Assignment 20 - Anna Baskin

How to: Vibrato on the Violin

What? You mean you don’t just jiggle your hand?

Apparently not. I recently realized I haven’t been doing vibrato on the violin correctly… ever. I was pushing up and down, like I was pressing a button, to take pressure on and off the string. It sounded right (to me at least) and it wasn’t very hard. I somehow managed to sneak by with my fake-vibrato until this year, when the correct method was finally demonstrated to me.

First of all, you don’t take pressure on and off the strings – that’s actually a huge no-no. Instead, you move your hand backwards to bring the sound slightly flat, then back up. The goal is to move the joint of your finger towards the scroll of the violin, so that your finger pad rolls parallel to the strings.

If you try it on an instrument slowly, it sounds like a screeching imitation of an ambulance (Weeee-woooo, weeee-woooo, weeee-woooo). To practice, you slowly speed up the movement until you’re vibrating your hand (very different than jiggling).

Some advice to help with the movement: keep your left hand loose and flexible, touch the strings with the tips of your fingers, prevent your thumb from clutching the fingerboard, and make sure to use your shoulder to hold up the instrument, not your left hand. Put it altogether and you suddenly gain the ability to play any note, no matter how high up the scale, with a warm, rich tone instead of the shrill pig squeal most violinists (including myself) usually produce.