Scales don’t have to be boring! I spent a whole month doing a different approach to scales every day, and posting the details. Not only did it keep things interesting -- it also brought more life to all of my practicing and playing.
or… WHY speed, weight, and contact point matter. Have you ever wondered how exactly your violin bow makes the strings vibrate? Why does the bow sometimes get a beautiful sound, and sometimes a horrifying sound? And why are speed, weight, and contact point so crucial to getting a good sound? The answer is actually pretty straightforward.
The large-scale requiems seem to get all the attention, but what about other, smaller-scale works that help us through times of loss, grief, and death? Here’s a Top 10 List (plus several honorable mentions) of elegies and other music of mourning for solo strings and chamber ensembles.
Vibrato is something a lot of developing violinists struggle with. It seems so effortless when done well, but it can sure feel like a lot of work to develop. Some violinists claim it can’t be taught – each violinist just has to figure it out. Some teach it by going into great detail about every aspect of arm vibrato, wrist vibrato, finger vibrato, width, and speed ... not to mention finger pressure, finger angle, thumb placement, and more. The truth is probably somewhere in between.
or… WHY speed, weight, and contact point matter. Have you ever wondered how exactly your violin bow makes the strings vibrate? Why does the bow sometimes get a beautiful sound, and sometimes a horrifying sound? And why are speed, weight, and contact point so crucial to getting a good sound? The answer is actually pretty straightforward.
Every good violin teacher encourages their students to keep a relaxed left thumb, which gently counter-balances the action of the fingers. And every good violin student takes this to heart, trying to keep it relaxed. But what if it won’t give up its grip? What if it takes all of your attention to get it to relax ... but as soon as you focus on something else it clamps down again? The cause might lie elsewhere.
On Feb 2 he would have been 146 years old, the timelessly suave Viennese violinist who epitomized the sound of violin playing a century ago. Who “discovered” previously unknown compositions from Tartini, Couperin, and Pugnani. And who performed the most epic, perfectly crafted slide in recorded history.
Forty years ago, the soul that represented a summer breeze of lyricism in 20th Century classical music left this world. On January 23, 1981, Samuel Barber died. In a century of fragmented styles – some austere, some pandering, and some destined to be repurposed in horror movie soundtracks – Barber’s style remained solidly in touch with a lyrical core and grounded in the human heart.
We all have them: the “skyscraper” passages. The imposing technical passages that seem inscrutable, and maybe impossible. From the sidewalk in front of an actual skyscraper, it seems dizzyingly high. How could someone even build something so high?! And staring at a tricky passage on the page, it can be hard to even imagine how something so difficult could ever be performed. But with the right approach, there’s always a way.
