Left Hand Articulation
In today's video, we're gonna be talking about one specific topic that you have requested in the community board on my YouTube channel, and that is left hand articulation. We're gonna go deep into left hand articulation what you need to do with the left hand what you need to do with the right hand ensure good clear uh articulation on the left hand.
In this video specifically we're going to be talking about left hand articulation under a slur because you might notice that in pian in piano music we have long long slurs in the piano music however those are not technically slurs right because how can piano slur doesn't make any sense but those are actually phrase markings the musical markings as to what the composer wants the phrase to do in comparison to the violin we have let's say we have a bunch of
We have a bunch of different left-hand articulation techniques that we can do under a slur so one of them let's say let's take a Schradieck exercise, for example.
you might notice that as i am i'm articulating that left hand as i go up the string so if i go up the note you hear that little bit of that little bit of uh sounding as i me pounding on the fingerboard actually it's not that much though there are a couple things that you need you need speed and agility of the finger so depending you can't if you have slow fingers you're not going to get a sound from the left hand but if i do
if i have a little bit of speed and agility onto the string right then i will get that really um pounding sound on the left hand now eric what about when you're going down the scale like for instance well in this case i we want pluck this left hand string
there's also left hand picado for those of you who are new to us on the on this channel and we have you notice how there's a bit of clarity while i'm plucking the string cellos also do this if they wanna if they really wanna get a clear sound from their c string or their g string they would actually pluck the string as the bow move so that way they get a nice clear uh beginning of the note so but in our case
you want the speed and the agility of the fingers of the left hand to articulate the sound but then on the way down you can't really re-arc you can't really re-pound the the fingers like because then you will end up playing three notes right so when we have pluck the left hand or try to do this exercise on e string and then you know there's that famous uh
you know round of the goblins kind of excerpt and that will that'll help you get that nice clear you will build some calluses and it will hurt a little bit at first but i guarantee you that you're gonna build a lot of clarity under slurs this is also clear in like eight the fourth movement of beethoven's opus 18 number one right so the first violin
you know that entire movement is full of these kinds of slurs if i do it without the pizzicato the left-hand pitcher
i can do it it'll sound okay but if i'm trying to project each single note and make sure that each single note is clear in a big large concert hall of course i'm overdoing it to make a point right i would not that's too much right but if i do a little just enough then i'm gonna get that really nice clear sound out of my slurs another example of this is mendelssohn's violin concerto first movement first page so we have
all of that is underneath the slur so check this out i'm pulling the fingers to create that articulation and then
all of that requires plucking of the left hand so it is something that you have to practice and it will be painful because you have to build calluses under your left hand and it'll create a lot of strength to be able to do that and once you establish that then you've unlocked another level of your vile implant because then you're gonna have nice crisp clean sound and notes that are really articulated underneath the big slur another one is schubert's
bumblebee so all of that i'm pulling the string i have my you know a sharp as an anchor
you can hear that there's that clarity there's a you know that crisp clarity that comes from the left hand if i do i'm not gonna get that clear sound if i only rely on the speed and the agility of my left hand if i combine the three the left hand picado and i also combine the the jilly and the speed and then you sound really really good and if there's anything that i want you to take out of this video is that three things you need speed agility and the left hand pizzicato from uh from your left hand because once you start incorporating that in your practicing especially in your scales and in your strategic and your ceph check all of that is really really beneficial because if you work on that you know outside of the music you really get to focus on what needs to be done with the left hand how do how does my hand feel how is my hand shaped is it more this way is it more that way and i have a bunch of other videos on the on the youtube channel that addresses you know left hand posture and position so that you can you can you can rely on those on the youtube channel i hope this video helped you when it comes to left hand articulation and i hope it answered any kind of burning questions that you've had about left-hand articulation leave a comment down below was this video helpful and what do you do to ensure left-hand clarity and left-hand articulation i want to know your thoughts i want to get a conversation going down below thanks so much for watching this video i hope this video helped if it did hit the like button and if you're not subscribed please make sure to hit the subscribe button hit the bell notification so that way you get notified for when new videos come out especially violin videos and it also helps me out as a content creator to provide more videos for you check out some other violin videos that i have on the channel and i hope that they will be helpful for you thanks so much and i'll see in the next video