# The Right Way to Use Violy

*Historical context: This article's source timestamp is August 14, 2017 (UTC). Its descriptions of Violy's capabilities and recommendations reflect the Chinese app at that time.*

We hope Violy will become a useful tool for parents who want to help their children practice more efficiently. But its benefits should not be overestimated. Every app has limits to what it can do.

First, here is what Violy cannot do for you:

1. Help you learn and practice an instrument without a teacher's guidance.
2. Have your child practice with the app every day so that you, as a parent, are finally "free of the struggle."
3. Serve as something you rely on completely throughout the entire practice process.

Violy is simply a tool. Even a good tool can help you become more efficient only when you use it properly.

<!-- more -->

Learning an instrument is a very complex process, and learning the violin is particularly demanding. We should never expect any tool or teacher to solve every problem. Ultimately, progress depends on the learner's own initiative: actively thinking, practicing, correcting mistakes and improving.

Here is where Violy can help: identifying problems with intonation and rhythm. That was the scope of its capabilities at the time of this article. How should you make use of this ability?

When you first encounter a new piece, after your teacher has explained it and assigned it for practice at home, you can divide the practice process into three stages:

A. Become familiar with the score.

B. Work toward fluent playing.

C. Develop musical expression.

Violy's main role should be in Stage B.

Stage A: It is better not to use Violy at this stage. If you do use it, use it only as a digital score rather than following its assessment feedback. The right approach is to begin without your instrument: sing the notes from the score, section by section. Then pick up your instrument and become familiar with each section by playing it very slowly.

Stage B: Once you can play the individual sections fairly fluently, start using Violy, still practicing slowly and section by section. The purpose of using Violy is to make sure there are no rhythm or pitch errors. Continue Stage B until you can smoothly join several sections together and gradually increase the tempo.

Stage C: Once you have brought the whole piece up to tempo and used Violy in Stage B to check that there are no rhythm or pitch errors, begin focusing on musical expression and making the piece sound good. At this point, you need to realize all the expressive markings in the score, such as crescendos, diminuendos and staccato bowing. You can practice without Violy at this stage if you have done Stage B thoroughly enough that pitch and rhythm errors are no longer an issue.

There is a basic principle of correcting mistakes that applies across many fields: the earlier you correct a mistake, the less it costs you. The same principle applies to instrument practice.

The mistakes beginners most often make are not giving Stage A enough attention, not going slowly enough and not making sure they understand every note correctly. If you do Stage A particularly well, checking each note against a tuner to make sure you get it right from the very first encounter, Stages B and C will be relatively easier. With Violy, detecting and correcting intonation and rhythm problems promptly becomes somewhat easier.

Violy's role is to help you spot basic mistakes promptly and correct them promptly! At the time of this article, this was the one task it could do well.

Because Violy has this basic capability, it also makes it easier than before for parents to set violin practice goals for their children. We will explore this in future articles.