Beginning & intermediate violin Video Lesson: How to Make a Beautiful Sound on Violin

Hi there, this is Mary Elizabeth Brown from Strings Around The World. Here today for Virtualsheetmusic.com to talk a little bit about how to make a beautiful sound on violin. One of the most common questions I hear from beginning and intermediate level violinists is, "How do I make a beautiful sound?" And it really comes down to three factors. First of all, we need to realize that the sound that we make is directly related to the way we use our bows. We will talk a little bit about the left hand later, but the primary source of that is here, in your right hand. We effectively need to develop a recipe for our beautiful sound. We have three ingredients to use in that recipe. They are bow weight, bow speed and our choice of contact point.

So when we talk about bow weight, we're talking about the amount of pressure that we put on the string with our bows. If you hear crunching sounds when you're playing, it's likely that your bow is too heavy. I like to use the word 'weight' instead of 'pressure', because the word 'weight' sort of implies that we relax our arms and let our arms do the work, in terms of putting weight on the string. As opposed to 'pressure', which might mean that we could lift our elbows or use our shoulders, which we don't want to do. So we're looking for a relaxed weight in the right arm that will allow us to have a good contact with the string. This is what we mean by bow weight.

When we talk about bow speed, we're really talking about the rate of travel in the bow, between the beginning and the end of a note. We need to make sure that we balance the speed of the bow with the weight that we put with our arms, in order to produce a beautiful and resonant sound. If the bow is too fast, you'll hear a sort of skidding or skimming sound on the violin. And if the bow is too slow, we'll move back to that crunching sound that we talked about earlier. So we're really looking for a balance of bow weight and bow speed.

The last element we need to talk about is the idea of 'contact point'. If you think about the space between the bridge and the finger board as a highway, we'll see that we have lane one here, right next to the bridge and lane five, over here by the finger board. Now, we could think about lanes one and lanes five sort of as the shoulders of the road. So we're going to drive our bows there in emergencies only, or for special effects, which means we will spend the majority of our time in lane two, three and four. If I play in lane two, I'll have a different sound from if I play in lane four. As we move closer to the bridge, we'll have a more intense sound. And as we move closer to the finger board, it will be a softer sound.

Once you are familiar with these three elements of sound production, so bow weight, bow speed and contact point, it's time to do some experimenting to find a sound that you really love. Keep in mind that no two people, and no two violin and bow combinations will be exactly the same, so it will take a little while. I would suggest using some review repertoire and scales, so that you can really focus your attention there, on sound production. Once you've done that, it's time to incorporate it into your repertoire. If you know a little bit of vibrato, that will help to make the sound really sing.

That brings us to the end of our video for today. I hope you'll join us for the next one. Be sure to leave your comments and your questions below, so that I can address them in one of the next videos. Thanks and see you soon.

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