Daily Virtuoso
Practicing shouldn’t feel like a constant battle with your own limitations.
Experience the revolutionary membership experience that helps you take control of your progress — while learning the greatest pieces in the repertoire (no more waiting!)
I’m Nathan Cole,
and I want to make you a Daily Virtuoso…
“Before, I’d spend hours practicing but it wasn’t targeted enough to see the kind of improvements that I needed. Nathan helped me focus on the skills I needed to improve the most. He has a special ability to pinpoint and distill the most essential information incredibly clearly.”
The absolute key to daily progress is realizing you’re ready now
I don’t need to tell you that everything in your life will transform the moment you…
- Truly fall in love with your daily practice
- Blow your own mind with your technical ability
- Play the great music written for the violin, and actually like how you sound
But what you might not realize is this:
Getting there isn’t about waiting until you feel worthy while shutting yourself off from the very music that made you pick up the violin in the first place.
It’s about using Bach, Kreisler, Mendelssohn, Wieniawski, and all the rest to become a better player. To face AND CHANGE your inner dialogue about who you are as an artist.
Count me in!
Over the last 20+ years, I’ve inspired tens of thousands of violinists through my online courses and YouTube videos.
I’ve also spent decades teaching privately and doing audition coaching.
As serious violinists, we hold ourselves to impossibly high standards. You may have heard the phrase, “stop comparing your ‘behind-the-scenes’ to someone else’s ‘highlight reel.’” That about sums it up for us, doesn’t it?
When you expect your daily work to sound like the (often edited) performance of an established star, you set yourself up for failure on a daily basis. You come to expect it.
And lower expectations mean smaller dreams. Those magnificent cornerstones of the violin repertoire seem to float further and further away.
You keep practicing but your morale decays as time passes. After another month, or another year, you’re not any closer to enjoying the pieces that made you fall in love with the violin in the first place.
And your daily practice becomes a constant uphill battle with little reward.
Does any of this sound familar?
If these thoughts have haunted you in the past – you’re not alone.
And here’s some good news: in the Daily Virtuoso, you’ll be writing a new narrative about yourself as an artist — in addition to solidifying the technical foundation that has always eluded you.
Here’s what you can look forward to:
- Colleagues and friends who will stand alongside you for years to come, sharing in your violin victories and the inevitable challenges. Feeling alone? Not anymore.
- As you separate practice from self-worth, you’ll be free to find better solutions with less work. Instead of focusing on how you’re failing, you’ll start seeing results.
- I’ll guide you with practice planning. You’ll have the focus and clarity to get the most out of whatever practice time you do have.
- My modular approach means you can go at your own pace, meeting your current abilities and stretching in an appropriate way.
All in all, the Daily Virtuoso will teach you how to make daily progress in the practice room the norm — so that improvement is undeniable!
Ready to start?
In the Daily Virtuoso, we do things differently…
We use the greatest repertoire as the vehicle for building your technical foundation — it’s functional fitness, on the violin.
No more choosing between technique and great music.
Here, you’ll improve your foundations as you learn the music you love.
And even better?
You’ll see surprise improvements popping up in your playing all over the place: your very next gig, rehearsal, lesson…even the big auditions and performances.
It’s impossible to predict how all of that growth will impact you.
You might feel ready and inspired to…
- Schedule that solo recital
- Make a recording of your playing
- Audition for a bigger orchestra
And if you’re a teacher, you’ll discover you have new tools (and a growing excitement about your playing) to share with your students — to help them step onto a faster highway of violin progress.
Here’s Katie — a professional orchestral player — who rediscovered her desire to learn new repertoire through our work together:
Queensland Symphony Orchestra
Lock in founding member benefits
I’m Nathan Cole, your violin guide
I play as First Associate Concertmaster with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and I’m on the faculty of the Colburn Conservatory. After a degree from the Curtis Institute, I joined the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra and the Chicago Symphony. I’m in my third decade with major orchestras. I’ve also been helping violinists online for 15 years, leading thousands of players through such events as the Violympics, Bach on the Road, the Spring Audition Intensive, and the Summer Bach Retreat.
It’s always bothered me to see players struggling to get through a door that could easily be unlocked with the right key. And as I’ve been blessed with knowledgeable, patient teachers who have given me the right keys over the years, I’ve always wanted to pass them on to others. Since 2001 — when natesviolin.com went live — I’ve been able to do just that, working with violinists I’ve never met in person!
For the last few years, my high-level Virtuoso Master Course has been the laboratory in which I’ve tested strategies and solutions with my most dedicated students. Summer programs, like the Violympics, have demonstrated the power of community paired with repertoire-based challenges. That’s why the Daily Virtuoso is the natural evolution of my teaching, bringing together the best of the VMC and the summer: year-round mentorship as part of a worldwide studio of dedicated violinists.
And as much fulfillment as I get from helping you, I’m taking the Daily Virtuoso journey for myself! By making a multi-year commitment to my growth as an artist, I’ll be in the best position to share only the best and most proven wisdom with you.
Fry Street Quartet, Utah State University
Ready to become a Daily Virtuoso? Here’s how it works:
Quarterly repertoire projects
Each quarter I’ll teach you dream-list repertoire (pieces that are on my dream list, at least!), with weekly video lectures and assignments to break down overwhelming projects into doable action steps.
You can work on all pieces or just one. I’ll provide you with lots of options, and you get to go at your pace.
Monthly live sessions
We have a handful of live sessions every month, including:
- Workouts (technical deep dives)
- Hot seats (feedback on questions and playing from the group)
- Practice squads (meet up with your friends to practice and ask questions in these special sessions led by some of my top students)
Weekly practice plans
Every week, I bring you approximately one hour of new video lessons to help you through our repertoire. You’ll get a written breakdown of practice assignments to accompany those videos.
These practice plans offer you the precise ingredients to design daily practice agendas that fit into your schedule. It’s both structured — so that you’re not wasting precious time and mental energy on figuring out how to use your time — and forgiving, so that there’s no way you can do it “wrong” when making those tough choices about how to use your precious practice minutes each day.
FAQs
…that by joining the Daily Virtuoso, you are entering the greatest online violin community that exists?
My programs are known for their exceptional communities that are all about friendship, collaboration, and mutual support. You’ll be inspired by having so many colleagues who are dedicated to getting better at the violin — and having fun while doing it!
If you participated in the Violympics or the Summer Bach Retreat, you know you can look forward to more of this:
Let’s get going!
The first time the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra went back to the stage, I noticed that the excitement was inviting me to just do the same old thing: overwork and overplay. Instead, I was just letting the tools do the work. I thought, ‘Huh, this is actually sort of easy. I can trust myself to just play the notes and play them well.’ And I wasn’t exhausted anymore.”
Auckland Philharmonia
New to learning violin online?
You’ll be amazed at how effective it can be.
There’s a reason I started making video tutorials in the early days of YouTube. It’s because I wanted violinists everywhere to have access to the best information to solve their problems.
Every time I’ve found a solution to my own technical challenges, I’ve been eager to share it. Why should you have to struggle when there’s an easier way?
My students are spread around the world, are all ages, and come from all backgrounds and walks of life. Even seasoned pros have solved their stickiest technical challenges through my video tutorials:
Are you ready to become a Daily Virtuoso?
Imagine that it’s a year from now.
Take a moment to reflect on how far you’ve come in a year… You realize that now:
- You’ve added several new pieces to your repertoire — and are EAGER to play them for others (and for yourself)…
- You no longer dread a page of passage work, lots of shifts, inconvenient bowings, and awkward double-stops. Now, you have a plan…
- You need less time to prepare for rehearsals and concerts because your technique shows up for you in a way it never has before…
- You’re setting your sights on music and playing opportunities that you NEVER would have dreamed of before…
- You’ve already taken auditions and playing opportunities in the last 12 months that you previously would have avoided at all costs…
- You’re embarking on musical collaborations that excite you (perhaps even with some of your Daily Virtuoso friends)…
- Your students are thriving and progressing faster than ever before…and they can tell that you have a new sparkle in your eye when you talk about the violin…
…And more. The possibilities are endless when you allow yourself to become the musician you’ve always wanted to be, by claiming the music you’ve always loved as yours.
So why wait another year to change your violin life?
I’ve realized I never want to stop improving on the violin.”
If you join the Daily Virtuoso before the end of 2023…
You are eligible for Founding Member pricing…which you will lock in for life!
That’s right: the Daily Virtuoso is not a one-time event.
This experience is my new “studio” and it represents an ongoing commitment I am making to teach the great violin repertoire to my students over the years to come.
It also represents my commitment to my own growth as a violinist; I want to prioritize spending time with the music I love. Let’s do it together!
Lock in founding member benefits
If you discover that The Daily Virtuoso is not for you, no worries. You have 14 days from your initial payment date to cancel your membership and receive a refund, no questions asked. In subsequent years, you’ll have this same 14-day window to change your mind at the start of each annual billing cycle. If you’re paying monthly, you can cancel anytime.
Settle or reach higher?
Whether you’re a professional musician or a dedicated hobbyist, if you’ve made it down this far, I know that you’ve devoted years or decades of your life to the violin.
It’s so easy to convince ourselves to settle for where we are now. What if we set our sights higher, on something we *really* want, and end up feeling disappointed and embarrassed?
I’ve been there, believe me. I know how easy it is to lose sight of the great parts of playing the violin. Whether you…
- Are exhausted teaching 30 hours a week
- Rely on freelance work and feel like you can never say no to a gig
- Feel your stomach turn as you walk into an orchestra rehearsal and see your grouchy colleagues (who don’t seem to bother with practicing anymore)
- Are tired of friends and family asking, “Oh, are you still doing the violin thing?”
So many forces — especially in the professional music world, let me tell you — can drag us down, tempt us to phone it in, and make us question our life choices. But together we can create a different experience, centered on our shared love for and commitment to playing our favorite instrument — the violin!
You’ve already done the hardest part, which is just getting started. And you’ve stuck with it and made it this far!
What if this chapter of your violin life is still just the beginning of what is possible for you?
What would happen if you believed that some of your greatest violin moments lie ahead of you, and all you had to do was start relating to your daily practice rhythm a little differently?
If you’re ready to find out, I hope you’ll join me in the Daily Virtuoso.
