In Part 2 we had a look at the theoretical aspects of shifts. Today we’ll see an example of how to perform a shift correctly.
Let’s start with some photos.
Here we have a picture of the left hand in the first position:
The thumb is more or less opposite to the first finger, the wrist forms a straight line.
Now we move into the third position:
The entire hand has moved. The thumb is still in position, the wrist line hasn’t changed.
You often see this sort of violin hold:
The wrist doesn’t form a straight line and the thumb is too low. The wrist prevents the hand from getting much higher than the second position because it collides with the violin body. The thumb sitting too low makes it very difficult for the fourth finger to hit the right tone.
Don’t try this at home! 
OK, before we start our first shifts we need some more basics.
We never shift up or downwards just “somehow”. We always try to slide along the string like a sleigh in the snow. Or like a curtain along a curtain-rod.
We generally take the last finger before the shift to slide on. There is one exception for shifts upwards, but we’ll look at this later.
Here is an example of a shift:
If we perform our movement correctly we “slide” on our last finger before the shift. That’s the first finger. We end up in the third position because the c with the fourth finger has to be played in the third position. We go up on the first finger to the g and simply drop our fourth finger. If we did it well we hit the c.
Why do we perform our shifts like this? Why don’t we just go up with the hand directly to the c?
The big advantage of this technique is the resulting hand position. If we just jump up chances are good we end up with a cramped hand. Shifting with the last finger we played guarantees a good hand position even after the shift.
Also important: Always make this sliding movement on the old bow. We start with a down-bow, do our shift and finally change to up-bow.
At the beginning you will hear those shifts quite clearly. That’s absolutely normal and even intended. So you can check everything if you’re doing it correctly. Later on we’ll conceal our shifts.
We do this by reducing the bow speed to a near-stop during the shift. Never hide your shifts by jumping up faster! Intonation would suffer.
Our shift downwards in bar 2 is performed accordingly. We slide on our last finger before the shift – that’s the second finger – to our target position. That’s the first position again. We end up with the second finger on the f and simply play the first finger e on the up-bow.
Et voilà – we played our first shifts.
It should look like this:
Please note: Those “intermediate” tones don’t necessarily have to be eighth notes. It’s just a limitation of my freeware music notation software. But it’s important that they are played at all.
In the next part we’ll have a look at Sevcik’s shifting exercises that train these movements specifically.
Have fun practicing – and if you have any questions, drop me a line, I’ll try to answer them in the next post.
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Left Hand, Shifting, Violin Lessons
