First and Second finger placement

July 26, 2011 at 02:38 PM ·

 First of all, it may actually be helpful psychologically to measure the physical distance on the fingerboard between the B and the C. It's probably a little bigger than you think it is in your present frustration.  

Second, unless you have extremely thick fingers, the only contact (if any) of your first and second fingers in the position you describe should be at the tips, near the fingerboard. The first two sections of the fingers need not touch at all, if your base joints are open. You can discover this by placing the first finger on the B on the left side of the pad, and then the second finger on the C on the right sight of the pad. 

July 27, 2011 at 06:20 AM ·

Hi Regina,

I'm not a teacher, but I still want to help. Your difficulty might be conceptual instead of physical. So perhaps an experiment could help. Put your first finger (f1) on the B on the A string, and keep your second finger (f2) as loose as you can. Now use your right hand to move  the tip of f2 about on the string. If you relax f2 enough, you will find that it will easily go down to where it touches f1, which is below the C you aim for.

Hope this helps,
Bart

edit: have you consulted your teacher about this?

July 27, 2011 at 07:28 PM ·

Hi Regina, as I mentioned in your thread on vibrato and finger contact, I suspect you may be holding your fingers with the 3rd and 4th baseknuckles straight and the same fingers too curled. This causes the baseknuckles to be parallel to the strings and forces your fingers to open sideways (as in a Vulcan salute.) If you curl your fingers with this posture of the hand, the finger tips will curl in toward each other. In left hand technique, you want to move everything: hand, wrist, forearm, elbow, upperarm, shoulder, shoulderblade, fiddle, so that they don't impede your ability to move the finger tips to where they need to go. 

To achieve a good posture of the hand, play in first position with 4th finger on E-string, 3rd on A, 2nd on D, 1st on G; this is called the easy setting of the hand. Now move the 1st onto the D string; then move 1st and 2nd onto A string. As you move 1st and 2nd onto A, keep the 3rd finger still; if you're unable to do this, you may need to pivot the whole arm about the 3rd finger tip, i.e. swing your left elbow out to the left slightly (the elbow swinging in this manner is called your 'steering mechanism',) just enough to bring the 1st and 2nd fingers over to the A string without disturbing the 3rd finger. If this is still difficult (if you feel strain in your fingers and back of wrist,) you may need to lean the whole hand more toward the scroll; this means the side of the first finger needs to be lower and your elbow needs to be a little closer to your body (i.e. close your arm pit, open your elbow.) Finally move 4th finger onto A; you may need to adust the steering mechanism back to the right slightly. 

With this posture of the hand, curling a finger moves the tip along the string toward the scroll. Extending the finger moves the tip along the string toward the bridge. You should now be able to reach a low second finger comfortably. 

Hope it helps,

JK

July 27, 2011 at 07:52 PM ·

 great post (as usual) by JK :) 

thumbs up!

July 29, 2011 at 05:07 PM ·

Its not possible to be precise without seeing your hand in motion, but I have a strong hunch the problem is in your hand (and maybe wrist) position. The space between B and C on A is large for anyone's hands, so the issue is the shape of your hand and how your fingers head towards the strings.  It is also possible that you are not moving your elbow back and forth across the width of the violin as you go from string to string, and have some strangely shaped hand that tries to reach several or all of the strings.  

Your wrist should be slightly bent. The part of your hand where the little finger attaches should be pulled towards the neck of the violin. Your fingers should be arched and drop down to touch the strings with the finger tips. The index/1st finger should rotate - so when you look down the fingerboard you are looking at your index finger nail.  Do this with your hand in front of you (no violin) and you'll see the fingers line up in a row.  That's where the string goes.  Get the hand into this shape with the violin and move the elbow back and forth across the violin to have that row of finger tips line up with each string.  Use the shape of the hand to help adjust where the finger tips drop.  There's plenty of room for 2 fingers on B and C.  Some help with your teacher will straighten this all out.

August 18, 2011 at 05:53 PM ·

This is an interesting question, that I have been working on for several weeks now. Recently I started with a new teacher with the objective to improve intonation amongst other things. My teacher has given me the Sevcik trilling exercise to work on and I'm really stuck on the very first one. For one thing my teacher insisists that each exercise is done perfectly. No problem with that, I want it perfect too. The first exercise requires that F4 holds B on the E string, F3 holds A and starts with F1 at B on the A string. With F3 &4 held, the exercise starts, but I have difficulty playing C with F2. I either play C sharp or F4 pulls away from B. I can do it if a clamp the neck with my thumb (bad!!!) to prevent the fingers from moving. My teacher says, it's like Yoga, give it time and keep at it but I wonder if my fingers are just the wrong shape. It's almost as though, if I could break the tip of F2 and reattach it pointing slightly more towards the scroll I could narrow the gap just enough to play C natural instead of C sharp. Also I feel tension in the web space between F2 and F3 as long as I hold F4 in place. If I let F4 go, no problem I can do the exercise easily, but my teacher won't accept that. Just keep at it or am I missing something?

August 18, 2011 at 09:56 PM ·

  Not being able to see you in person I might be off with this, but I'd like to know what your thumb placement is like. Many times, thumb placement is responsible for problems like you described. Is your thumb directly across from the first (or between the first and second)? A lot of people have fingertip placement problems because the thumb is too far back, hanging out with the pegs. 

August 19, 2011 at 12:27 AM ·

I think my thumb is okay, it is one thing that I have worked on and I try to move my thumb into a good position to optimize the exercise, but I will pay particular attention as I practice. My hand span is quite large and I believe my teacher and that given time I can achieve the desired result, but it is frustrating trying to do something that seems so simple but feels so hard for a simple half tone.

August 23, 2011 at 05:26 AM ·

I think I have  solution for you to try. I felt that I was having the same problem with the half step between the first and second finger in 1st position whilst maintaining the third and fourth finger in their positions as in the Sitt trilling exercises. What I discovered was that my elbow was not far enough to the right, that is under the body of the violin. This brings the hand into a position where the fingers can come down more naturally together and allowing the first and second finger to hold the half step, even when the third and fourth finger are holding their positions. So instead of concentrating on the fingers, maybe concentrate on the arm position and bring it around the violin so that the fingers can play more vertically. You can actually try the movement without the violin. Just hold your left arm in the playing position, with your elbow as far to the right as you can comfortably go, and your hand totally relaxed. If you look at the space between your first and second fingers, they come together naturally. If you now move your elbow to your left, watch how your finger tips move apart into more of a whole step. I did what my teacher told me to do and that was to experiment until I found out what worked for me. Hope this helps.

August 24, 2011 at 06:17 AM ·

 Regina, perhaps too simplistic, but something that works for me: just practice what you describe yourself, namely, when two fingers have to be just a half tone apart, put them down together! This is best practiced when playing a DOWN scale (at least with me, in an UP scale the problem is not present). If needed, briefly pause within the scale to give you the time to place the two fingers together, then continue down the scale. Work slowly and slowly diminish the pause. It's just a matter of putting in the needed hours of practice really, like everything with the violin.

August 26, 2011 at 06:04 PM ·

How true, everything connected with playing the violin seems to take hours or practice but I wonder if temporarily stapling the first two fingertips togther would shorten the practice time?

August 26, 2011 at 06:14 PM ·

This may seem ridiculous and obvious, but make sure your scroll isn't dropping. I used to have no problem with C#, but a bear of a time keeping the 2nd finger on C natural when the other fingers were down. I wasn't paying attention and let the scroll drop down and to the right, and I would get all scrunched and tense. Keeping the scroll up, much easier. It's often the simple things... :)