RH pizzicato on violin with guitarist fingernails
Viohazard is working on Wieniawski's Dudziarz (Bagpipe Player), and has difficulty with "correct" RH pizz technique where he has to pluck the A and E strings in a single stroke.
The difficulty is that he has classical-guitarist-length fingernails on his right hand. He has no guitar performance tests etc this year, and so plans to shorten his RH fingernails to "just long enough" for guitar.
His violin teacher thinks that ideallly his RH nails should be as short as his LH for this technique, but is considering whether it would be enough to shorten the left edge of each nail, given that Viohazard plays classical guitar regularly. However, violin is his first instrument.
Knowing that violin/classical guitar is not such an unusual combination, Viohazard, his violin teacher, and his guitar teacher would all be interested in hearing how other guitar-players handle RH pizz on violin.
Submitted by Viohazard's mother, as Viohazard thought it would take him a week to write all that in English! He looks forward to participating...in simpler English.
Replies (7)
Keep in mind that my background is in classical guitar and I'm only a beginner violinist.
On guitar, the contact point is the spot where the flesh and fingernail meet. You cannot alter the shape of the left corner without having a change in the quality of guitar sound produced. The fingernail itself only needs to be about as long as the very tip of the finger so nails shouldn't interfere with pizzicato unless you're playing with claws.
I expressed the same concern to my teacher and am actually doing any pizzicato (yeah, not much since I'm just in Suzuki book 2) with the fleshy pad of the index finger. Maybe that's completely incorrect technique that'll have to be adjusted at a later time but thus far I don't have problems producing sound with the flesh and no risk of catching the nail.
I have relatively long fingernails for a string player and get around it by doing all my pizzicato with my middle finger and thumb rather than index. As there is more pad on these fingers, I find that it makes quite an acceptable sound.
Hello. thank you for the comments.Just I do have to remind yo (if you don't know) that I have to plack two strings rapidly one after the other.
I heard some music one time that didn't have rh pizz. You could try to find it. Sorry I can't remember the name.
I am a classical guitarist who also plays the violin and guitar nails have never caused a problem for my violin pizzicato.
I teach and play both classical guitar and violin and have had problems with my nails doing violin pizz. only in moments of excitement during a performance, mostly while improvising.
I find that, for the most part, I can avoid my nails striking the violin string by finding the point on the side of my fingertip just before the string would contact my nail and using that for pizz. In other words, my right index (or middle) finger is pointing at the violin scroll, as it should be, and I strike the string with the flesh just to the "left" of, and "around the edge of my finger", from my fingernail.
I have to let my nails get pretty out of control before they become a problem, and this is much too long to play guitar properly (unless you're Esteban).
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May 7, 2007 at 08:26 PM · Viohazard is an interesting name...