Here is how you make your violin sound good
Hi there violinists of YouTube, in today's video we're going to be exploring how to get a good sound on the violin. I'm going to guide you step by step on what I think should be a good sound and my approach to providing and creating a good sound. Stick around to the end of the video for this tutorial.
Also if you're new to my community, my name is Eric and I'm a violinist. I do a lot of violin content, classical music videos on this channel. And if you're not subscribed, I encourage you to subscribe, hit the bell notifications so that way you get notified for when you new videos come out.
Making a good sound is not as hard as you think. Usually a lot of violinists (a lot of beginner violinists) they try too hard to make a good sound on the instrument. However, less is more and if you feel more relaxed, the louder your sound will get, the better you'll actually play your instrument.
The first thing I want to talk about is your posture.
Having good posture while you're playing the violin is very important. And typically speaking, when you lift your shoulder up in various ways it's not the most natural way to stand up. So you want to make sure, that you are being as natural as possible and all you do is put up the violin as so. The more you move, the more you try to fix the violin posture, the worse it's going to get. So see if you can talk to you teacher and use this video as a reference to figure out what is the right posture for you.
Once you figure that out, I want to put your violin up and I want you to relax your hand and the bow on the string. A lot of times beginners will think, "Oh! I need to make sure that I'm holding the violin bow as tight as I can so that I can keep it afloat." As a matter of fact, if you really think about it, the bow is falling down on the violin, and the violin is breaking the bow's fall. So as long as you're providing enough grip, not grip as in tension, you're just holding the bow in a way that will let the bow rest on the string, then you're going to get a nice good sound.
One more thing that I want to encourage you to do is to breathe during the process. Inhaling and exhaling. It is not natural to hold your breathe while playing the violin because tension builds up in this area here, in the upper torso. If you're not breathing, and you're just trying to play, the body will feel tense. Not just your upper torso, but everywhere else.
Let's move on to the next thing. We got the posture, we got the ability to hold the bow, hold the violin up. Now I want you to bend your knees and I know you can't see my screen of course. You should have a nice, relaxed, balance on both legs. And you don't want to squeeze your knees so much. That will actually help you stay grounded and for you to provide a good sound. And once you have established that when you actually make a sound, you want not just to breathe in, but to breathe out. Exhaling will release all the tension in your body for you to create a nice beautiful sound.
Now, let me demonstrate how this process works. It kind of happens all simultaneously and I'm going to do this a couple times for you to actually follow along. So what I do is once I have my violin in place, I have my fingers set on the left hand and the right hand, I take a deep breath and I let my knees help me with the process of pulling a sound.
Now, I want you to notice that I used the word, "pull'. I did not say, "press". If we press, we are going to get a very aggressive sound and that is no good. And what I'll do is I'll use the gentle cushion of the bow hair to provide that sound. You can definitely use more bow hair if you're playing something loud, such as a concerto or you need to project inside a big concert hall, you use a lot of hair. But in this case for this exercise, you might be able to see it here, there you go there's my angle, it's not so much where the stick is over the bow hair, but ever so slightly so you get that edge, you get the nice cushion. And I want you to bounce, that bow hair on the string. We are going to rotate our shoulder in an oval motion. And then in combination. with the good posture, and the breathing, and the cushion of the bow hair, we're going to play a note.
The reason why soloists have this beautiful sound is because they have perfected this. It's just a bunch of basics that they have perfected throughout a long period of time and there's no reason why you can't either.
Let's review, make sure that you have good posture with the violin. Make sure you have a good bow grip so that way you're not squeezing or tensing or doing anything crazy like that. Make sure your knees are bent. Use your right shoulder to create an oval motion to create a nice beautiful sound. And, last but not least, this isn't something that I mentioned before but the sound of the violin goes upward. It does not go sideways That's why we're trying to teach you how to create that motion of the bow going up and that is going to help you get a lot more resonance, a lot more volume into the concert hall.
I hope this video helped you, thank you so much for watching! Leave a comment down below, what are some of your struggles in creating a beautiful violin sound? I want to get a conversation going in the comment section. I respond to every single comment so please feel free to leave a comment and I will definitely respond back. Please hit the subscribe button because that helps other people like you find what the video is all about and to help them and subscribe, hit the bell notifications so that way you get notified for when new videos come out.
Also, I'm offering a free 'Intro to Violin' Course down in the description below. It is free all you got to do is sign up for your first, last name and your email for you to get a hold of this course. And what this course does is explain what it takes to actually start the violin. It's not a violin playing course per say. But you get the tools on how to find a good teacher, whether you should rent or buy a violin. So that way you're not making a wrong decision. You're probably on the fence and you want to start playing the violin full time or you want to get more interested or more serious, I hope this course will be for you. I'm always looking for suggestions, so please email me or leave a message on my website at ericmrugala.com/contact and I'll hear from you. Thanks so much and again if you're new to the channel please make sure to watch other videos that are here to help you. Thanks so much and I'll see you in the next video.
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