How to Play the Violin Like a Pro
Have you found that no matter what you do you just can’t sound like a pro on the violin. Do you find that you’re just unable to play with a mature sound and you don’t know what to fix? Well that’s what we’re going to address in this blog post.
Foundation
The first step is to check your foundation. Think about it, do you see professional violinists play with a droopy violin, a horrible bow hold, and a horrible left hand? No! The reason why is because we want to be set up ergonomically.
Professional violinists play how many hours upon a day in rehearsals and concerts and practicing for a lifetime. I’ve spent a lifetime on the violin. If I played the violin not ergonomically correct, I would be in a world of pain right now. So inspect your foundation.
Take the time to learn correctly set your foundation in place and your violin journey is going to be a lot easier.
So you may ask, “Okay, so what is the foundation?” Foundation is a good violin hold and a good bow hold, making sure that you’re able to hold the violin without any tension. We want to play as relaxed as possible so investigate your foundation.
Play in tune
Intonation is playing in tune. Now we’re not robots. We’re not machines and even the best violinists do play an occasional note out of tune; however, you want to make sure that you strive every single second to play in tune.
How do you fix your intonation? With scales! Make sure you practice your scales every day and listen to every single pitch. Play scales slowly. If you hear anything out of tune, start from the note before and fix the note that was out of tune from the note before.
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.
There is one simple commonality in all levels of violinists from newbie to professional – Developing Gorgeous Tone. Improve your violin tone today and beyond with Gorgeous Violin Tone Academy. 12 weeks of tonal study bliss.
Relaxed left hand
If your left hand is tense, you’re not going to be able to move around the instrument very easily. You’re not going to be able to play quickly and you’re also not going to be able to shift easily and effortlessly.
Vibrato
and then vibrato… It’s imperative to have a healthy vibrato to sound like a professional violinist.
If your vibrato isn’t healthy, it’s going to really affect your sound so it doesn’t sound mature. There are two different forms of vibrato. We have an arm vibrato and a hand vibrato. We can have narrow vibrato and a wide vibrato but no matter what vibrato you’re using, you want to make sure that it is healthy.
What I mean by healthy is that it’s not tense and that it’s not what I call a tension vibrato.
Bow speed
To sound like a pro you need to vary up your bow speed. You want to explore all parts of the bow and really investigate both speed.
How to practice bow speed? Scales!
- Take any scale and just work out playing frog to tip with varying speeds of bow. Take any scale and practice playing really fast bows.
- Explore playing slow to fast.
Know your violin positions
When you are able to play outside of first position, you have more opportunities to explore different colors on the violin. Playing in position and adding vibrato with bow speed really influences your tone.
Bow distribution
What is bow distribution? Bow distribution is when you think about where exactly you’re going to be, what part of the bow and in what part of your piece.
Within your musical phrases, you want to know exactly where you’re going to be at all times in the bow. Perhaps you want to be at the frog. You want to always know where you’re going to be in the bow. Are you going to be in the middle?
Where are you going to travel?
Where are you going to use more speed in order to get to where you need to be?
When you talk to somebody, you talk in phrases. You talk in sentences. You may be asking a question. You may be declaring something.
The same is with music. You want to know where your musical phrases are.
If we play music like a professor at a university that’s in one of the most boring classes and he talks monotone all the time, you find that the students are falling asleep.
It’s the same with music. If we played like a boring professor, you know, actually it could be kind of interesting but we could take that same idea and make it more interesting if you add those dramatic dynamics. That way your audience will be enthralled, encapsulated and won’t be able to take their attention away from you because you’re grabbing it with the way you are playing!
Bow finesse
Next is finesse within your bow strokes. Think about how you end your phrases. Allow yourself that decrescendo at the ends of the phrases, if it does call for a decrescendo. Add finesse to the end of the bow stroke and not end with stopping the brakes. In general you want to end with really nice finesse on your phrases.
Don’t be afraid of making mistakes
You want to play with confidence. If you play with fear, it’s going to come across and your audience is going to know you’re playing with fear. They will think this person’s a little nervous. Stand with confidence. Hold your violin with confidence. Don’t be afraid of making mistakes and play with confidence.
Make sure that you enjoy yourself and release any blockages that’s stopping you from feeling free and expressing yourself on the violin. Take the time to play for others because playing for others you’re going to learn how you are in those specific situations.
Think about it. Professional violinists play for others all the time, right? So, if you want to play like a professional violinist, don’t keep practicing in your practice room. Get out there and share your talents your gifts and let other people feel the happiness and love that you have and inspire them to feel better.
Keep educating yourself
The violin is a lifetime process. Study with a teacher. Work with online programs. Get even more tips on how you can sound like a pro with my Gorgeous Tone Academy. 12 weeks of tonal studies, training videos, live workshops and more. Discover more here.
I’ll see you there.
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