Once I read
from a book about violin pedagogy that a famous teacher won’t let his students
to play anything unless they can play good open strings. At first I really
doubt this point. But now I know that it’s nothing over exaggerated.
The first
thing to make the violin sound is to play an open string. This is a motion
concerning the whole part of our body from our shoulder to our back, and from
our shoulder to our 5 fingertips.
Ms. Baker,
our chamber music teacher in APA, told us a story about Mr. Gingold, whom she
met in a master class when she was still a college student. Mr. Gingold drew a
bow for about 5 minutes, with perfect control. I’m not sure he did one up only or
one up and one down bow. But after hearing this story I start to practice open
strings with “super” slow bow, letting the bow going millimeter by millimeter,
and let it sound by its own weight. This helps me to relax my right arm and
shoulder tremendously, and gives me time to feel the balance of the bow at
different fingers. (i.e. When the bow is at the frog, the balance is at the
pinky; while at the tip, the index finger. As the bow goes from one end to the
other, the balance at our fingers changes from out pinky to the index finger gradually.)
Few months
ago I found a very useful method to make an even sound – to play open string
using metronome. Visually divide the bow into number of portions, say 8. Then play
a full bow in 8 beats, counting in exact rhythm, that one beat to a portion. There
can be many varieties in doing this – not only in 8, but can also in 5, 7, 9… Or
to do it in more limited length on the bow, say, just in the lower half of the
bow.
Then, next,
very important, is to change dimension from one to another – i.e. string
crossing. It must be done in exact rhythm. Because without rhythm, one will
lose the sense of time, while timing is “Extremely” important for our
preparation movements.
There are 10
standard ‘surface’/ ‘dimensions’ on the 4 strings:
1)
E
2)
A
3)
D
4)
G
5)
E-A
6)
A-D
7)
D-G
8)
E-A-D
9)
A-D-G
10) E-A-D-G
(Seems very
easy, right? But it’s from the very clear explanations about basic theory of bowing
that I learned from a German professor. I didn’t hear such explanation else
where. Seems that not much people care about this…)
If you can
have secure (controlled) bow change and strings crossing, I’m sure the violin
will sing naturally and happily.