Dynamics

May 31, 2008 at 5:35 PM

I was told to really pay more attention to the dynamics when I played, both by my teacher and my husband. I find it more difficult to control dynamics on he violin when compared to the piano. I don't recall having such a difficult time doing crescendo and decrescendo on the piano, but I'm having a very hard time with the violin. I understand that i can bow faster, press harder, use more hair, play closer to the bridge and stuff to get a louder sound, but as a beginner, this is definately easier said than done. If i bow faster, I'm running out of bow, and playing close to the bridge makes some gutting cat sound that my cat detest.

I was having this discussion with my sister in law since she plays both piano and violin. She told me she thought that it's alot easier to control dynamics on the violin because there are so many ways you can do it, and in combination.
Maybe to an advanced player, this is true. But to a beginner, at least from my experience, it's VERY DIFFICULT.

It is definately MORE difficult to play pp than to play ff.

What do you think? Easier to control dynamics on piano or violin?

From Antonello Lofù
Posted on June 1, 2008 at 9:50 PM

As I wrote in a prevoius thread,

playing pp is much more difficult than ff this because the former requires that the arm weight is removed; on the contrary to play ff it is enough to apply all the weight of the arm.

Anton

From Stephen Brivati
Posted on June 1, 2008 at 10:25 PM

Greatings,
a lot of what we think about the violin and do on it are governed by the language we use in a kind of feedback loop. So it is very importnat to avoid using words like `press.` We do not press. The bow must always be understood as bing pushed and pulled. These two words , in French obviously, became a kind of mantra of the Franco Belgina school of platying .
Because of the many factors involved in produgin the range of colors on the violin it can be very confusing as to how to vary dynamics. On the whole it is better to think of playing louder in terms of using more bow rather than presing harder. It is a very good idea to practice a very simple exercise advoctaed by numerous teahcers down the ages of praciting crescendoson down bows and vice versa. Another way of working on the problem is to keep the facotr of sound point constant. So whatever passage you are playing, play it on lane five (the one nearest to the fingerboards) and only on lane five. Fibnd out the best possible weight , speed of bow and tempo to make the stirng vibrate the most. Think of it interms of vibration rather than volume. Repeat the procedure on lane four (closer to the bridge) then lane three (half way between fingerboards\and bridge) then lane two and so on. In lane one you will find that a very slow tempo and bow speed is necessary to produce the best possible sound. After this work play the passage as normal thinking only about the music.
Cheer,s
Buri

From Pauline Lerner
Posted on June 2, 2008 at 1:46 AM

You're right. There are so many factors that it's easy to get lost. I suggest that you work on one factor at a time. I tell my students to use more pressure on the bow (sorry, Buri). I've also heard this action described as "scoop the bow into the string" and "play your bow more into the string." I could not understand the last one until I watched the winter Olympics and listened to the commentator describe the problem of one skaters who did not perform well. The commentator said, "The skater did not have the feel of the ice she was skating on." You've got to learn the feel of your bow on the strings and how to manipulate it to get the effect you want.

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Dynamics

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