Why do violinists move their fingers

You can make sure that your progress goes well by concentrating on the fingering techniques that will create clear, beautiful sounds. A Connolly Music Publication.

Dos and Don'ts of Violin Fingering. Lifting from the Base Knuckle — Do Again, another common violin fingering problem is the result of excessive tension: not lifting your fingers using the base knuckle. Share this article. Search StringOvation. Connolly Music Home About us Shop our brands. StringOvation Latest articles Submit a guest post. Subscribe to StringOvation. Northport, NY I'm not sure I follow all of the minute detail what you guys discuss on this website and clearly with great insight and knowledge , but it seems to me that there is something about Milstein that is just different from everyone else, and that nobody can quite explain it.

What IS the man doing, anyway? When I saw a picture of his hands I noticed he has an extremely long 4th finger, can't help but wonder if it got in the way sometimes and hit the other string. He then showed how the large size of his own hand made some movements difficult. Unfortunately for some, I have no intention of taking everything everyone says seriously and feel rather sorry for those that do.

C'est la vie. As for Perlman, I'm always amazed how he manages to play with his monster mitts. Truly wonderful that he can achieve such delicacy with such large fingers. Sander, he Milstein -is- holding up the violin with his left hand. The degree to which one does this varies from player to player with Milstein being somehting of an extreme.

What I think is deceptive is the statement itself. The elfy hand is balanced on the arm which is balanced on the spine which is suppooirted by the legs, all done via the porimary control of head neck and back. It is when one fals into the trap of feeling the left hand asna independent entity holding the violin thta real trouble can start.

Incidentally, it is quite posisble to support the violin a lot while using a shoulder rest. That may be the best of both worlds. I am glad you mentioned that last point. I hold the violin mainly with the left hand. The shoulder rest simply helps me avoid having to raise the shoulder during shifts my shoulders are quite slanted.

I get concerned, when I see students of mine who use shoulder rests having the left hand completely uninvolved in holding the fiddle Horizontal fingering is more comfortable, but I can't get my fingertips close enough together to have consecutive notes in tune without my figers being more vertical. So much of this depends on one's anatomy. I know a great exercise for figuring out your natural position. Hold your violin as you normally would, but keep your left hand at your side.

Then, take your arm, put your hand next to the neck on the left side. Notice the angle of your fingers and where your thumb touches your index finger. Very quickly move your hand into playing position keeping that same posture, with the neck touching just above the middle joint of the thumb. Thank you so much for the exercise! Just some clarification about the wrist: I assume you want it to be flat, rigth?

Because any bending inward or not will change the angle of my fingers. If I keep the wrist in a neutral poistion, the angles of the fingers to the fingerboard are vary from degrees, depending on different fingers. But if I bend my wrist a bit inward, my fingers can be pretty flat on the strings.

Also, if I turn my wrist clockwise a bit to keep my palm completely parrallel to the fingerboard, then the angles of my fingers become almost 90 degree. I was taught to do this by my Chinese violinist many years ago, as it was considered necessary for shifting.

Now I wonder if I should avoid wristing the wrist this way. I should instead let the left forearm to do more work when it comes to shifting, right? I find that this makes my wrist vibrato much easier and more fluid. However, the trade-off is that it makes proper intonation much harder. I just read this morning a book by Yehudi Menuhin. Some excerpts:. Menuhin rested the neck on the tip-most joint of his thumb.

He writes that this is crucial, as it allows the violin to be "rolled" by the fingers. In the photos, his wrist breaks noticeably towards the body, even in first position. It doesn't quite touch the body, but it comes close.

This is very different from the instruction in Fischer, Violinist Master Classes, my two teachers, etc, but does feel more comfrotable to me. IMO, this helps to counter somewhat the vibrto stiffness caused by Menuhin's thumb position.

He held the scroll higher than the body. He writes that this allows gravity to aid in shifting to higher registers. About 18 percent of people can do neither, according to a study in The Journal of Hand Surgery. But in a similar group of 90 professional musicians from "three of London's leading orchestras" 38 first violinists, 33 second violinists, 19 viola players , none lacked this ability, and all but two were able to bend just their pinky finger. The two players who failed the first test have difficulty lifting up their ringer finger when their pinky isalready holding down a string:.

And their attempts to perform the tricky move of holding down the E string with their pinky while reaching for the G string with their ring finger "results not only in discomfort but bad technique. The authors hypothesize that this small movement may function as a type of "natural selection" for elite musicians, and suggest that perhaps kids ought to be tested for this ability before being handed a violin.