How to Continue ABRSM Violin Practice Online After Leaving Beijing
Shang Kun 2026-09-05 1
It is a conversation I have had more times than I can count over the past few years. A student, often one who has been making steady progress in Beijing, sits across from me, or calls me from a new city. Their tone is hesitant, almost apologetic. The story is always similar: a parent’s job transfer, a university acceptance, a family relocation. They are leaving Beijing, and they assume their violin journey is about to hit a long pause, or perhaps end altogether.
There is a specific anxiety that comes with this. Violin is not like learning history or mathematics. It is a physical, sensory, deeply personal craft. The relationship between teacher and student is built on observation—the tilt of the wrist, the pressure of the bow arm, the minute adjustments in posture that you cannot always feel yourself. When you are in the same room, a teacher can reach out and adjust your hand. They can hear the difference between a well-supported tone and a forced one, instantly. The idea of replicating this through a screen feels, to many, like an impossible compromise.
I have seen this fear in the eyes of my own students. I have seen the shoulders drop when we discuss the logistics of continued learning. But I have also seen the relief, and the discovery, that comes when we find a way to make it work. This article is written for that specific moment of hesitation. It is not a sales pitch. It is a guide, born from two decades of watching students navigate this exact crossroads, of witnessing the breakthroughs and the bottlenecks, and of refining a method that translates the standards of a Beijing studio into a global living room.
If you are leaving Beijing, or if you have already left, and you are holding your violin case wondering, “Is this the end of the road”, let me offer you a different perspective. It is not the end. It is a pivot. It is a chance to learn differently, perhaps more deeply, than you ever have before.
The Real Challenge Is Not Technology. It Is Trust.Let us start by dismantling the first myth. Many people believe that the barrier to online violin lessons is a technical one. They worry about lag, about poor audio quality, about the inability to play together in real-time. While these are real considerations, they are the easiest problems to solve.
A good quality external microphone, a stable internet connection with a wired Ethernet cable instead of WiFi, and proper camera placement—one that shows both your full posture and a clear view of your left hand and bow arm—can solve ninety percent of the technical issues. I have been teaching students in Shanghai, London, New York, and Tokyo for years. The technology is mature enough now, in 2026, that latency is rarely a barrier for diagnostic and corrective teaching.
The real challenge is trust. Can you trust a teacher who is not in the room Can you trust that they can hear the subtle flaws in your intonation through a speaker Can you trust that they are seeing the tension in your shoulder, the slight collapse of your left wrist The answer is yes, but only if the teacher has invested the time to build an observational framework that works through a lens. It requires a specific, deliberate methodology.
When a teacher knows your sound, your habits, and your particular physical tendencies from your time together in-person, the transition to online is not starting from zero. It is a continuation. The teacher already has a mental map of your body. They know that you tend to raise your right shoulder on the up-bow, or that your fourth finger naturally drops flat. Online, they are not learning your playing from scratch. They are refining known problems with a new set of eyes. This is why continuity with a familiar teacher is invaluable.
The Story of a Student Who Left, and Why She SucceededI think often about a student I will call Linda. She studied with me in Beijing for three years. She was preparing for her ABRSM Grade 7 exam when her father was transferred to the Shanghai office. She was devastated. She had built a rhythm. She had a practice corner. She had a teacher who knew when she was faking it and when she was truly working.
In her last lesson in Beijing, she barely played a note. She mostly sat there, trying not to cry. I asked her what she was afraid of. She said, “What if I get worse What if I pick up bad habits and no one stops me”
That is the honest fear. It is not about losing access to lessons. It is about losing the safeguard of a trained eye. It is about the loneliness of practicing alone, unsure if you are drilling a mistake into your muscle memory.
For the first two months online, it was hard. She had to become a better “self-diagnostician.” I taught her how to record herself between lessons. I asked her to listen to her own recordings and identify three things that sounded wrong before I even commented. This process made her a more independent musician than she had ever been in person.
She passed her Grade 7 with a Merit six months later. Then she passed Grade 8. Now she studies online from a different city, preparing for her diploma. She told me recently that the online period was the most important growth phase of her musical life because she could not rely on me to fix everything in the room. She had to learn how to listen to herself. That is a superpower that in-person lessons, oddly, sometimes delay.
The lesson is this: leaving Beijing does not mean leaving your progress behind. It means you will need to develop a new form of agency. But with the right guide, that agency becomes your greatest strength.
Practical Steps: How to Keep Your ABRSM Journey Alive OnlineNow, let us get specific. You have your exam goals. You have a foundation. How do you structure your continuation so that you do not lose momentum
First, redesign your practice environment. You can no longer rely on the teacher to catch every error in real-time. You need an environment that supports your own critical listening. Ensure your practice space has a mirror. Record every practice session, even if only for the first ten minutes. The act of hitting “record” changes your focus. You play with more intention because you know you will review yourself.
Second, ask for a diagnostic lesson plan. When you begin online work, your teacher should not just “continue” where you left off. They should give you a written or verbal plan that outlines your three biggest technical issues and the specific exercises to address them. This plan becomes your weekly compass. Without a clear target, online lessons can drift into vague “let me see what you are doing” sessions. You need structure.
Third, use the pre-recorded submission method. In many of my online lessons, students now submit a video of their scale and study piece 24 hours before the scheduled live session. This allows me to listen and annotate with precision. By the time we meet on a video call, I am not hearing it for the first time. I have already analyzed it. I can spend the entire live session fixing problems, rather than diagnosing them. This approach is actually more efficient than many in-person lessons where the teacher hears it for the first time in the room.
Fourth, embrace the asymmetry of online work. In-person lessons are linear. You arrive, you play, you adjust, you leave. Online lessons can be layered. You send a video. You receive a voice memo of corrections. You try again. You send a second video. You meet for a shorter, high-intensity focused session. This back-and-forth, over a week, creates a continuous loop of improvement that a single weekly 45-minute session cannot replicate.
For ABRSM specifically, the exam format itself is very friendly to online preparation. The exam is scored on accuracy, musicality, and consistency. These are all qualities that improve when you build a habit of self-recording and self-critique. Blind spots become visible. The minor slips that you would forget by the time you reach your teacher become permanent records for discussion.
The Student Who Thrives Online Is Not the One You ExpectThere is a common misconception that online learning is only for advanced students who can “self-correct.” In my experience, the opposite is often true. Beginning and intermediate students sometimes adapt faster because they have not yet built a rigid framework of habits. They are more flexible. An adult learner who started from scratch during the pandemic and learned exclusively online often has a more relaxed, less anxious relationship with the instrument because they never experienced the pressure of the “exam room” atmosphere of an in-person studio.
The children who struggle are often the ones whose parents treat the online lesson as a passive viewing experience. The child sits alone in front of the screen, and the parent disappears. In-person lessons can rely on the parent being physically present to absorb the instruction. Online, this needs to be more intentional. The parent must sit next to the child, take notes, and become the hands-on coach for the six days between lessons.
I have a six-year-old student who moved to Guangzhou. Her mother sits beside her with a notebook. Every time I say, “the wrist needs to be softer,” the mother writes it down. She films my hand position with her phone so she can show her daughter later. That child is progressing faster now than when we were in the same room, because the mother has become a more active partner in the process.
The painful truth is this: the online format reveals the strengths and weaknesses of the learning system. If the student has been passive, online lessons will expose that. If they have been actively engaged, online lessons will amplify that. It is a mirror of the student’s independence. For some, it is a wake-up call. For others, it is a liberation.
What to Look for in a Teacher for Long-Distance ContinuationNot every teacher who excels in a face-to-face environment can make the transition to online teaching. The skills are different. An online teacher needs to be a better communicator. They cannot rely on charisma or physical presence. They must articulate clearly, give precise verbal cues, and design exercises that the student can execute alone.
Look for a teacher who provides a structured curriculum, not just a weekly “let me see what you practiced” session. Look for someone who uses supplementary materials—videos, annotated scores, pre-recorded exercises—to keep you engaged between calls. Look for a teacher who is honest about the limitations of the medium and is willing to work creatively around them.
When you find a teacher who has a system specifically designed for online continuation, rather than someone who is simply “doing their regular lessons over Zoom,” you will feel the difference. The lesson will feel tighter. The homework will feel clearer. The progress will feel more tangible.
This is where the value of a teacher who has been doing this for a long time, who has taught students across different time zones and exam boards, becomes apparent. They have already seen the pitfalls. They have already built the workarounds.
At Kun Violin, we have spent years refining this process. The transition is not an afterthought. It is a core competency. The moment a student tells us they are moving, we have a checklist. We help them set up their camera angles. We guide them on audio equipment. We design a transition plan that acknowledges the emotional loss of leaving the studio while offering a clear, practical path forward. It is not a sales pitch. It is a service we built because we saw too many students give up at the airport.
The name ShangKun may not be familiar to everyone outside of Beijing, but the approach is simple: treat the student as an individual, honor the physicality of the instrument, and never let geographic distance become an excuse for stalled growth. Whether you are in a dorm room in Boston, a flat in London, or a house in Shenzhen, the violin does not care where you are. It only cares if you are practicing with intention.
A Final Thought on Commitment and ContinuityThere is a quiet tragedy in the story of the abandoned violin. I see it often. A student moves, and six months later, the instrument is in the corner of a closet. The case gathers dust. The calluses on the fingertips soften. The bridge bends from the tension of the strings loosening. The seh-String breaks and is never replaced. The instrument becomes a relic of a former identity, a reminder of a path not taken.
It does not have to be this way. The technology, the methodology, and the community exist now to keep the string unbroken. The only missing piece is a decision. You have to decide that your musical journey is not tied to a single postal code. You have to decide that the relationship with the instrument is more important than the format of the lesson.
If you are reading this, and you are standing at that intersection, asking yourself, “Should I keep going or should I let it go”, I want you to try just one month. One month of structured online continuation. One month of self-recording. One month of earnest effort with a teacher who understands the landscape. If at the end of that month, the flame has gone out, you will know with more certainty. But more often than not, what happens is the opposite. The flame becomes stronger. The student realizes that the real distance was never the kilometers. It was the hesitation.
Let the move be a chapter, not a full stop. Your next note is waiting.
