Katharine Rapoport

With all of its different parts and its beautiful, delicate-looking body, the violin can feel a bit intimidating at first. This Cheat Sheet helps you get to know your instrument by introducing the most important parts of your violin, provides some easy steps to keep it in tip-top condition, and takes you through the process of taking the violin out of its case for the very first time.

Once you feel you have developed your skills to a comfortable level on the violin, you’re ready to move on to trying your left hand in different positions along the neck. Position refers to the place where your hand goes on the neck of the violin in order to play the notes. Playing in third position Playing in third position is violinists’ second favorite thing to do (after first position)!

A good time to start on vibrato is when your violin hold, bow hold, left-hand balance, and some shifting skills are comfortable and working well. Although it may seem almost magical when you see and hear a player making a beautiful vibrato, the approach to vibrato is logical and involves some step-by-step preparation.

One piece of gear that you can change up with relative ease is your violin bow. Upgrading a bow is much more reasonable in cost than buying a fancier violin, and it can make a significant difference to your sound quality and your playing experience. When you try out a few bows, you immediately realize that there’s a considerable difference between one stick and another in terms of weight, balance, and the feel of the frog in your hand.

Playing sad music might make violinists feel like the weight of the world rests on their shoulders, but a good, comfortable shoulder rest can give some much needed support without that heavy feeling. A shoulder rest is a bracket or cushion that fits onto the back of the violin and helps the player to support the instrument.

Playing three notes in a bow is just like playing two notes in a bow on the violin; you just fit in one more note. The big difference involves dividing your bow length (well, just the horsehair bit, really) into three parts when you try the preliminary stopped versions, until you feel in control. This is what you see on the music when three-note slurs are coming up.

You know that tuning your violin is something you need to do, but what exactly does it mean? The word tuning refers to adjusting the strings of the violin to their proper pitches. All sorts of factors can affect the pitch of each string — temperature and humidity changes, drafts, playing loud music where the bow pushes heavily on the string — so you need to know how to tune effectively, right from the start.

If you feel good about your skills, you’re ready to move on to trying your left hand in different positions along the neck of the violin. Position is the name for the place where your hand goes on the neck of the violin in order to play the notes. Finding first position First position is the name for the basic left hand position violinists start with and use the most.