Comments

Originally I thought you were saying there's an ideal weight before click and that having it is dependent on having the ideal bow angle. But I think you're saying his angles are perfect in the context of his interpretation somehow, which you like, whether anyone else likes it or not. It looks like it might vary from violin to violin, and might even imply there's a "best" amount of roll to have in the positioning of a particular fiddle.

Do you think Heiftez understood this intuitively, or do you think he was doing all of this consciously? I don't need to know unless I get on as robot programmer at Toyota, but it's interesting.

It's horrendously difficult to obtain only one click at a time in every part of the bow. You are right Buri. In my very first cello lesson, my teacher taught me just that when I started to bow the open strings. He referred it as the "bite" at the beginning of each bow. Apparently, once you had a good "bite", the string would start to vibrate and you only need to glide lightly for the rest of the bow to continue the string vibration. I tried it on the violin but it didn't work so well, probably because cello and violin have different temperaments. I'll refer to the Basics try it on my violin again. We used to do this for fun in rehearsal as a way of 'commenting' on whatever the God on the Podium was saying...I didn't realize 'til years afterward that it was actually an exercise...lol Greetings,
>Originally I thought you were saying there's an ideal weight before click and that having it is dependent on having the ideal bow angle.

Yes, I was. Although I guess it@s like a lot of things in violin playing- although there is an optimum angle doing it less perfectly may well produce something close to the require dresult. I think the purpose of the exercise is not so much to find the ideal weight as to find the `maximum.` Perhaps not quite the same thing.

>But I think you're saying his angles are perfect in the context of his interpretation somehow, which you like, whether anyone else likes it or not.

That`s interesting. Actually I didn`t mean that. His angles are as near perfect (in that piece ;)) as one could wish for. Interpretation would be a secodnary issue depedning on the degree you associate dit with the actual quality of sound.

>It looks like it might vary from violin to violin, and might even imply there's a "best" amount of roll to have in the positioning of a particular fiddle.

I think your right. But , depending on diffenret physiques to some extent there is generally a golden mean for most aspects of playing the vioin which is not wise to devaiate from. The majority of us do so for one reaosn or another. Nothing to do with prunes I belive.
Cheers,
Buri

Hi there,

This 'click' exercise is so intriguing, yet tough to understand through description. Is there any chance it exists on Video, or could be taped and posted by someone who is comfortable with it?

David

I don't understand perfect angle except as part of an interpretation. For example, if you used software to cut a note out of a sound file and played that note by itself out of the context of an interpretation, I'd know very little about how effective, appropriate and so on that sound was in its real context. Since the sound is determined in part by angle we're saying, we don't know if the angle was perfect unless we're discussing an interpretation. That's why I thought you were talking about the interpretation. I had never heard of this click exercise so I thought I would try it. I was able to get the clicks on the first try and I was quite amazed at the sound. Doing them up and down the bow produces an interesting effect. I am not quite sure of the efficacy of this exercise but it is an interesting sound. Have any composers used this in their music? PS Buri, if you mean this angle should be a constant thing, unlike speed, pressure, and bow position on the string, then what you're saying makes sense to me.

The click exercise reminds me that one of my teachers had me making loud steady scratching sounds with the bow and gradually easing up each try until the scratch was gone. Similar idea of finding the maximum weight, maybe.