As we have seen here we have to be sure that our finger remains in position during the vibrato movements. The finger must not leave its position as it is the case during shifts.
But nevertheless we have to oscillate our tone.
The solution is pretty easy: We let the finger roll on its tip, like a ball on the string. Through this we leave it in position and oscillate simultaneously.
It is most important that our hand position is correct, the wrist must not be bent in any way and the thumb has to be relaxed opposite the first finger. It should look like this:
In this post we’ll limit to the arm vibrato. We perform a movement as if we want to shift downward, but just a tiny bit, perhaps a quarter tone or even less, followed by a “shift” upward, about a quarter tone higher than our first tone and down again.
The result is a chain of small shifts up and downward. There we have our sine wave again. The small shifts oscillate around the mean tone in the middle, thus creating the desired vibrating effect.
The only difference between the vibrato and ordinary shifts, apart from the size, is the fact that the finger doesn’t leave its position and is rolling over the tip instead.
When we perform our “shift” downward it should result in something like this:
I’ve exaggerated a little bit for clarification, but basically that’s the movement we need. The arm kind of pulls down the finger.
The subsequent shift upward pulls the finger in the opposite direction, we roll over our fingertip without leaving the present position and we should end up like this:
By repeating this movements up und downward while we increase speed we get our first vibrato.
But keep in mind: We have to be relaxed. The fingers and the arm must not create any tension, otherwise we would spoil the whole movement.
Congratulations – you’ve done your first vibrato!
In the next post we’ll have a look into the hand vibrato.
{ 3 trackbacks }
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
One of the challenges for me is keeping the thumb from sliding around (especially in the winter when my skin tends to get dry) while rocking the fingers. I’ve tried using rosin on my thumb to get some friction. Is this a bad idea? You also show the pad of your thumb under the violin neck. Is this your normal playing position? I generally have a bent thumb that comes up the side of the neck with the thumb tip peaking above the top of the fingerboard.