help with holding violin

October 12, 2011 at 06:26 AM ·

Greetings,

paradoxically, slipping down is often caused by the shoulde rrets being too high.  Try going against your intuition and lowering it a smuch a sposisble.

Cheers,

buri

October 12, 2011 at 11:29 AM ·

Even lowering it to zero, perhaps?
I forsee yet another 100-poster on the pros and cons of SRs (and CRs) :)

October 12, 2011 at 12:43 PM ·

Well, there are a lot of different kinds of teachers. And there are a lot of different ways to play.

Some violinmakers and dealers are very good with the chinrest/shoulder rest problem and have many different ones of each in stock. One way or another, you are going to need to visit a shop to try the combinations... 

You are developing what we call "death grip."

Try loosening up. You want the fiddle to balance on your "shoulder" and on your hand. Not your thumb, but rather the edge of where your index finger joins the metacarpals, and on the other side, the side of your thumb. Don't *grip*, but rather *rest* the neck in there.

At the other end, you have the "shoulder" which can actually be very different parts depending on your geometry.  Again, you are balancing it. It isn't a grip. Gripping is bad. At the neck, gripping leads to neck problems.

Remember to keep your hand high enough to get the fiddle level. Some people are below level and do fine, but start out by putting some concentration on keeping the scroll end up. This will help with the other end, the shoulder area, too.

Hopefully Buri or Clayton or someone who is actually an expert will be able to elucidate further.

Good luck!

October 12, 2011 at 02:21 PM ·

In my opinion, a comfortable violin hold starts with the CHINREST!

Also - in my opinion - except, perhaps, for one of them, all chinrests are wrong for you. So the place to start is to find a chinrest that makes your violin feel like it belongs where you play it. Let's hope one of the ready-mades fits the bill, because it can cost hundreds of dollars to have one tailor-made. It is sheer luck to find the right chinrest unless you actually take your violin to a violin shop and try different chinrests on it.

Once you have a comfortable chinrest and can seat the violin comfortable on your collarbone you can develop a way of holding the violin and perhaps find a comfortable and appropriate shoulder rest (personally I don't use one any longer, but I have in the past and most players I know do - and some are really good violinists).

The available shoulder rests are all different and it does make a real difference which one you use - small difference in personal physique as well as small differences in violin dimensions can affect which shoulder rest(s) will work for you. (BonMusica is one that definitely did not work for me.)

Andy

October 12, 2011 at 03:02 PM ·

OK - now we're getting personal...

What kind of shirt are you wearing??? When I have young boys show up to their lesson with slippery soccer shirts that have giant holes to put your head through - it's definately difficult to hold the violin. I grab a clothes pin and make the hole their head is going through smaller and it helps a lot!

My personal favorite - the cotton turtleneck!

Smiles! Diane

October 12, 2011 at 03:50 PM ·

Thanks for these responses and thoughts. I initially used a Kun rest, and went to the Bonmusica at my teacher's recommendation, as it allows for greater adjustment and shapes to my shoulder better than the Kun did. That helped immensely, but as my playing "progresses", I'm finding that my left hand can't do the fingering I want it to do because it is also having to push the violin back up on my shoulder. It might well be that the chin rest is what needs attention. Currently, mine is to the side, and perhaps I just need to go to a well-stocked shop (not a luthier necessarily?)and explore options. Two related thoughts: 1) I'd love to play with no shoulder rest, but right now, that is inconceivable! 2) As a beginner, I find it WAY too easy to blame my problems on equipment, and not to just work though the problem, since at this stage, I'm not sure what is "technique" and what is an "equipment" issue.   Thanks again for the feedback.

October 12, 2011 at 03:54 PM ·

I've never played with a shoulder rest.  Try without one.  And try a leather chamois (over your shoulder) - the chamois 'sticks' to your shirt fairly well, and the violin 'sticks' to the chamois fairly well - so it might just do.

Try easy solutions first...see if they work...and go from there.

October 12, 2011 at 05:06 PM ·

Richard,

Its a common problem at the beginning. I remember it well from when I re-started on the violin. A very good thing is it seems you and your teacher want to keep the left shoulder relaxed. Its good because it will keep your finger muscles, which are mostly in the forearm, relaxed to do amazing things.

I use a piece of foam (no cover, held by a rubber band) as a shoulder rest and the rough surface helps keep the violin still. Try it, or if you don't like it, try thin foam or chamois on the bottom of your current shoulder rest. Shifting, and especially down shifting, is usually the most common cause.  Work on relaxing your left hand grip to reduce friction during the shift - and try to move very quickly, but without a jerk at the end of the shift. It takes practice. Physics tells us the violin has inertia and will try to stay in place on your shoulder unless it feels a force to move it downwards.

If the violin moves a little bit, don't worry about - keep playing. Move it later at a rest.  You will not drop the violin.  A bunch of 'emergency reflexes' will kick in to grab it, if anything serious starts to happen.

Keep working on a relaxed shoulder. It will pay off 'big time', as your playing develops.

October 12, 2011 at 05:42 PM ·

"I'm finding that my left hand can't do the fingering I want it to do because it is also having to push the violin back up on my shoulder."

This seems like a technique issue and not a shoulder rest / chin rest issue.  Again,  the violin *rests" in the "vee" between thumb and index finger. You don't need to disrupt your fingers if you keep your hand up high enough and balance freely.

October 12, 2011 at 07:10 PM ·

 Greetings,

people often don@t realize that the violin actually needs to be held slightly high so thta the weight of the instrument is thrown into the body and not the scroll. If the violin is tilted down which I suspect it is,   then gravity is doing a good job for you.  The other reason to keep the violin high is that the string angle down from the bridge towards the scroll. In an ideal world you shoul have the string perpendicular to the groung (so the bow doesn`t slip towards the fingerboard)¥-maximum efficiency) . The best way tojudge this is to point the scroll at the mirror and lift te instruments scroll. at the point where the view of the finger board disappera in the mirror you have the correct angle...

Cheers,

buri

October 12, 2011 at 08:54 PM ·

October 12, 2011 at 10:57 PM ·

but perpendicular is a much more interesting word than parallel.  It hints at the color purple for starters.....

October 12, 2011 at 11:29 PM ·

October 13, 2011 at 12:27 PM ·

 "My teacher doesn't have much more to say on the topic."

that's cool.

October 14, 2011 at 12:58 PM ·

Thanks some more! Buri, your suggestion to lower the height of my shoulder rest seems to help, as counter-intuitive as that may be! I'm very tall, and raising the height made sense when I was initially getting used to the violin. Now, though, lowering it appears to be an improvement! Thanks for the idea!       And Al, I guess if I had control of everything else, my teacher would have more to say on this matter, but there's only so much that can be addressed in an hour lesson. Give a teacher a break!

October 14, 2011 at 01:13 PM ·

 sorry richard.  i was just a bit underwhelmed by your original statement without knowing the full scope of your circumstance.  i am very much a pro teacher person, and i know very well how one hour can fly by so quickly...

good luck and have fun.  it is indeed a treat to have v.com in the backdrop to serve as a sounding board for issues.

having said that, i still believe that to further explore this issue with your teacher (who is the only one that sees how you hold your violin ) is worth the time and disruption of your other plans on other issues.  it can be argued that if you take care of this issue, you may have better control of other things that are currently out of control.

October 14, 2011 at 05:48 PM ·

The counter-intuitiveness of the lower shoulder rest is an interesting thought. 

I suspect what actually happens is that a higher shoulder rest puts the whole instrument up that much higher, which makes it necessary to put the left hand up that much higher, which is not achievable comfortably, and so the violin points at gophers but from up on a high cliff rather than from a lower knoll.

Conversely, the lower shoulder rest puts the whole business lower, making it easier to get the scroll relatively high and therefore the balance more effective.

I am a tall person (6-1) and certainly don't have a short neck. I am happy with no shoulder rest, and an ordinary chinrest. I've met other, much smaller women (who sound better than me!) who are practically in a plaster cast when they play, with a 5cm high chinrest, and massive shoulder rest to accommodate her long neck.

The difference is one of balance. Some people are convinced that the violin needs to be locked into position. This leads to a never ending search for the perfect chinrest and the perfect shoulder rest, when what you need to do is try what Buri says and work on the fine points of balance instead.