 Hi. This video is a primer in holding a violin or a viola in an orchestra setting here at NCSSM and anywhere that you might be working in an orchestral situation. Just want to give you a couple of reminders of tips, things to bear in mind when you're holding your instrument in a seated position. First of all, when you're seated, you want to be seated on the front of the chair. Don't ever, in a playing situation, allow yourself to be back against the back of the chair. You want to be up front. From your waist up, you should really be in a standing position. In fact, a lot of times, I'll have students stand up and then sit down and just have that posture from the waist up. So that's first. The second thing is to remember that when you play, your instrument doesn't come out the front of you. Your instrument is positioned on your shoulder. So it's very important that violins and violas not sit straight ahead on your chair, but actually turn your whole body about a quarter turn to the right. My right foot is oftentimes behind the front of the chair as I'm seated. Now we're going to pretend that the camera that I'm looking into is the conductor. So in that situation in orchestra, you're turned about a quarter turn to the right. Your instrument then goes on your shoulder and your instrument's scroll is pointing right at the conductor. In this setting, I don't have a music stand, but we could pretend that that imaginary music stand is right here. So your scroll is pointing past the music stand to the conductor and you're looking at your music so that you can look right to the conductor and back to the music stand. It's a very natural motion. I'd like to show you some things about the setup holding your instrument that are very, very important to remember and there are a couple just very quick concepts and if you always kind of line up this way, it'll really work. When I hold my instrument in the playing position, I want you to take a look at my elbow. I like to think of the strings of the instrument as creating a plane. They're creating a plane and my elbow is either lined up in that plane between the floor and my strings or it's actually just a little bit inside that plane and that's really vital as you set up. So again, we're on the front edge of the chair. We're turned about a quarter turn to the right. The scroll is pointing towards the conductor. My left elbow is in the plane of the strings or even inside. When I'm conducting, a lot of times I see students that look like this and it just kind of hurts a lot of the stuff that you need to do when you're playing. What this does is it gets you onto the tips of your fingers and it makes shifting much easier and it makes vibrato much easier. When your elbow is out like this, you can't do any of that stuff. So check that out right away and you'll be in great shape. The other thing I want you to check is I want you to check your left thumb. Your left thumb should be vertical, not horizontal. You'll notice that when my left thumb is horizontal, my wrist bends and it's not a good playing position. When that left thumb is vertical, it allows me to use the tips of my fingers and a much freer to shift, a much freer to play vibrato and to do things properly. Again, not horizontal, vertical. And actually the thumb should not be up like this either. It should be down this way so that the tip of your thumb is below the edge of the fingerboard. There's our playing position. Give it a try.