About Customize Your Shoulder Rest – Quick Tip:
Hi there, I’m Dr. David Wallace of myTalentForge.com and this is the Quick Tip of the week!
The Quick Tip of the week is to customize your shoulder rest. So that you adjust the instrument to your body, not your body to the instrument.
And you can do that using pink make-up sponges!
My viola teacher at Juilliard, Karen Tuttle, is the person who came up with this idea. And you can actually now buy these pads from SHARmusic.com, and various other places, but a drug store is good enough.
You can see right here, I need a little more height than this coon shoulder rest will give me.
My neck is pretty long, and without this, there’s a little extra space and I can only fill in that space if I squeeze. That’s going to hurt- that’s not going to be good for my playing long-term.
So, I take some rubber bands, put a sponge there, and now it just fits and floats comfortably. As a matter of fact, I need a little more space here, so I take the rubber bands and put it right there…
And I have the instrument fit my body rather than the other way around.
When I take the instrument away, I look just like I look when I’m standing normally.
So get yourself some pink make-up sponges, some rubber bands, and customize that shoulder rest.
And for more tips on ergonomic playing, check out myTalentForge.com’s Comfort With Your Instrument and Comfort With Your Bow Series.
That’s your tip of the week!
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