How to Make the Best Tone & Sound on the Violin
Ever wonder how to make the best tone & sound on the violin? Are you searching for tips to improve your tone? You are in the right place. In this blog post, we’re going to get all into tone on the violin.
Everybody wants to play with gorgeous tone, right? Nobody wants to sound horrible on the violin. No matter if you’re a beginner, intermediate. newbie, professional, advanced, whatever level you’re at, achieving gorgeous tone is the basic desire for every violinist.
You don’t want to sound horrible.
Foundation directly influences violin tone
If you don’t have a proper foundation, you’re not going to be able to pull out the best tone that is possible for you on the violin.
If there’s any tension in your body, doesn’t matter where it is in your shoulder, in your neck, in your wrist, in your fingers, in your hand, you’re not going to pull out the best tone possible.
In order to improve your violin tone, the first place to inspect is your foundation. You want to make sure you have a relaxed and secure violin hold with a chin rest that is suitable for you. You should be able to hold the violin without your left hand and be able talk and walk around the room, all the time feeling really comfortable.
I would suggest using a shoulder rest if you find that you need to have a little bit more height.
You also need to feel that your left hand is able to move freely around. We don’t want it to be gripping or have any type of tension here, nice and free left hand.
We also need to have a super relaxed bow hold. Any tension in the bow hold will also affect the tone. The more relaxed you can play your violin without tension, the better your tone is going to be.
Now, you may find okay, yeah I’m okay, I feel like I’m relaxed but when you get into a performance setting, you start to tense up and yes that will affect your tone then as well.
So you do want to keep relaxed at all times, even in performance settings as much as possible.
How many times have you been dissatisfied with your tone on the violin?
You want to sound better but you don’t know where to start. You are serious about transforming your violin tone and know deep down all you are missing is proper training.
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Contact Point
You may have heard the words contact point before. What exactly is a contact point?
The contact point is where your bow is sitting on the string. Our typical places for contact points are either close to the fingerboard, close to the bridge, or anything in the middle.
Our normal contact point is in the middle of the fingerboard and the bridge.
There are five distinct contact points and I get really into detail in my Gorgeous Tone Academy where I give you tonal exercises to explore different contact points and which contact point is best when.
When we play close to the fingerboard it’s quiet. If we play close to the bridge, then it’s louder. Keep in mind, that it doesn’t matter where you are in your contact point, if you’re playing with a crooked bow it’s going to sound horrible.
Play with straight bows
Always investigate that your bow is straight. The most common place for a crooked bow to occur is on the G string.
There’s a couple different ways you can check your bow that it’s going straight. You can use your eyes and look directly but what I found with teaching over 20 years, is that all violinists are different. Where you see on the violin is actually going to be different than where your teacher sees or if you look in the mirror or if you’re playing in a recording, you’ll have a different perspective.
Do you know if you are able to see that you are playing with straight bows from your eyes directly?
If you are unable to see your straight bows, try the following:
- Compare your bow to the fingerboard that it’s running parallel with the fingerboard.
- Check your bow is running parallel to the bridge.
Perhaps when you use glasses or lenses or without glasses, without lenses, you may find that your perspective changes up a little bit.
Exercise time:
- Practice straight bows, open strings every day, three minutes on each string
- Play in front of a mirror, record yourself and just make sure your bows are truly going straight from frog to tip, and tip to frog.
Bow arm mechanics
Bow arm mechanics directly influence your violin tone. First, you want to make sure that your bow arm is adjusting to the level of the strings. Secondly that your bow arm does not move in an arc but that the movement stems directly from your elbow. An arcing bow arm causes crooked bows.
You want to keep the part of your arm from the shoulder to your elbow completely still and only move from the elbow.
Adjusting to string levels and pulling straight bows are two distinct different motions that we actually use when we’re playing the violin.
Exercise 1:
- Spend three minutes on open strings every day.
- Play with long whole bows making sure that your elbow is on the correct floor.
- For example, Tuesday, three minutes on the A string. Wednesday, three minutes on the D string. Thursday, three minutes on the G string,
- If you’re on the A floor, make sure your elbow stays on that same floor as you’re playing the A string and that you’re not hitting other strings.
- If you find you are hitting other strings, it’s most likely something is going on with your elbow elevator
Exercise 2:
- Practice playing from A to D, E to A and D to G
- Make sure your elbow is on the A floor while you play on the A string and when you go to the D floor, your elbow is on the D floor.
- Be sure to raise your elbow when you go to a lower string
This is the beginning of string crossings of how to make sure your bow arm is in operation with your string crossings. As you get more advanced, we have different techniques for string crossings but this is the basic level.
Energetic flow
Final tip to improve your violin is something that I have realized on my own and from teaching over 20 years is what I call the river in you.
This river is the flow of energy that is occurring when you play.
Think of yourself and your violin as energy and vibration. The strings when we play create a vibration. Within our body, tension acts as a block to this flow.
This flow starts in the back of your neck and goes through your shoulder. It then goes down through the elbow, goes through the wrist, through your fingers and into the bow. From there, it goes into the violin. You want to feel like the violin is actually holding the bow up.
A great way to explore the river in you is as you’re doing those open string exercises, be very mindful not to feel any tension. Be very aware of your body. Ask yourself “Do I feel any tension in my neck, shoulder, elbow?”
If your shoulder’s too tight, you’re going to sound tense. If the flow is stopped by tension in your elbow, you’re going to hear that as well. If the flow is stopped by the tension in your wrist, your wrist will not be flexible and you’re also going to hear it. If your fingers are tense or the index finger is over-dominant, which I find in 99 cases of violinists that I work with, the index finger is naturally over dominant.
An over-dominant index finger also affects the sound.
Pull never push
Always feel that you are pulling the tone out from your violin. We never push into the violin. The word push does not exist in the violin dictionary. No pushing. Never, never push.
Unless you’re playing some super modern pieces where they’re actually asking for some strange sounds, that’s the only time you want to feel like you have to push but otherwise, you always want to feel like you’re pulling the sound out. That’s going to help produce that gorgeous, gorgeous tone if you pull the sound out.
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