Violin For Dummies
Overview
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. Watch yourself blossom into a musician with tips on technique and style. When you’re ready to go further, this book will help you find the people and resources that can help you get just a little closer to virtuoso!
Your own private lessons are right inside this book, with the included online video and
audio instruction, plus recordings that will help you develop your “ear.” This book takes the guesswork out of learning an instrument, so you’ll be ready to join the band when the time comes!
- Choose a violin and learn the basics of holding the instrument and playing notes
- Start reading music with this fast-and-easy introduction to musical notation
- Improve your musicianship and start to play in groups
- Explore different music styles and legendary violin composers
The violin is a beautiful thing—adding melody everywhere from orchestras to folk and pop tunes. With Violin For Dummies, you can make the music your own, even if you’re a total music beginner.
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About The Author
Katharine Rapoport is an accomplished violinist and violist who taught violin, viola, and chamber music at the University of Toronto for over 25 years. In addition to authoring teaching manuals and syllabi—as well as articles for Strad Magazine —she has performed live in Canada, the USA, and across Europe.
Sample Chapters
violin for dummies
CHEAT SHEET
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.
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Violin & Fiddle
Now that you’re up and running with your violin (just don’t sprint too fast — you might drop it!), you can look beyond traditional teaching out into the big, wide world.
Subscribe to a magazine
A fun and easy way to keep up‐to‐date on musical topics is by subscribing to a magazine, where there’s certainly plenty of info to interest you.
Finding a violin teacher to work with is a great step to enjoy some helpful feedback on your practicing. A whole lot of teachers are out there. Finding the right teacher for you involves a combination of finding someone who is knowledgeable and having a good dose of the right chemistry — you and your teacher need to get along well and to enjoy your time together too.
Violinists who have changed the face of musical history arrive on this planet only every now and then. Here are ten outstanding violinists who have made special and unique contributions to music.
Niccolò Paganini (1782–1840)
Famous for spectacular feats of all kinds on the violin — including supposedly sawing through two or three of his four strings so that he’d be left playing on only one or two strings — Paganini’s “24 Caprices” for solo violin still represent the pinnacle of violin virtuosity.
Violin & Fiddle
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.
Violin & Fiddle
Here are four useful exercises to put your string-crossing skills into action on the violin. It may feel awkward at first, but keep practicing. These exercises give you a workout involving changing to higher strings.
When you first try the moves, you can stop the bow gently after the last note of the measure, and then roll your arm and bow to the next level.
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.
When it comes to the violin, you need to have certain accessories, while other accoutrements aren’t necessary but may be really cool to own. How do you separate what you need from what you want?
Necessities
A whole lot of accessories are available on the market to keep your violin healthy and to make your practice time easier and more fun.
More than 70 parts go into making a complete violin. This hourglass-shaped string instrument consists of several basic parts, including the 21 important elements explained here.
Back: One of the most important parts of the violin, for both aesthetic and acoustic properties. The back of the violin can be made of one or two pieces, and it’s arched for strength and tone power.
If you’re a rocker at heart, or you dig other nonclassical styles, you may find the sound you’re looking for in electric, or electronic, violins. Folk, fiddle, country, and rock players use these violins to get power and projection, along with a more strident tone that can hold its own against the guitars and percussion.
Violin & Fiddle
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.
Violin & Fiddle
Two violin playing styles to explore are Klezmer and Baroque. The name klezmer is taken from a Yiddish word meaning musician or musical instrument, and most of the klezmer music is intended for dancing.
Klezmer music originates from long ago in the Jewish schtetls of Eastern Europe, where musicians played a big part in daily life.
Violin & Fiddle
Imagine you are a bird and the upper parts of your arms are wings. Go on, give a little flap, or do your best imitation of a chicken dance! What does a bird impersonation have to do with playing the violin? Well, when you cross over to another string with your bow, your upper arm changes levels, just like a bird flapping its wings.
Violin & Fiddle
Keeping your chin and jaw clear of the top of the violin means less damping of sound and less damage to the varnish from the heat and sweat of your chin. (You can see patches of lighter or darker wood on the tops of old violins where the players’ chins used to rest. Modern violin makers sometimes imitate this look when building new instruments so that the violins look “antiqued.
Violin & Fiddle
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.
Violin & Fiddle
If gravity didn’t exist, there wouldn’t be problems with the violin hold. Violins would just float around, and you would be able to play lightly on a lovely Stradivarius as it wafted by. However, the reality is that you do have to support your violin in the most practical and comfortable way possible, which can be tricky.
Violin & Fiddle
When you’re actually playing the violin, you’re most comfortable when your left hand forms and holds a well lined‐up frame. Holding your left hand correctly is important to achieve the right sound. Here’s how to do it:
Stand up and hold your violin across your waist just like a guitar, with the violin’s neck cradled in your left hand.
Violin & Fiddle
When you meet some double stops in music, as a violinist, you need to be comfortable going from playing on a single string to playing on two strings at once— and then back again. The exercises below take you through the stages for making a smooth transition between strings.
With separate bows
One situation you encounter often in double stops is switching from one string to two strings (and then back to one again) just as you change bow direction.
Violin & Fiddle
Crossing to different strings on the violin with your left-hand fingers is a bit like steering a boat, because your left arm works like a rudder to bring your fingers over the relevant string. The movement, called arm steering, or elbow steering, is very subtle and keeps your left hand working well when you need to cross strings.
Violinists always need to plan out their bow distribution so that they make the best possible use of those 24 inches or so of horsehair. Following are the most useful ways of dividing the bow so that you can get the sound you want.
Deciding how much of the violin bow to use on a note or measure
If a violinist runs out of bow, the sound simply disappears — or the bow makes a very peculiar little crunchy sound while the player tries desperately to keep bowing, using the last inch of bow.
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.
Violin & Fiddle
Sometimes, composers write double stops where the finger needs to play on the lower string of the violin, while the upper note is an open string. These double stops may feel like taking your fingers to ballet or tap dancing classes.
When your finger is playing on the lower string, it has to land a little more steeply, on tiptoe, as it were, to keep the upper string open and clear-sounding.
Violin & Fiddle
You will want to have a firm grasp on the different types of shifts to be a successful violinist. The intermediate-note shifts and finger-substitution shifts will help you become a well-rounded musician.
Intermediate-note shifts
Another type of shift involves using an intermediate note, which is an extra note that a player creates very discreetly to help make shifting smooth in two particular instances:
When you’re shifting up from a lower-numbered finger to a highernumbered finger
When you’re shifting down from a higher-numbered finger to a lower-numbered finger
A careful sequence of actions conceals the sound of the slide very discreetly so that the actual notes of the music are clear to the listener.
Major chords are a great starting place for beginning violinists. Budding rock stars playing in their parents’ garages may not have formal musical training, but they still manage to make music— or something pretty close, anyway. Beginners create harmony by very simple means, using chords known as primary (or principal) triads.
Violin & Fiddle
Once you know some basic moves on the violin, you need to know how to find the positions you need to play music of all kinds. Pick up your bow, and away you go!
Open-string shifts
An open-string shift is a sneaky little number where your left hand shifts (the most shifty shift!) while your bow— which you have now picked up again— is bowing an open string.
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.
Every time you play the preparatory slur where you stop the violin bow between notes, that’s slurred staccato! The stroke is like a slur because the bow continues in the same direction for the next note, but it’s like staccato because the sound stops briefly between notes to get a little separation. Here, you see what signs indicate slurred staccato on the page.
Violin & Fiddle
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.
Violin & Fiddle
Often at the very end of a piece, the composer asks for an even richer sound from violins by writing three and four notes to be played at once (or as close as possible to at once), which means you’re actually playing chords on your violin. You use your bow in special ways to make these chords sound as clear as a bell.
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.
Violin & Fiddle
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.
Violin & Fiddle
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)!
Violin & Fiddle
Pizzicato sounds like something delicious to order in an Italian restaurant, but it’s actually a technique that can make your violin sound a bit like a harp or a guitar — you pluck the strings. You can use the pizzicato technique to allow you to concentrate on placing your left‐hand fingers on their spots without having to think about using the bow at the same time.
Taking the violin out of its case (and putting it away again safely) is a skill; mastering the art ensures that your instrument will have a long and happy life. To open the case, follow these steps:
Place the violin case on a stable, flat surface, such as a table or a sofa, with the lid facing the ceiling, and then turn the latch-and-handle side to face you.
Violin & Fiddle
When you’re used to playing, your fingers know instinctively where to land on the strings to get the right notes. But at first, they may need some pilot training. Don’t worry; most violinists’ hands are a little tentative when feeling their way around the fingerboard for the first time. After all, your view of the fingerboard when you’re in playing position is telescopic (which is kind of weird), and violins don’t have frets for guidance like guitars do.
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.
Violin & Fiddle
Meter is the rhythm and beats of a song, and it’s indicated by the time signature: those numbers written on the music staff at the start of a piece of music. The top number tells you how many beats are in a measure, and the bottom number tells you which kind of note equals a beat. If you can feel the beat, you can get a good grip on the musical flow of a song.
These bowings may be off-the-string, with the bow lifting off (or even bouncing off) the violin string between strokes, but they’re not off-the-wall! The following introduces you to some off-the-string bowings that just drop in or make flying visits to your strings.
Brush stroke
You smile when you play the violin because playing music is fun!
Violins are made of natural materials that are sensitive to temperature and humidity changes. Follow these tips to help your violin have a long and happy life:
Keep your violin at about room temperature.
Store the case away from high-traffic areas so that it doesn’t get knocked around.
Always close and latch the case when you finish playing, to protect your violin from falls.
Preparing the bow and fingers for slurs means coordinating certain techniques on the violin. This slurring exercise may remind you of a country dance, where the caller first walks you through all the steps slowly and separately, before the band strikes up and you whirl into action.
Slurring two notes in one bow stroke is easy if you work your way through this preliminary exercise below, on your A string.
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.
Violin & Fiddle
No matter how much you baby your violin, it still goes out of tune. And sometimes the pegs and fine tuners stubbornly refuse to do their job. Here are some of the most common problems you face, as well as the solutions.
Peg problems
Sometimes pegs are hard to turn or don’t stay firmly in place. Pegs are typically made from harder wood than the main body of the violin, so the pegs expand and contract at different rates with natural heat and humidity changes.
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.
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.
A beginner violinist eventually becomes best buddies with the pegs and fine tuners, but at first, using them feels somewhat strange, and they don’t always behave perfectly. The following shows you how to manage pegs and fine tuners. Consider doing some trial runs with the pegs and fine tuners before you actually start tuning to specific notes, so that you get a feel for the process without the pressure of doing it precisely right away.
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