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Articles & Books From Katharine Rapoport
Cheat Sheet / Updated 02-16-2022
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.
Take a (violin) bow and let your inner musician shine! You don’t have to be a genius to start fiddling around! Violin For Dummies helps budding violinists of all ages begin to play. If you’ve never read a note of music, this book will show you how to turn those little black dots into beautiful notes. Start slow as you learn how to hold the instrument, use the bow, finger notes, and play in tune.
Article / Updated 03-26-2016
After getting down the basics on playing the violin, focus on making your moves as effortless and clear-sounding as possible so that you gain a sense that they really belong to you. Get to this next level of playing with productive practice sessions. Here are some ideas for making your practice time as engaging as possible.
Article / Updated 03-26-2016
A regular dominant chord on the violin is a triad (which is a fancy name for a three-note chord) formed on the dominant note (V) of any scale. A dominant 7th makes an even richer sound, using the same triad plus one more note: the seventh note above the dominant on which the chord begins.
You form a dominant 7th chord by adding a seventh interval on top of the third and fifth you already have on a dominant chord.
Article / Updated 03-26-2016
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.
Article / Updated 03-26-2016
Trills are great fun to play on the violin. A trill, which involves a rapid alternation between the printed note and the next note above it, often happens near the end of a phrase or movement of music. Trills are musical ornaments, something like the glittery decorations on wedding cakes. A trill really draws the listener’s attention to a particular note.
Article / Updated 03-26-2016
Pizzicato is almost always a right-hand technique on the violin and is a good way to add variety to your playing. Here are some nifty pizzicato techniques to complete your knowledge of this plucky little sound.
Unless a piece of music uses only pizzicato throughout, chances are that you need to play some plucked notes right in the middle of other bowed notes.
Article / Updated 03-26-2016
The most satisfaction you can have when playing the violin is when you know you’re getting the best-possible sound from your instrument. Now is a great time to take the violin you inherited from Uncle George’s attic to the string shop and make sure of the following elements:
The sound post is safely wedged in the proper spot inside the violin.
Article / Updated 03-26-2016
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.
Article / Updated 03-26-2016
Just as works of art, literature, and architecture have style features that tell us a lot about when and where they were created, so does the harmony we hear in music. People can often tell their Beethoven from their Bartok, but may not know why they sound so different. Here are four main historical styles you’ll want to recognize and a quick primer on how to listen for the tell-tale signs in the sounds:
Classical: Although people often refer to “Classical” music as a general term, to contrast it with pop and rock, in fact Classical is a term that musicians use to refer to music composed around 1750–1830.
