To press or not to press, that is the question...
Recently, my new teacher has shown me a technique for feather playing the violin with the right hand. This essentially involves merely touching the strings with the pads, not the tips, until the note you are playing is in focus, not until the finger touches the fingerboard. In fact, the fingers aren't even supposed to touch the fingerboard.
If you play with this sort of technique, you have better velocity. Also, your intonation is better. Apparently when you prss down on the string, it actually stretches the surface of the string out, so that the note you are playing will sound about a quarter to a half step sharp. My teacher demonstrated this, and then later I also conducted the experiment with the same results.
Also, when playing on your pads, you get a more well rounded, and fuller tone. Whereas pressing down gives you a slightly more focused and mellow tone.
Now, I know what you are saying: "Wonderful idea, incredibly efficient". That's what I said when I learned it at first, however it is unbelievably difficult to get in your blood, especially if you where taught to use pressure and have been doing so for the last 8-9 years.
I find that I keep reverting to pressing down on the strings. I know it's bad...but...I actually like it! I like the feeling of the strings against the fingerboard and the tension of the string beneath my fingers. Plus many professional violinists I see do it (including my old teacher). Also with my fat fingers, playing half steps is very difficult, especially in the top register and when doing chords, which is why using the finger tips works better because it removes the need to pick up your fingers (it also removes the risk of the finger fat interfering with the vibrations of the other strings, when doing chords).
The intonation can be dealt with by calculating your finger placement a quarter step lower than normal (as string players we always have to adjust anyways). And the tome actually suits my style of playing and vibrato, and I like the focused yet mellow quality.
I have seen many top rank violinists use both techniques. Oistrakh, for example, seems to be using the pad technique, and I heard that Heifetz used this technique also. But others, such as Frank Peter Zimmerman and Kyung Wha Chung seem to be using their fingertips and pressure most of the time (and they get excellent intonation and tone).
Auer, in his "Violin Playing as I Teach it" points out that there is not "right" amount of finger pressure, and that it is up to the phisical qualities of the player.
What do you think?
Any comments, suggestions, tips, and insights are very much welcome.
Thanks,
Cristian G.
Replies (14)
My teacher, who was taught by Shinichi Suzuki, has said much the same thing and gave me that exercise of barely touching the string with the fingers and then gradually increasing the pressure until a clear tone emerges. She explained that too much pressure can bring about too much opposing pressure from the thumb and hence tenseness and a possibility of the dreaded "death grip" in the left hand. Tenseness will inhibit not only the easy movement of the fingers but also the ability to shift freely up and down the fingerboard. If shifting is compromised by tenseness then vibrato will be as well.
we were fooling around with this at my last lesson, trying to figure out what the best pressure combination (left hand and bow) was for optimum tone with vibrato. In the low positions it was a relatively light bow ('bow weight') combined with a bit more finger pressure. I found that with insufficient pressure on the fingerboard the vibrato gets more extreme but the note sounds less focused. OTOH its my impression (and I too would love some expert opinion) that as you move up the fingerboard you need less and less pressure to make a clean note.
Moving up the fingerboard usually requires a bit more pressure on the lower strings. Example: the final mvt in Brahms's second A major sonata where you leap up high on the G string for the A and then the C# A.
If you do not have enough pressure then vibrato suffers. In fast fleeting passages the fingers should be closer to the strings and less pressure used to allow for the speed. Slow passages (especially loud passionate ones) need much more pressure to cope with a bigger (and/or faster) vibrato.
P.S. Auer was probably right.
Not being a player, I don't have any opinion on the correctness of any technique. I'll only observe that my better (higher-level, more famous, better orchestras, however you want to measure it) professional customers need to get their boards dressed a whole lot less than less-experienced players and students, which indicates to me who's grinding harder. One, watching while I measured string height at the bridge end of his board, asked me why it's measured there, because "no one ever" presses down all the way to the board up there.
Cristian. Your teacher is absolutely correct. It is a fingerboard not a string board. The finger usually touches wood but the string is in contact with the fleshy pad of the finger tip not the wood.
Your teacher is right on the money.
The projection of the neck on modern violins results in the finger stopping the string, and not the fingerboard. It is completely unnecessary to exert any more force beyond that required to stop the string at the location for the desired pitch.
I do an example for my students that my teacher showed me...having them slide around a piece of paper underneath my fingers as I play passages in third position on my violin. :)
Thank you for your advice and comments. I know that in the higher registers, it is possible to play without pressing at all (especially on the E-string), but the G-string provides so much tension that it is impossible to play without pressure (at least on my model of violin). However, it also depends on where you are in terms of bow placement. I find that when I am playing close to the bridge, it helps to press. However, I hardly need to press when playing close to the fingerboard or even in the middle. I guess that to an extent it's all relative...
this is not complicated- press as hard as you need to press and no more. When you sit on a chair, you don't try to push your butt down harder, do you? Why would you do that with your finger on a string? Gravity should be plenty enough, any more is stress.
Aren't there Arab bowed string instruments that do not have a fingerboard ? I'm sure I saw and heard one such once, in Agadir, Morocco.
However, conventional violinist wisdom has it that if you DID have both a Strad and a Guarneri, you'd find you would need to grip harder with the left hand on the Guarneri.
Playing with LESS L.H. pressure is a new experience for me. I've tended to go for Guarneri copies. I have a "Strad" style violin now and I had to learn how to play it differently from my entrenched orchestral manner. Less "bite" with the bow too.
Old dog, new tricks.
This is a very interesting point David. And yes, there actually is a Chinese instrument called the Erhu which has no fingerboard (just a long stick):
http://www.chinatownconnection.com/erhu-chinese-violin.htm
Atually I find it interesting that you brought up the difference between a Guarnari and a Strad model. I have a Guarnari model, and my teacher has a Strad, and it could be that to some degree the differences in finger pressure needed is due to the instrument. But we hardly can blame the instrument for our own technique. I think it depends mostly on the player.
Tom Bop's analogy is fascinating. Since each combination of player, (bow), string and instrument is unique (plus the effects of temperature and humidity), you should press just enough to achieve the desired effect. Only when playing pizzicato (that's why I put the bow in parenthesis above), is it necessary to use considerable pressure on the fingerboard, otherwise the resulting tone will fizzle or sound "blah".
On the other hand, if you press too much, you will loose speed and create more wear and tear (on the wood of the fingerboard, the material of the strings and of course your body, too). The key is in experimenting: play while aiming for minimum pressure, play using maximum pressure, with several grades in between, listen for the effects and use your judgement.
But is not everybody using too much pressure? No, I don't think so. My personal experience is that I treated my violin way too gingerly (while still not relaxing completely) and only my teacher's advice about using the appropriate amount of force set me on the path to better tonal quality AND a more relaxed way of playing.
Maestro Auer said it very well, there is no ONE right way to play. Learn both ways and incorporate the two together.
A quick measure of pressure is how far the pink of the fingernail goes whitish: for my hands, 1/16" in each nail is sufficient.
On the E-string in the higher positions it is not always necessary to press the string right down to the fingerboard; in fact in many double-stops, the higher strings are even pressed sideways!
However, we still need as good a pressure in soft as in loud playing, and much more for a ringing pizzicato.
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January 14, 2012 at 06:45 PM · Cristian, I think it depends a lot on what your teacher was aiming for, particularly with you. We fiddle players can get really strong fingers, and if you think about the velocity issue, the more muscle effort you put into your downward motion, the more effort it will take to lift back up, and thus you slow down your fingers.
As a teacher I've told students to lighten up, and (in a few cases, usually beginners)) I've told students to press harder. When I've told students to lighten up, it's been because too much effort was going on in the left hand, causing too much tension and slowing down the fingers.
So I'm thinking that you might have some tension that your teacher is aiming to help you with; but that in general, there is a happy medium. You can press a little more in slow passages and a little less in fast ones, and not having ever seen you play and only guessing by what your teacher is saying, you might currently need to lighten up overall, at the moment!
It's all relative. Hope this makes some sense!