Surviving the A String

February 20, 2006 at 11:08 PM

Tina Wilke’s thread about “what do you like best about your playing?” got me into a rant about what I least liked. The A string, I replied. The problem-child string of my violin; willful, disobedient, inconsistent. Particularly when played with the fourth finger. When I try for the E note, I’m reminded of failed attempts at elementary school sports, where I’d fling my arms at the tetherball or swing the bat with no athletic prowess, instinct or knowledge of physics on my side. The fourth finger on the A string acts the same - it flies out there, blindly, panicked, landing with a sort of splat, nine times out of ten in the wrong place.

What’s going on here? Why does my fourth finger know where to go on the G, D and E strings, and why is it such a nightmare on the A string? It’s been months since I began the fourth finger business – how can I still be so lamentably poor? Worse, the bad playing is contagious. My B sharps consistently and the C sharp doesn’t. In my attempts to get the notes right, my shoulders hunch, making my bow skitter around and catch the open D string, which growls in disapproval. The bow tilts crazily, like a car on snow, too close to the bridge now, and a moment later overcorrecting to produce the skritchy sound so distasteful to the human ear.

Lesson time is the worst. There I stand in front of my teacher, screwing up notes I learned six months ago. “I don’t know what to do with this A string!” I hear myself say, a bit wildly. Surely she must be thinking that I don’t practice at home. Can a student be fired, I wonder, for not progressing at an acceptable pace? Will she, one day soon, turn to me with regret and unease etched on her face and say, “I’m sorry, I just don’t see that this is doing either of us any good…”

“Let’s try an A major scale,” she suggested gently last week, looking at my plum face. Then we segued into the tiresome Frere Jacques again, which always makes my adult sensibilities cringe. Following my success there, we proceeded once again to the week’s assigned piece. And bingo, the B sharped and the E flatted. Four times in a row.

What appalls me is the un-intuitiveness of it all. Or rather the intuitiveness to get it wrong; the heavy sense of inevitability I get from the A string—the dark twin of my easy-going, sweet-sounding, low-maintenance E string. The D string, as well, is so pleasing with its rich sound and resonance, triggering the sympathetic vibration of my G string until the whole violin hums. Even the G string is a breeze compared to the A string. “You’ll get it all eventually,” my teacher always consoles me.

I trudge through the parking lot to my car after the lesson, head hanging. I recognize the solution here is simply to stick with it. I’ll continue to practice five hours a week. Whether it’s a good-sounding practice or bad is beside the point. Experience has taught me to persevere through doldrums like these. A day off to lick my wounds, and back I get onto the horse. (Well… horsehair, at least.)

And then today, while still humbly aware of my ineffective stabs of the fourth finger on the A string, I notice something I’ve never noticed before. The B on the A string, when hit properly, resonates in my chest, as if I’m having a heart palpitation, or I drank so much caffeine that I’m feeling the bzzzzzzzz effect. How could I not have noticed such a thing before? Amazing, really.

And there it is—another compass for helping me negotiate this foreign terrain that so intrigues, baffles and exasperates me. Maybe some day yet, the A string and I will become friends, the way I am with my E and D string right now. I’ll play and it will hum to me in its clear, honey tone.

Until then, it’s practice, practice, practice.

From Stephen Brivati
Posted on February 20, 2006 at 11:15 PM

Greetings,
you may be having two kinds of problems, both of which are fairly eays to resolve with patience. First, the relationship between elbow and fourth finger and second, your left hand is too far back towards the scroll.
A simple daily exercise is to place the fourth finger correctly curved and very relaxed on the e string and pluck it as a left hand pizzicato. Be conscious of the pad of the finger and keeping that nicely curved shape. No need to pluck agreesively or alter the shape of the finger. The pull back is from the base of the finger. Take care not to tighten the muscle sin the forarm.
After plucking the e stirng a few times move over to the a string and repeat the carel set up of the fourth finger. Everythign arranges itself around that finger. Nothing is strained. You will find that the elbo has changed position to accomdate the fingr. this is corretc. After plucking a few times repeat the procedure on the d string and then the g.
One minut eof this pracitc eevryday will helpI think.
Cheers,
Buri

From Terez Mertes
Posted on February 20, 2006 at 11:27 PM

Buri, I'm plucking the fingers of my right hand, a la violin, as I'm reading your suggestion. I get it - and I promise to try it on something besides my right hand next.

Thanks!

From Sheila Ganapathy
Posted on February 21, 2006 at 4:09 AM

First of all, let me tell you how much I enjoy your writing! You write about yourself but it's not just like "This is me. This is my life. And that's it!" You write like you're writing a novel, and it makes you a character. It makes reading your blog so much fun!

When I read your paragraph about being fired as a student, I laughed b/c that's practically what happened with me when I got reprimanded for my lack of improvement due to my lack of practicing. But I saved myself from being fired by promising that I would practice. Isn't that funny? You can be fired even as a learner/student? (It IS a little funny!)

Sheila

From Terez Mertes
Posted on February 21, 2006 at 2:13 PM

Sheila, oh no - you mean my imagined scenario might happen?? Boy, now the fingers will REALLY start slipping during my lesson! ((Terez rushes from room to pick up violin and start practicing NOW...))

And thanks ((back again...)) for your nice words about my blog - it gave me the warm fuzzies to read. : )

From Theresa Martin
Posted on February 21, 2006 at 3:10 PM

Well...what to say? Of course, I thoroughly enjoyed your description of your "problem"--fabulous writing. I wish people like you would write whole books about learning to play violin.

I have not spent much time with my 4th finger on violin. On cello, yes, and it's no problem--as long as I remember to keep it curved rather than straighten it out. Straight, it goes sharp. Curved, it's much more likely in tune. I just recently decided that I would work on my fourth finger on the fiddle, for fast passages (triplets) that go from C to E and back to C again, and some others where the difference in the strings is just too noticable. I don't take fiddle lessons (lessons on cello are going to have to be enough--there's a lot of cross-over and I have a good fiddle friend who helps me out when I need it), so I haven't had to "perform" any of this in front of teachers.

It's funny about the A string though. I have a loving relationship with my A string. Actually, I love all four strings. I have little patterns on all four strings that I have a hard time keeping in tune. But this little instrument is so delightfully sweet all over...

From Terez Mertes
Posted on February 21, 2006 at 8:00 PM

Theresa - you and Buri have a good point about the curved fourth finger. Off I go now to step into the cage with the lion for the next hour. Wish me luck...

It is funny, isn't it, that it's the A string that I don't get along with? My teacher tells me it's usually the E and the G her students struggle with. I was always one to do these things differently...

And thanks for your nice comments about my blog/essay. I think I've spawned a new sub-genre here. It's not a traditional blog. But it's more than just a random essay. It's a... blossay!

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Surviving the A String

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