, I’ll play it first so they can hear it, and I’ll sometimes record myself demonstrating the various rhythms so they have something to reference later. For the four-note groupings specifically, I’ll write the rhythms out and have students copy them down, so they have something concrete to return to the next time evenness becomes an issue.
It usually takes a student at least two lessons to get comfortable with these rhythms and understand how to practice them independently for evenness. That’s a normal part of the process, not a sign anything’s wrong as this is genuinely technical, detail-oriented work.
Recording and Listening Back
One thing I’ve started recommending to students is recording themselves and listening back specifically for uneven finger landings, since it’s often easier to catch on playback than in the moment.
Student Success
Students consistently make strong progress, whether learning in person or through online lessons, which I offer to students anywhere in the country. One student studied with me in person for two years before transitioning to online lessons, and after five years of online study, was accepted into the Greater Twin Cities Youth Symphonies Philharmonic Orchestra in spring 2025.
Ready to Get Started?
I teach in person in Falcon Heights, North Oaks, and Mounds View, and online. Contact me to schedule a free intro.