finding the first note

February 1, 2005 at 06:16 AM · Greetings,

you should never hit or pluck to find a note. It looks bad and is seldom sucessful.

What you casn do is systematically develop your technique in two ways. The first is the use of guide notes. If one wants to hit a first finger a in third position then one fingers123 in first and then shoots the first finger up to third. Or another example, if you want to play a c# with a first finger ion 5th positon you finger the third finger a, exchange it for the first, finger the third finger c and then exchange it for the first finger.

These are very crude examples and Fischers has gone into this question in great detail including how topractice them until you no longer need them . The book is of course, Basics.

The pother thing you are posisbly a litlte lacking in is a kineasthetic sense of the fingerboard. This can be develkoped very easily by a simple exercise donw for five minutes every day.

Play a b in fist posiiton on the e string for a whole note. Remove the left hand and bow for a whole note plus a little more. During this long pause imagine a b one octave higher. Really discipline yourself to hear that note in your head. Now , without preparation simple place the left hand and bow and play the note. You may be surpirsed ot find that most of the time you hit the note dead on. The hand really does lknow what to do if you mentally hear the pitch in advance. If you miss, don`t correct it. Repeat the procedure a few times.

Then go back to your original b on the e string and imahine the same note with the left hand and bow off the violin.Now place the fourth finger or whatever finger on that note on the a string. It will surely be in tune.

Now go back to your original b on the e string. rest and imagine an octave lower with the bow and hand off the violin. Then just play the note perfectly in tune in third position.

Etc. Change the note every day.

Why do we take the hands off. Because it is all the preparation you are doing which is messing you up. Coming form nowhere the hands and fingers -know- the psoition of the note and the shape they need to be in to paly it in tune. You are learning to think a clear instruction in advance and then not interfere with the execution with losts of extra movements. All the preparation you are doing at the moemnt is simply sensing imprecise data back to the brain whioch would actually prefer you to stop mucking around so that it can get on with the job without you interferring ;)

Cheers,

Buri

February 1, 2005 at 02:21 PM · Ultimately, I think your goal should be Buri's second idea. Whatever, or whichever system you use to learn finger placement, you will want to work towards a physical understanding of the fingerboard. You will want to work towards the ability to "feel" where the note is. The thing about starting notes is that each piece only has ONE. So, learning the distances and feel of your body/arm/hand and the fingerboard and string distances should not be as much work as learning the entire fingerboard/string note placement (although, that is the eventual goal).

The "references" are there, all the time, it is just "becoming aware" of them that may take study.

You might look at "positions" as blocks of notes rather than strictly as "references" for hand and finger placement. Truely, your references, in the end, should be in the relationship between your instrument/fingerboard/strings and your hand/arm/body placement, regardless of what notes you are playing.

Buri's recommendation for using the exercises in Basics is a good standard approach, and one that you will find many on this board to agree with---can't go wrong with it.

Another approach, that tends to rely entirely upon your kineasthetic abilities are exercises as found in Hansen's "A Modern Approach to Violin Virtuousity" These types of exerices go straight to the point at releasing the player from "position references" to an innate understanding and therefore knowledge of the fingerboard/strings (after all, we can play notes above the fingerboard). But, it may be something that you approach after using exercises like those found in Basics---but it is something to strive for.

February 1, 2005 at 04:46 PM · I agree. The one thing I would mention that Buri just touched on is that you need to hit the note correctly more times right than wrong (I usually aim for twice as many times) IN A ROW.

My steps with my students are: 1. Figure out how to hear the note and find it.

2. Start cold: violin down, unwarmed up, (maybe sing an intro to yourself), then put violin up and hit note. If it is wrong, note how, then go through the whole procedure again. Count how many times wrong and double it. At some point if you've missed a few in a row and you tell yourself that now you must do 10 in a row right, your concentration will kick in and you'll start doing it.

Always practice more times right than wrong. Our brains are soft computers and whatever you do the most at home will come out in a performance.

Lisa

February 1, 2005 at 05:22 PM · Hi,

My suggestion is to practice audibly with an intermediate note. Don't find it out of thin air. Then, repeat the motion while not sounding the process. You will have measured the distance. Many players do this, and it works. You need you ear to guide your fingers at first. And I have seen it in action. Just look at the DVD of Szeryng doing Brahms in there is a part in the development where you can tell that he actually practiced that way. (Could be wrong as usual... hahaha). This works for me, but it is personal.

Cheers!

February 1, 2005 at 05:36 PM · Actually, Christian, your method is fairly common. I think we may all have been thinking in terms of getting rid of the hesitation in using reference or "inermediary notes." Intermediary notes, like sounding notes, tend to put the "halt" or hesitation into the equation.

Ideally, one would move onto using a method that does not need it, such as a kineasthetic sense of note location.

At any rate, I have used the method you describe and it does help to show distances and locations.

February 1, 2005 at 11:48 PM · Greetings,

I agree Christian. It is rather liek there are two stages in the development of the sense of the fingerboard. Without the one you describe the latter could be a very wearisome process indeed,

Cheers,

Buri

February 2, 2005 at 05:02 AM · Thanks for the suggestions. I've always felt quite stupid trying to find the note onstage, but I never knew how I shoudl practice it (other than hit-or-miss over and over, which just doesn't work.)

February 2, 2005 at 02:59 PM · Alex,

What Christian and Buri have stated is probably the way most people end up learning. I know that I used intermediary notes and then moved onto other techniques. The "hit and miss" thing may only be useful as a "self-test." But, honestly I've found that that kind of rote repetition often creates the opposite effect. If one does something incorrectly more often than correctly, the tendency is to dampen the ability to progress.

So, you might try what Christian described to begin with and then move onto forming a mental/phisical model of "where the notes occur" (this might be your own set of "blocks of notes" or "relative positions")and then try to progress from there. I know that for me, once I understood where the "traditional positions" were and could play three and more octave scales, I then began to "deconstruct" the fingerboard and string length. Basicaly, I'd make-up exercices that at first would allow me to hit all of the octaves of a chosen note, and then octave-third compbinations, and then other intervals, up and down the length of the playable string/fingerboard and onto more variations. Ultimately, patterns emerged. I did this while referencing the written note on the page as well. At times I had to write my own exercises, for sight reading purposes, if Kruetzer, Flesch or Sevick did not contain the combination/range I was looking for. (These days I use the Hansen exercises as a reference challange and to get an idea of where I might have gotten soft).

In the end, I believe that what "references" I am aware of are predominantly hand/arm and finger "feel" relative to the instrument and an awareness of where along the length of a sting I am deviding it. This tends to make me more aware of the natural overtones and devisions of the strings. It also tends to make me aware of the tonal qualities of the particular instrument I'm playing when I do these types of exercises.

February 2, 2005 at 04:52 PM ·

February 2, 2005 at 07:05 PM · Keep notice of your thumb's position on the neck and make sure the rest of your fingers play in a constant position relative to your thumb's position.

Think of it mathematically... your fingers are always a function of your thumb position.

February 2, 2005 at 09:51 PM · The thumb, like the intermediary notes is a good tool to get you to where you want to go. Obviously, it plays less importance the farther up or closer to the bridge you get.

February 2, 2005 at 11:39 PM · Greetings, ` respectfully take the opposite podsition to Henry. The thumbs posiiton is a diretc function of the fingers posiiton. This was also the view held by Galamian for what its worth.

Cheers,

Buri

February 3, 2005 at 07:31 AM · What about finding some weird double stop or octave in a high position? How do you go about doing that? I do the wild tapping thing too... actually before I started doing that, I'd actually use the tip of my bow to quietly bow the notes. It's quite embarrassing when I look back at not-so-old videos and I see myself bowing the octave over and over again because I'm doubting whether or not I heard the note right. It looks. SO. retarded. :( HOW DO I FIX IT FOR DOUBLE STOPS?

February 3, 2005 at 09:51 AM · Greetings,

I think you practice lots of scale sand arpeggios in double stops all over the instrument.

SEvcik is very systematic in this regard. I have a prferecnec for the Dounis Artists technique book.

Cheers,

Buri

February 3, 2005 at 02:49 PM · Hi,

Thanks for the comments. For me, I still use intermediate notes in practice often, because I don't always have as much time as I want to become "blind" in finding notes. I find that it saves me a lot of time. But, I guess that after doing it enough times, you do get a "blind" sense of where things are. I guess I like rather than hesitation the extra assurance.

Cheers!

February 3, 2005 at 03:11 PM · Buri, I tend to think of the thumb in the terms you describe. But, once the fingers are in place, the thumb can be another physical "reference point." Ultimately, the combination of the fingers/thumb along with all the other body parts makes the kinesthetic reference. In my own playing, I am fully aware of finger movement along the stings, but my thumb tends to follow. The thumb is a consequent not an anticedent.

I think placing the thumb as a primary reference by using it as the center of movement still locks one into "position playing."

At any rate, it is an interesting road to travel.

-A.

February 3, 2005 at 04:34 PM · Nothing caused me as much surprise when I began reading here as the notion that the thumb could be used as a reference for finding notes. It's a totally new concept for me, and something I have to check out. Do you guys do that kinesthetically by feeling where your thumb is and your hand in relationship to it, or do you actually look at your thumbs?

Wouldn't double stop exercises help you locate notes in pieces involving double stops? I mean, thirds have a certain feel and shape to them for example, that stays the same and only the distance ratio changes by shrinking as you go up the fingerboard. So wouldn't you be finding "a note" (one of the two notes you are to play) and the other one comes because you are accustomed to doing double stop exercises separately and so the shape of the interval is there in your hands so to say?

February 4, 2005 at 12:24 AM · Greetings,

Andrew, that is certainly true. The thumb also has the highest percentage of data receptors of any of the fingers so ignoring it would be daft. That may have been what Henry waas getting at.

Cheers,

Buri