I'm in the middle of my practice session and I decided to record myself a lot today. One thing that really annoyed me about my sound is my vibrato. I'm a junior undergraduate violin performance major and my vibrato hasn't really been discussed by anyone since 7th grade except that it needs to be faster. So I tried using a "faster" vibrato, but unfortunately it sounded even more wobbly and unfocused and even more obnoxious. So I found Oliver Steiner's post about finger tapping and applying the feel of relaxed finger tapping to vibrato. All of a sudden this application instantly made my vibrato more focused and beautiful instead of "Lutheran Church Lady-ish" I know, of course, this is not a permanent fix and it needs to be applied to the rest of my playing and I will need to use this technique frequently to retrain myself, but I can't believe how simple and genius this exercise was.
Thank you so much for your vibrato post, Oliver!!!!!!!!
More entries: November 2007
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