How to do Vibrato on the Violin
How do you make music shimmer on the violin, how do you enhance your tone to make it gorgeous, how do you make people cry grateful tears of emotion when they hear your playing?
It's all about vibrato - that's the secret sauce. Of course it is important that you have your basic foundation and you are playing in tune before you start learning vibrato. In terms of Suzuki Books, I usually start teaching students this skill somewhere in Book 2.
So once you are ready, how do you do vibrato?
It can be a rather elusive skill, but I aim to de-mystify it by describing various kinds of vibrato and then giving you some concrete ways to work on learning to do it, including:
- How to exercise the seldom-used muscles that produce vibrato
- How to optimize your posture to enable the vibrato motion
- How to expand your vibrato palette once you get it started
Keep in mind, vibrato is not a skill that you learn in a weekend; it is a long-term project. You'll make the most progress with the feedback of a good teacher, who can see what you are actually doing and personalize your practice approach. That said, here is a general description to get you on the right track.
Kinds of Vibrato:
WRIST VIBRATO: The hand oscillates from the wrist while the forearm remains relatively still.
ARM VIBRATO: The wrist remains immobile and the motion comes from the entire arm. This is an especially handy kind of vibrato for double-stops and very high notes.
In all likelihood, one of these kinds of vibrato will feel easier to you than the other. For me, wrist vibrato was always more natural, so I developed that, then later added arm vibrato. It is best to eventually develop both kinds of vibrato, as they serve in different situations.
FINGER VIBRATO: The movement is mostly in the fingers. I don't use finger vibrato; most people don't. Some argue that finger vibrato doesn't really exist. I can think of one instance: Itzhak Perlman is the rare violinist that occasionally uses finger vibrato - and uses it well!
In any kind of vibrato: you vibrate up to the note and not past it. So your vibrato goes below the pitch and back.
How to exercise the seldom-used muscles that produce vibrato
These exercises will mostly prepare you for wrist vibrato.
- Egg shaker:
Find an egg shaker, box of tic-tac candies or anything that fits in the palm or your hand and makes noise when you shake it. (You can make a shaker with a plastic Easter egg and dry rice, but be sure to tape it securely shut to avoid a mess!) Holding it in the palm of your hand, shake from your wrist. When you shake the egg, make sure that the motion is coming from muscles in your forearm that control your hand and that you are not just flopping your loose hand around, using upper-arm muscles. I shake to the following words, repeating them for about 20 seconds each: "pizza-pizza"; then faster: "pepperoni-pepperoni"; then faster: "buy-a-pizza-buy-a-pizza." After that, you can just trying going as fast as you can for about 30 seconds. As with anything, stop and rest if it starts hurting. - Shoulder and head taps:
Tap your shoulder and head, with the same rhythms as you would with the egg shaker. - Taps over the finger board:
Violin up. With the thumb hanging on at the base of the neck and hand over the top of the violin, tap the wood of your violin to the left of the fingerboard with your left pinkie. (It's a little complicated to describe, see the video!) This really isolates your "wrist muscle" because it immobilizes everything but your hand. - Table vibrato:
This will help you get that feeling of keeping your finger in place while rocking the hand. First, hang from your fingertips on the side of a table, fingers curved, wrist down. Keeping the hanging position, with just your fingertips touching the table, gently rock your hand side-to-side. Now, lift all but your third finger, keeping the curve of fingers and wrist down, shake side to side. The "hanging" is what keeps your fingertip in place. Try with each finger. You can also do this on top of a table; rest your wrist on the table. Note: This motion is not directly transferrable to vibrato, in which the motion a bit more forward and backward. But it helps you to get the feeling in your fingers, of hanging, and the fingertips remaining in place yet rocking. This was the single-most useful exercise for me personally, in learning vibrato!
How to optimize your posture to enable the vibrato motion
A lot of your teacher's requests regarding posture will suddenly make sense, once you start doing vibrato. If you have failed to heed those "bad habit" warnings, you may run into a wall that you can't get past until you make a few posture-related revisions.
No gripping the side of the instrument: If you are gripping the neck of the violin with the side of your hand, you are impeding your hand from moving. It's normal to touch the violin with the side of your hand, but when you do vibrato, you will let go. That doesn't mean you need to move the hand far away from the neck, you just have to let go with the side of the hand.
Straight thumb: Generally, if the thumb is bent, it can often be a sign that you are gripping the violin. Also, a bent thumb causes more tendon strain with the vibrato motion.
Straight wrist: Start with a straight wrist and rock forward. A collapsed wrist limits your motion.
Fingertips: Flat fingers don't rock. The more you place your fingers on the fingertips, the easier it is to rock the finger. When it is rocking, it rocks on the tip and somewhat on the pad.
How to expand your vibrato palette once you get it started
After you have figured out the basic motion of vibrato, you can work on how to vary its speed and width. The basic options for vibrato include: fast and narrow, fast and wide, slow and narrow, slow and wide. You want to be able to do any of those, and change from one to another.
For speed: One exercise you can try is to set the metronome on 60, then try one oscillation per beat, then two, three, four, six, eight, etc. Keep in mind that you will not change the pitch an entire half step - your ear may kind of "ask" for that, resist! The pitch will change a quarter-tone or less, so be prepare your ear. This will allow you to practice vibrating at different speeds.
One you get adept at the different speeds, you can vary the width. So you can do the entire exercise with a narrow vibrato. Or the entire exercise with a wide vibrato.
I would NOT recommend this exercise until you have mastered the basic motion.
You might also like:
- Vibrato Master Class with Shakeh Ghoukasian
- String Instrument Techniques: How to Learn Vibrato
- Intonation, a Physical Phenomenon
Replies
Thank you Laurie,you are a wonderfull and a very immaginative teacher.Fantastic the idea of pinkie taps the wood on the left of the fingerboard
Thank you, Laurie! Striving for a true half-step in the one exercise you outlined has always been my downfall. Quarter-tones, here I come!
Thank you, Laurie, for this excellent video!
Thank you for sharing! I've been practicing vibrato for a few months now with very slow progress. Looking forward to trying these exercises!
I don't have any plastic eggs, but realized that a plastic pill bottle such as the pharmacist provides your prescriptions in could work very well. Pick a size that suits you, and some have locking lids too. An empty vitamin bottle is another possibility.
Great idea, Mark!
Thanks for sharing this! I will send it to my students. I have several of them working on vibrato right now while they are staying at home. It’s a good time to master it when there are fewer performances to prepare for.
Vibrato is a fluctuation in pitch. There is not one definitive way of producing a vibrato, it is all about the sound coming out of your instrument. Like you, I show my students different options and have them decide which method works for them. For some students I have them do a glissando of a whole step, then gradually shortening the length. This way they have immediate success. Since I also play cello, vibrato is super easy on the cello even through it is the same motion. I have my violin students sit on a chair and hold the violin between their knees like holding a cello. The more varieties you show your students, the more successful they will be at this most ardent skill.
wish that I had someone to show me your exercises years ago...
I have been dutifully trying to imitate Nate's every move,
I seem to have too much swing and not enough ping, see
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3lhoutwB14&feature=emb_rel_end
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April 23, 2020 at 11:41 PM · Laurie, thanks for this. I need to apply more effort and patience to my somewhat nervous vibrato. For inspiration I'd like to offer this video featuring two of three great Japanese jazz violinists that I know of, "Maiko" and Toshihiro Nakanishi (the third, not in this video, is Naoko Terai). Toshi Nakanishi, on the right, the elder statesman among Japanese jazz violinists, has one of the most exquisite, expressive and refined vibratos I know of. Enjoy!