Let’s start with the short version:

My name is Erik Williams. I have owned and operated Sacramento Strings Violin Lessons since about 2011, and I was teaching in some capacity for roughly 4 years before that. In total, I have played the violin for 23 years. Private violin lessons have been my sole source of income for many years now, and I take great pride in that level of expertise. Having taught hundreds of students, I eventually developed my own style of teaching which I believe is superior to the typical approach. I have taught numerous beginner students as well as much more advanced players. I have also consulted with injury afflicted violinists, and my own passion for increasing the playability of the instrument has led to me creating several violin-related inventions.

What’s different about my teaching method?

Most importantly, my teaching style is built upon years of experience with hundreds of private students (yes, hundreds!). In private lessons, I make use of all the important things I’ve learned from teaching, such as patience, adaptation, creativity, and repertoire. Good private teachers are actually quite hard to find because they need to combine so many different qualities into one package, and I believe I have achieved this. But at some point, I realized that simply being a “good teacher” wasn’t enough. I needed a system that would not only show a student how to play, but also give them the reason and the context to keep pushing forward even after things got difficult and the initial novelty wore off! Thus, I decided to change my perspective on what teaching really meant, and what lessons should really look like.

My new teaching method revolves around the concept of a semi-permanent “quartet” of similarly-skilled players that students join as soon as possible. These quartet rehearsals are supplemented by a separate, weekly private lesson. While it isn’t possible for a brand-new student to start playing music with others on their first day, my goal is to have you playing with others - in some capacity - within a month or two of starting. Typically, violin students don’t get the pleasure of playing with others until they have years of experience. Not only does this rob a new player of the fun of playing chamber music, but it also allows many basic concepts to fly under the radar. And most importantly, playing alone for years is a common reason for getting burned out. So by building a sense of community, everyone will learn faster, enjoy it more, and build real skills that will translate well into other group music later on down the road.

Now, I want to emphasize: I don’t consider these “group” lessons, although they are held in groups of 4. Think of them more like “rehearsals.” You will still take private lessons from me, once per week. But you’ll also meet once per week with the “quartet”, which I will supervise. These two different lessons are meant to be synergistic. In some cases, a student may opt to have their private lesson and quartet lesson on the same day. Unlike a traditional group lesson, your quartet will always have the same 4 violin players in it, and you will be playing different parts to form cohesive harmonies. Your individual musical voice will still be heard, unlike larger groups where your tone doesn’t matter because it gets drowned out. You will all improve together. If one player learns significantly faster than the others, they may eventually be offered the chance to move to a more advanced quartet. But the general idea is to keep a group together.

My personal history:

I began teaching because it was very natural to me, even from a young age. I always found myself trying to tell others how to do things, even when it wasn’t solicited! So eventually, when I found myself wondering which direction to take my career, it made perfect sense to teach the instrument that I had spent nearly my entire life learning. I had taught here and there for free as a teen, and around the age of 21, I started charging for it. It became my sole source of income and I’ve been teaching full time ever since.

Now that I’ve taught students that number in the hundreds, there are many aspects of teaching that I’ve come to understand. One of those is how important a good quality teacher is. The other is understanding what exactly makes a good teacher in the first place. Looking back on my learning history, I can get a good perspective on both of these questions.

I began learning the violin when I was 8, mainly because my parents gave me the choice between piano and violin. I picked violin because I thought it was more “unique” than the piano at the time. My first teacher was - to be frank - not good. I can’t even comment on her level of skill on the instrument, because all I remember was how mean she was. I spent about 2 years learning with her, because my mom and I simply didn’t know any better. I was too young to understand that teachers shouldn’t act so bitterly towards their students, and it wasn’t until she literally threw me into a chair that we started searching for someone better.

My next teacher was an order of magnitude better than the first, but was generally dispassionate. It seemed like lessons were just her “going through the motions.” If I didn’t make progress on something, she would tend to just move me to the next song. Her expectations of me were low, and perhaps that was what allowed her to be patient.

My 3rd teacher was very much like the 2nd, but with much less skill. While I didn’t find lessons with her to be inherently negative, she just didn’t really seem to care about the results, and she couldn’t play well enough for me to feel inspired as a student.

Finally, on our 4th try, and after about 4 years of lessons, we found an excellent teacher. I recall being amazed that lessons could actually be fun. With her, I discovered that “musicality” existed, and that notes could tell stories. She was lively and wonderful, and really tried her absolute best. We commuted 40 minutes each way to get to this teacher, but it was well worth it. These lessons went so well, in fact, that I outgrew this teacher within less than 2 years. But for the first time, we were changing teachers because of the progress I had made! Although she was a naturally talented instructor, she didn’t consider herself qualified to teach past a certain level, and it was recommended that I find someone who specialized in more advanced students.

My 5th teacher was very qualified and had high expectations of me. The issue was that, due to my unstable lesson history, many foundational concepts were missing from my technique. I think this frustrated him, since he wanted to teach more advanced concepts, but wasn’t sure exactly what was missing from my basic building blocks. This is a good example of what happens when a teacher has plenty of experience with advanced students but almost none with beginners. Even though I was considered “advanced” at this point, there were still aspects of my technique that weren’t at that level, and he wasn’t sure how to address them. Eventually his frustration with this led to him yelling at me, and as a sensitive teenager, this crushed me.

The overall experience with teacher number 6 was an interesting one. While I can’t say that he was a natural-born teacher, he had many strengths and I don’t recall him ever losing patience with me. I remember him as the first teacher who really moved me “back” rather than “forward.” And while that might sound bad, it was a very positive thing. He gave me simple, beautiful pieces that allowed me to really build the quality of my tone. This taught me the value of being willing to go back to simpler pieces to build foundation — something I wish more teachers would do! It’s easy to fall into the trap of always giving increasingly complex pieces to students, only to have them burn out because the quality isn’t there. While I learned invaluable insights from this teacher, we eventually had to part ways. He made the mistake of overestimating me and putting me in a situation that I wasn’t prepared for (a paid role in his quartet playing for a wedding). I had nearly zero experience in gigs like this, and we had no rehearsals. He simply assumed I’d be able to do it, based on my technical skills alone. When I arrived at the wedding and we had a quick “warm up” 15 minutes before the performance, I realized I didn’t really know how to fit my part in with that of the others, and I started panicking. As the performance started, this panic made things even worse, and I totally failed my part. After that, he never interacted with me in the same way, and it felt like he blamed me. But in retrospect, it was his fault for putting me in a situation without testing my preparedness.

My 7th teacher was my last. She was well known for being excellent, and that reputation was well-earned. She was the first teacher I had that was capable of teaching absolute beginners and bringing them to a very advanced level. In having this broad teaching range, she was a very good fit for me, since I had certain aspects of my playing that were very advanced, while other parts were lagging behind. She was able to identify which things to prioritize to try and balance me as a player, and to pick out my weakest points while still refining my strengths. She was both passionate and fun, while still having a rock-solid foundation. I stayed with her for about 2 years and reached a high level of playing before deciding I needed a break from playing.

Why did I take a break? As it turned out, I had severe stage fright. And although my playing had come so far, I would get severe shaking in every audition I took. This could only ruin so many auditions before I realized that perhaps musical performance wasn’t going to be my future. No matter how hard I tried, everything would come apart when I had to play it in front of judges. I remember a judge saying to me once: “It doesn’t matter how well you play at home unless you can prove it in auditions.” He was correct. But in a way, this was a sort of blessing. If auditions had gone well, I would have never discovered my passion for teaching. Shortly after quitting lessons, I decided I would try my hand at teaching professionally, and it turned out that I had quite an affinity for it. I decided to go full time with it, and 14 years later, I like to think I’ve taken all the best parts of each teacher I had, and combined them into a cohesive whole.