Violin Video Lesson: Just Me and My Vibrato

All right, I would like to share with you how I learned to vibrate, when I was around 10 years old. It all started when I noticed that my friends were doing it, vibrating, but I couldn't. So I set out to correct this. You see I am very very determined, some of my friends would say even to the point of extremely obsessive. Well, I tried everything to get this vibrato but it was all in vain, nothing worked. So one night while I was sleeping around four in the morning, I dreamed I was playing a violin and out of all the things, vibrating. I immediately woke up from this dream, reached under my bed and pulled out my violin case. I took out my violin and bow, and began mimicking exactly what I did in my dream. Everything I saw my hand doing, in my dream, I did the same way and guess what, it happened. I could vibrate.

So I simply put the violin back into its case and back under the bed and went back to sleep. And that was that. I had a vibrato from that day on. Found it in my dreams. Well, because I learned to vibrate through a dream it has turned out to be the hardest thing for me to teach to students. What I tell them is that vibrato is the only thing about playing a violin that ever came easily to me. So with that I would like to welcome you to VirtualSheetMusic.com's Meet the Expert. My name is William Fitzpatrick, and I am the Henry Temianka professor of violin at the Hall-Musco Conservatory of Music which is located on the Campus of Chapman University in Orange, California. I'm as well Director of MusiShare and the MusiShare Young Artist Program which is located in Irvine, California.

While a student at Juliard I remember Ms. DeLay explaining to me that one had to be very careful about not using the two sides of muscles in the left arm at the same time as doing so would produce a stiffness that could lead to a muscular problem later on. By this I mean, this side and that side, you know how you can tighten them up. Well, I found this to be true, and I felt it particularly in my efforts to obtain a faster vibrato. I would just get stiffer and stiffer. Doing a fast vibrato just wouldn't happen for me. I felt very limited.

All right, so let's move forward a bit in time. Once while teaching an eight year old student at the Conservatory de Levallois in France, I tried for a year to get her to vibrate with no positive results. It was very frustrating for me and I can't imagine what it was like for her. So I was about to give up, and simply move her to another teacher. My thinking was that by moving her, perhaps they could succeed with another approach.

While I was considering just how to announce this to her, I taught a lesson to an older student who came in exclaiming "That's it, I know what I won't be doing in my jury this year". I asked what she was talking about and she said that after her last jury the judges said that she "trilled like Tweety Bird". Well, I smiled and said, "What do you mean? Show me" and she did. She trilled. So I said then, "Okay look, why don't you just simply slow it down". And she paused, did so. And then looked at me with a "really?" look on her face.

Well, I thought a lot about this lesson and then began to think about my student with the vibrato problem. So at our next lesson I said to her, "Let's try something new. Let me show you how to do a trill". She got very excited, she did it, she was really happy to have learned this new technique. So for two weeks we did trills, particularly with her second and third finger. Then at the third lesson I said, "Okay, do the trill again." And a moment later I told her, "Okay now do the trill but don't put your third finger on the finger board". Like that, suddenly it happened. She had a vibrato.

Well, for many years I taught vibrato in this way but while my quartet was in residence at the University of California, Irvine. I found a new way as I was introduced to rotations. Using rotations to explain the vibrato, just to me made so much more sense, and as well connected to other areas of left hand technique. These are the same rotations that I talked about in an earlier video called What are rotations on the violin. If you use that video as a base then what I'm about to say will probably be more understandable.

So now with this understanding of rotations, you've surely noticed that the vibrato's point of origin has switched. It avoids what Ms. DeLay warned me about with the two sides acting at the same time, as the point of origin is clearly now the elbow. But it really looks like it comes from the wrist, don't you think? It's a very deceptive gesture. So let's look a bit deeper into this, here are some of the exercises that I give to my students that help to develop vibrato.

Okay, first put your first finger on the E string. Now pulling your finger back like this, try to touch and return from the string as quickly as possible like this.

You want to touch the string as lightly and as quickly as possible.

Now, when you can do that, try it two times. Or even three.

How about focusing on going from the string back into the hand. To do this I use left hand pizzicato, like this. You see it goes from here to here. I start students learning this very early through my melodies book, with the second melody.

So there we have two ways that can help to describe how the finger comes to and comes from the string, defining the vibrato gesture. Oh, do note that the vibrato goes toward the scroll of the violin. As the motion of the vibrato, you see it's from here to there. Try this exercise to help develop this reaction in your play. Start from the low and go quickly back, like this.

You can do one at a time. Two. Or even more. Doing this will help to establish the vibrato pattern is not even. I mean if it were, then it would sound like this.

So that's it for this discussion about vibrato. If you have a comment or a question to ask me, please feel free to post it below. Do take care, and as always here's hoping that you're becoming more and more aware of what your body is doing, that this knowledge is helping you practice into becoming more efficient and effective, leading you to even better performances.

Automatic video-to-text transcription by DaDaScribe.com

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