I started coaching sessions with Heather in January 2014, having been finding my own way along without a teacher for around 3 years. I knew that I had major issues with intonation, tone, timing and vibrato to name but a few, and I had no structure to my practice although I played for an hour and a half every day. I had never tried or even considered violin coaching online but having studied Heather’s website and watched a few videos it looked like she ticked all the boxes. Having a free half hour Skype session with Heather then absolutely convinced me.
I found her approach light and inspirational, whilst she was able to shine a laser beam on the weaknesses in my technique in an instant and give me clear instructions on how to correct it, accompanied by exercises to wire it into my nervous system.
In the following months since then I have loved every session and have seen week on week improvements in my playing beyond what I dreamed possible. Heather’s way of bringing awareness to every pitch is inspirational and has revolutionized my intonation. Having worked with Heather online for these few months I don’t know if I would want to go back to conventional face to face teaching. It has so many advantages.
Heather can just pull up some relevant teaching materials or sheet music and I have it instantly. I get links to videos so that I can continue learning between the sessions and can prep new things that we are going to work on. Plus I get a recording of our session so I can go back and check on anything I wasn’t clear about – and go back to earlier recording to see just how far I have progressed over the weeks.
Then one of my favourite things – I get written notes after the session, with what to work on for the next session which has been great for giving me clear guidelines on what to practice each day, providing me with the structure that I had been lacking.
In short, I can’t praise Heather’s coaching sessions highly enough.
