• Keep your body upright in both sitting and standing positions, no slouching!
• The violin must be parallel to the floor, don't let the scroll tilt downwards – you will end up with all sorts of injury problems and a terrible sound!
• Try not to clench your jaw or tense your left hand in holding the violin, check your left thumb is not gripping the violin.
• Breathe! Easily forgotten but this is another big tension factor, resulting in violinists holding tension in their shoulders and neck which has a great impact on the sound that is produced.
• Use a mirror! This is such an important point for checking your bow is in the right place on the string and in relation to the bridge.