I'm an amateur hobbyist at playing the violin and it's along time since gradeschool when I had a teacher for a year or two. I took it up on my own three years ago and have ever since never really found a restful, natural way to play.

The violin always wants to fall off my shoulder producing great tension trying to keep it in place with the shoulder and head and no matter how much I try, even at periods when I practice 1½ - 2 hours a day specifically trying to alter my posture I just can't find a way in which my body isn't totally inapt to wield the instrument, purely ergonomically speaking.

I'm quite tall (193) and with long arms and broad shoulders maybe the place of my shoulder which holds up the instrument comes too far away from my head? But I mean it can't be more than a few centimeters difference from the average body.. maybe my long arms though... maybe my shoulder has no clear restingplace for the violin but just a shape it will inevitably fall off. Maybe my clavicle it's that my claviclebone and the muscle connecting to the neck are too pointy so there's no plateau for the violin to rest upon?

For me it's a mystery how people can feel adapted to the instrument after a few years, as natural to their body as playing a piano may be. Atleast they smile and don't grin and frown when they play.. I've spent over three years, at times practicing over an hour a day, and still feel as if I play it like riding a bike with a freely swivelling sadle excerting great effort to hold it in place and still loosen my arms to bow and apply vibrato etc.

When I look around at chinrests and shoulder-supporters they all look like basically the same thing so I have been doubtful that that would be my problem. Do people usually need to find their own type of chinrest and shoulder-supporter?

If I try to analyse the ergonomic problem with playing my violin maybe I'd like the chinrest to be positioned halfway out from the base of the violin.. but I have no clue, I've never seen such a configuration.

It feels like I'd want to screw the shoulder rest in place on my shoulder heh.

(trying to save money to get some help directly from a teacher but I have like no surplus income now (student))..

You might try the shoulder rest called forte-secondo made by Willy Wolf out of Holland. It has the ability to be adjusted more than any other shoulder rest that I have tried.

thank you for your reply. it seems that's the shoulder rest I'm using. I've wanted to make it more concave but it'd get very low and also the metal axis on the underside would reach the violin and scrape the wood (such a crazy construction!)..
anyhow, you may have given me an idea.. I'll try sawing off the axis so it doesn't reach to the midle and put something in between the chinrest-foot and the violin to raise that to compensate the lower shoulder rest (my neck feels a bit too long as it is).

thanks for the replies!
I went to a few stores the other day and tried the tallest kun-rest but it was quite low but then in the next store they showed me that the wolf-rest had smaller screws within the screws which I had never noticed! x¨D they gave me some plastic collars for the smaller screws so I could screw them in place and I sawed off the axis and shaped the rest so now it's very comfortable!

I now know where I want the violin on my shoulder and can now relate to the fitness of the chin rest.

I also bought synthetic core strings as I was told you hardly use steel strings for classical playing (which felt like the proving of something I'd felt all along allthough my local musicstore persistently recommended prim steel strings...)

Now considering my prim steel strings feels like a joke. I don't have to press down so hard that I occasionally strain my fingerjoints when applying vibrato just to reach the fingerboard.
And losing that need for excessive force along with the raising and shaping of the wolf-rest I can relax alot more than before!

On a side-note switching to non-steel strings made the depth of the playing of the instrument more than double and it feels like I'm suddenly playing the same instrument that I've seen and heard from classical violin performances.
I can better relate to the need for various kinds of technique that never seemed to apply to my instrument before.
And with that I further realize how much more I need to learn ;¨)

Hope another tall, long-necked/shouldered hobbyist with stupidly hard steel strings may find this post useful :¨)