That’s why Green wants to go to Berklee, to develop that musical foundation. And he wants to keep learning secrets from all kinds of violinists, classical and jazz, living and dead—Itzhak Perlman, Stéphane Grappelli, Joe Venuti, and Stuff Smith all are in his iPod. “I try to keep myself well-rounded,” Green says.

And, he points out, even though he’s gotten famous around Texas pretty fast, he’s had to work at it. “I never take time off from practicing,” he says. “If I’m getting ready for something special, like a concert or a competition, I spend four or five hours a day working on it. If I’m just maintaining, I spend two-and-a-half to three hours a day. Bill Dick gives me a bunch of exercises for speed and accuracy, a lot of arpeggios and basic scales, and then sometimes different etudes like the Rode and the Paganini caprices; those help me maintain my technique.

“Before a concert or a competition, we get the guys in the band together and have a rehearsal. We play a couple of hours and run over all our tunes and make sure we know everything and don’t get nervous. Usually in a show I feel a lot more loose than in a competition, because in a show I feel like I have more control over what I’m doing. In competitions I have to follow a more structured pattern.”

So he’s got all the right habits and strategies. Bill Dick repeats that there’s just that one more thing he has to develop.

“He needs theory,” he says. “That’s what’s going to unlock his creative side, and open him up to his own voice and his own music and his own career.”