Don’t Fret

I use a fingerboard decal called the Don’t Fret for all of my beginning violin and viola students. I have had excellent results using this decal, so I was a bit surprised to stumble on a heated debate on the merits of using fingerboard markers. I can see some merit in arguments both for and against, but I think that my students typically learn faster when starting out with a fingerboard decal than they do if they had no fingerboard marking. I also think they do better with the Don’t Fret than with traditional fingerboard tapes.

My first teacher used a piece of masking tape as a fingerboard marker, on which he used a marker to draw 3 lines. I recall that I was a bit disoriented for a couple of weeks after he removed the tape, and that after being in place for about 9 months, it was difficult to remove, and the goo it left behind took considerable effort to clean up. Nowadays, most teachers use thin “pin-stripe” tapes to mark the finger positions in the first position.

One of the things that I noticed the first time I saw those little pin-stripe tapes is that you can easily feel the position with the fingertips, which is something I couldn’t do with the simple tape & marker system my first teacher used. Whenever I would play something on one of my student’s violins with pin-striped position markers, I found that the tapes actually interfered with proper intonation, and were a distraction for shifting. And typically, the teacher who applied them got them in the wrong places.

The Don’t Fret decal does not have those drawbacks.  The stripes are accurately printed on a thin vinyl strip which has a mild adhesive on the back, so you can’t feel the stripes. The texture of the surface of the decal closely matches the texture of the fingerboard, so it does not affect shifting. Students using the Don’t Fret tend to play more in tune than the students using pin-stripe tapes. I suspect that has to do with the fact that they are using the tactile feedback of the incorrectly-placed tapes as a crutch, and they just accept the note despite the fact that it is out of tune. The fingertips, and not the ear, become the first discriminator for tuning, which exactly backwards. Students using the Don’t Fret can’t feel the stripes, so they typically only look when they hear something wrong, and then adjust using the visual feedback of the marker.

I have also found that the Don’t Fret decal doesn’t interfere with Pythagorean tuning, probably for the same reason. Since there is no tactile feedback from a pin-stripe, the ear becomes the first discriminator, whereas with a stripe that can be felt, the student has a hard time overriding that position even slightly to adjust for Pythagorean tuning.

Obviously, not everyone shares my assessment of the Don’t Fret, because I had one student whose middle-school orchestra teacher actually removed the Don’t Fret that I had installed, and replaced it with three pin-stripes (incorrectly placed, to boot; one was noticeably crooked). I found myself thinking very ugly things about the qualifications of that teacher to teach anything, much less music. But I did not override that decision at the time. What I did was wait until the end of the school year, and remove the tapes. The student is at the point where he doesn’t need the markers, and his playing has already improved significantly in just a few weeks. Those tapes were interfering with his progress. I hope he gets a more qualified teacher next semester.

The Don’t Fret leaves very little residue when removed, which can be easily cleaned with a soft, dry cloth. It’s much quicker and easier to remove than the individual tapes. I remove the decal as soon as the student is able to make a reliable shift between 1st and 3rd positions. My experience has been that the student recovers very quickly from the removal, usually within a couple of weeks.

I keep a stock of the Don’t Fret decals, which I buy in wholesale quantities from the manufacturer, and I sell them by mail order (US addresses only). I just got notice from that company that they have raised the wholesale price, so my next order, probably in late July, will be at the new price, and I will be adjusting my retail price accordingly. I don’t really mind the price increase all that much, because I still consider this marvelous invention to be underpriced even at the “new, improved” price.

This entry was posted on June 27, 2010 at 5:41 pm and is filed under Backstories, Resources. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.