Free Video Violin Lesson 6

Review Questions

1. Can you place your finger on and name each note on the D and A strings?
2. Are you playing all of your notes with the correct finger, or are you getting lazy and moving your fingers around? Pay attention to where you fingers go!
3. Are you practicing your bow hold/exercises?
4. Are you comfortable with the self-test from lesson 5?

Hello and welcome to Stringsavvy.com Violin Lesson #6! In lesson #5 we learned how to play three popular tunes: Jingle Bells, Old MacDonald, and Twinkle Twinkle. I also asked you to learn 44 and 45 on your own. 45 is especially important because it has you doing some fingerings that you aren’t used to. Everything up to this point has been 99% stepwise, meaning that it either went up one note or down one note. Even when it wasn’t stepwise it only went to an open string.

If you have been practicing your bow hold and exercises, then Congratulations! Today we learn the bow!

Review bow hold:

1. Thumbsup/Thumbsdown
2. Middle Finger across
3. Ring finger on logo
4. Index knuckle on bow
5. Pinky on top

Hand is leaning into the bow, not away from the bow

Bow is a bow HOLD not a bow touch. Don’t be afraid to grip it a little bit.

NO straight fingers, all should be curled in some way or another.

Posture

Stand tall, shoulders back, with your feet about shoulder width apart. Never stand with your two feet together. This not only throws off your balance, but will also cause you both stand and PLAY shyly. Put your violin on your shoulder and place your chin on the chin rest. Now if you are like me and have a taller neck, it may be interest to you to get a shoulder rest. I really enjoy the Kun shoulder rest- its $30 and will last you forever. I LOST two of these growing up before I could ever have the chance to break them! Right now I have one for each of my violins and they have been running strong for over five years, with many more to come I’m sure. You can pick one up on my Amazon store through this link.

Watch your left arm, specifically your elbow and hand. Avoid what us teachers call a pancake; that is when your hand goes flat against the neck, limiting the reach and agility of your fingers. Your wrist should be flush with your shoulder, not bending in any one direction. Obviously don’t let this translate to keeping a stiff arm, you still have to keep a relaxed stance. Your left elbow should be under your violin, and not up against your body. If I do this, what happens to my posture? In addition, gravity will pull my bow down the strings over the fingerboard versus over the F holes where we can get the most tone.

Learn how to set up a shoulder rest!

Funny story:

I once had a parent yell at me for starting their child with a shoulder rest without asking them first! This was because they didn’t understand why they were paying $30 for a “wavy stick.” The next week they showed up with one that they picked up for $14 dollars, some brand I had never heard of. They were a little bit direct and rude in how they presented their find.

Well, I had to hold back the chuckles at the end of the lesson when I telling them that their “budget” shoulder rest had broken in half mid-lesson while on their child’s shoulder! Now they were set back $45 instead of $30 as they bought the Kun I had recommended the previous week. If only they had listened to the teacher!

Starting Position - The Box:

Approximately in the middle of the bow, the bow, arm and violin creates a box. It is here that I am parallel with the bridge. Now I want to maintain that wherever I am. This is achieved through flexibility in the wrist. You’ll see as I bow down, my wrist isn’t staying straight, but bending to maintain integrity of the bow. My elbow also stays still while I come down. As I come back up to the middle I form a box again. Now moving up, my elbow comes forward just enough facilitate my arm and bow to reach the frog.

A great violin player is comfortable with all parts of the bow, and so what better way to learn than to practice each of these together, and then put them together?

Changing Strings

When switching from string to string, we want a clean change. In order for that to happen at higher speeds, we first need to practice that through a much slower and mechanical process.

Stop and Set

Go ahead and play an A. Now stop the note and raise your elbow until you see your bow hairs are exclusively on the D string. Once you have finished the motion, then move your bow and play D. Once more, stop the bow and lower your elbow until the hairs are only on the A string. Set it there. Now you can play A. While everyone has a different name for it, the stop and set method is something that was and probably still is practiced by all the pros, allowing them to maintain very clean changes.

Bow Lift

The bow lift is used to reset the bow and can be used either for the actual physical need to reset the bow, or simply to mark the end of a musical phrase. Here we are using it to reset the bow. If you look in #52, A Strand of D ‘N’ A, the last note is a down bow followed by a repeat leading us back to another down bow. If we just played a down bow chances are we won’t have enough bow to play a second downbow, and we lift and reset to give ourselves that bow. Be sure to SET the bow, and not throw it down!

Review:

1. Posture
   1. Stand up tall
   2. Shoulders back
   3. Feet shoulder length apart
2. Get a shoulder rest
   1. Learn how to set up a shoulder rest!
3. No pancakes!
   1. Watch your left elbow
4. The Box
   1. Starting position for your middle point
   2. The wrist bends to keep a straight bow
   3. When moving up towards the frog, the elbow comes forward just enough to help reach
5. Changing Strings
   1. Stop and Set
6. Bow Lift
7. Reset the bow, not rethrow the bow.

Vocabulary

Acro - Play with the bow on the strings

Assignment