What are Rotations?

Welcome to Virtualsheetmusic.com's Meet the Expert. My name is William Fitzpatrick, and I am professor of violin at the Hall-Musco Conservatory of Music, which is located on the campus of Chapman University in Orange, California. I am as well, director of MusiShare, which is located in Irvine, California. I thought we might have a discussion about something which is very, very dear to me and how I teach, which is called rotations. Now, at a masterclass at the University of California Irvine, I heard someone look at a pianist and ask the following question. "Which is faster, to do this, or to do this?" And the pianist answered, "This is faster."

And the person who was giving the class looked at the pianist and said, "Why is it then that you pla.y this way?" That caused quite a stir in my mind, as I asked myself, "Wow, do I play this way or this way?" And all of a sudden, I realized that I played this way. Now I went to New York and as soon as I could, I walked and knocked on the door of my teacher, Ms. Delay. And I said, "Ms. Delay, I have something to show you. I just figured out that I don't play this way. I play this way."

And she looked at me and smiled and she said, "It's true, Billy. We do play this way. But not everybody can understand that." Now I took that to mean I shouldn't teach it, which I didn't for about 25 years. But that's how I played. When I played, I played this way. All right, shall we examine that gesture just a little bit? What we're talking about is playing from the elbow a rotation, which goes that way. Now I know you're all going to say, "But professor, that's impossible. How can you possibly play the violin like this? You've got the neck, it won't allow you to play like that." But you see, I'm not crazy stupid. Of course, you can't play like that. But what will happen is because of the neck, what was once this, will become this.

Let's try something. If you were to take your hand, and you're doing this. Now, hold your thumb. What happens to your hand? It goes that way. What does that remind you of? Of course, your vibrato. It reminds you of your vibrato. You see holding it, it's just like with the neck. And that means that you're rotating on your elbow, but it mutates into that gesture. So obviously, this can work with your vibrato, here, here.

What else can it do? Shifts. You see, if I'm throwing my fingers this way, I'm going like that. Here we go. That gesture, going this way and this way, my rotation is turning my hand and making me go higher. That becomes my shift. What else could we do? Obviously, a trill.

Ah, but that's that vibrato trill. Well, slow it down.

And you see I all of a sudden have a huge range of possibility of trills. What else could happen? Well, because I am throwing from my elbow my fingers, I don't have to press, I don't have to squeeze with my left hand. How's that possible? Well, if I'm throwing it, my hands are free, my wrist is free. I use the acceleration or the speed that my finger is now coming to the string with gravity or weight, to make it so that the string goes down just far enough.

Here. Let's look at that from a closer distance. So here we go. My hand is back. I'm going to the string. That is my rotation. It looks just like that. Except my finger, my thumb, is stopped. So this is what we call, or at least I call, rotations. If you have any questions or any comments, please leave them for me below on the page. And I look forward to talking to you again soon.

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