People ask me pretty often what is the best way to adjust the shoulder rest. In this article I’ll try to shed light upon this topic.
Although there are several manufacturers of shoulder rests the systems resemble each other frequently. I did the photos with the Kun Voce.
We attach the rest in a neutral position:
The shoulder rest should be bent around our body. If we attach it the other way round it gets very uncomfortable for the shoulder.
Probably the distance between the two “shoes” or “boots” must be adjusted thus preventing the rest from falling down or dangling around loosely.
Kun rests are adjusted with screws, Wolf rests have a little metal bracket for this purpose.
Next, we put the violin onto our shoulder and see what it feels like.
It’s very important to adjust the correct height of the device. As I wrote here the distance between the bottom of the shoulder rest and the top of the chin rest should match the distance between shoulder and chin or jaw bone. So you might want to change the height of your shoulder rest by using the screw at this side. The other side should be adjusted accordingly.
We should end up like this:
Sometimes our violin hangs like a trumpet. In this case we have to pull the shoulder rest back to improve the support by the sternum:
No matter what you do you should keep three things in mind:
The instrument should be more or less level, you should be able to hold the violin without support of your left hand and, above all, the whole thing should be comfortable, because that’s the reason why we use those shoulder rests.
If you have any comments or questions – just ask!
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Shoulder Rest
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
I am looking for violin shoulder rest for my 10-year-old son.
Now he’s using 3/4 violin. I would like to buy 3/4 to full size shoulder rest. I found that Kun doesn’t have shoulder rest for this range (only 1/2-3/4 and full size) but Wolf does.
However, my son’s teacher recommanded Kun.
Could you compare these two brand to help me make decision?
Sure.
I’ll slide in an extra post tomorrow.