Now that we have our instrument tune and ready to go, we're going to take some small steps and do some small exercises to be able to get us ready to play our first scale. So here's what we're going to do, we're going to name our fingers first. And when I named my fingers, the thumb doesn't have a number. So I start as if I'm doing kid math, and I go 1234. And after I count to four, I realize that those are the numbers of my finger. So this is my first finger, second finger, third finger and fourth finger.

Well, the num does not the thumb, the thumb does not have a finger, the thumb does not have a number. Now, now that I know my fingers, and I know my numbers on my strings, my littlest string is the littlest number 1234. Then we're kind of ready to go. So we're going to just do this exercise. Together, it's a pretty simple exercise, what we're going to do is we're going to get our hands ready. And when we get our hand ready, it's going to look like this.

Our fingers are going to be open. So you're having your palm out and your fingers out. And we're trying to get in touch with this part of our hand is right about here. And after we touch that part, we're going to do it again. And notice that I'm about one half inch away from my nut. The nut is that shiny little raised piece of wood there, about a half an inch away from that nut.

And after I touch that, so it's going to go away and then you touch it. And that's just that simple. So no, we're all we're gonna do is do it again and we're going to do it together. I want to say take your hand away as the No one. And when I say two, it's going to come together and touch. So one is a way to touch.

One is a way to is touch. So 1212121212121212 I think we have that exercise is a really great one to practice. And the reason why it's great to practice this exercise is for the first bit. As we begin to play your violin or little music or whatever it might be. We want to make sure that that part of your hand touches your violin. Now that I have this part of my hand touching, I've done my exercise a fair amount of time.

I'm ready to move on to the next step. And that next step looks like this. I have my hand touching, I'm going to curl my finger around. And after I curl my finger around, you're going to see that the finger is on setting on the tip. So this is my index finger is the first finger. That's the only one we're going to do in this exercise.

But it looks like this, I'm going to have my index finger and it's going to touch Now the difference here. The difference here is that when I curl my finger around, there's going to be a happy medium of where the finger touches. So I just take a look at my finger by itself. I have the tip. And then you can kind of see everybody's fingers looks different, but you can see mine. How it kind of has this tip and then it curls real fast into like a little slope.

Well, this slopey part right there is the pad of your finger, it's soft as pliable. Now, where I want to get my finger to touch is on the tip of it, but slightly on the pad. So what I mean by that is if you have your finger curled around, you're going to not have your finger 100% up like this, so that your fingers pointed directly down, if you can see that, because that would be too much of an angle downwards. also hurt on your wrist. And you're not going to have your finger the other way. Or if I push down on this knuckle, this knuckle right here and not this one, but that one right there.

I press down on that knuckle. It'll look like this. And now I'm collapsing the ark that I have in my finger. Or it's a collapsed bridge is how I Describe it to some students. So instead of this collapse bridge, we want to have a curl around, and then our finger, most of the part of their finger that is touching is that tip of our finger versus the pad. Now, some of the other things to be aware of, is your fingernail length.

You want to make sure that your fingernails aren't too long. And here's a good test. If you take the tips of your fingers, and you tap on your tabletop or on your violin by itself, it'll sound I have calluses so you hear a little tick but this hand It won't be quite as is audible on the video. But now, what those sound like his fingernails, when those sound like is the pads of your fingers, and you're going to want to make sure that when you're doing this, you're not hearing the Pick up your fingernails touching the wood. And as long as you don't have your fingernails touching the wood when you do that little exercise, and you're good to go, if you happen to have fingernails that are touching the wood, you'll need to clip your fingernails and get them down to a manageable level. Because if you don't, what'll end up happening is the finger now will get in the way of you being able to curl your finger around, because the finger now will touch the violin, and you won't be able to play the violin as well as you want to.

So now that I have this in mind, and I have my hand touching, and I did that exercise, and I'm ready for exercise number two looks like this. I'm going to get my finger curled around, I'm going to have that nice arc, decided my finger is touching and if it's not if it's somehow gone away, then I'm going to touch it back again just as a quick check. And now all I'm gonna do is gonna I'm gonna instead of using my bow I'm just going to put it away, I don't need it, I'm going to think of one thing at a time. Now, now that I'm just simply holding my instrument with my index finger down, I'm simply going to lift it up and then set it down and lift it up instead of down. Once I get used to lifting it up and sending it down, I'm going to work on lifting it up just up over the strings, and then setting it back down, just up over the strings, and then back down.

So yeah, up, down, up and down. So the idea here is that we're not lifting their finger really hot, but it's just a smidgen, just a little bit. Okay, we're done with exercise number one, and we'll see you back here for exercise number two