Achieving Cleanliness in Violin Playing

So you're trying to hit a tennis ball with a racket or you're trying to hit a baseball with a bat or just trying to play ping pong. Well, all of these require great timing if one is to be successful. So with that in mind, why don't we explore ways to develop the timing needed to play cleanly as a violinist on virtualsheetmusic.com's Meet the Expert?

My name is William Fitzpatrick, and I'm the Henri Temianka professor of Violin at the Hall-Musco Conservatory of Music which is located on the campus of Chapman University, Orange, California. I am as well director of MusiShare and the MusiShare Young Artist Program which is located in Irvine, California.

So what exactly do I mean by timing? Well, for example, the finger and the bow must be played simultaneously if it's going to be clean. I mean, you put your finger- it has to be at the same time as the bow for it to be clean. This task is truly difficult, but there is a way, and many teachers talk about it. My teacher Stephen Clapp and Ms. DeLay talked about it. Leonard Bernstein talks about it. Lots of people talk about it. They all talk about preparation. So much of this talk about timing is really about being prepared.

So why don't we look again briefly at sports? You see with tennis, one has to prepare one's feet to get into the right position to swing at the ball. One has to visually follow the ball across the net. One has to bring back the arm to get ready to swing. And so you see it's about preparation. So much of playing really well, really cleanly is about being prepared. Sometimes I tell my students that playing the violin is like a sport, but I'm not sure they fully understand to what extent I mean this. Well simply put, just like tennis or baseball with the violin, things must be prepared in advance, meaning, your fingers must be in place before your bow starts or it simply won't be clean.

I remember having a lesson on the Bartok Concerto No. 2, and on the sixteenth note passage in the first movement, Ms. DeLay told me that my performance of the passage wasn't clean. Just what she suggested that I do to get it cleaner opens the door into this discussion of finger first practicing. She said that I should place the finger then play the note for each note. Didn't matter if it was out of time, I just needed to do it in this way so as to create my habit. So I practiced the Bartok from then on like this.

So what this did as well is show me that if I put the finger in place first, that if it was on the string prior to playing the note, it's so obvious but suppose I had even more fingers in place, would this make the timing issue even more advantageous? Using this backdoor route, we come to a basic principle. Stay loose at all costs.

Here, let's look at these three notes, A, G, C sharp. If I play them separately like this, then it's difficult to get the timing right, why? Because the finger has to be down, everything has to be at the same time, right? It's like we said. But if I put them all down at once, I simply need to place the bow as the finger is already there and already prepared. Here, putting my first, my third, my second finger down at once and voila. What this means is that I am doing two things or more at once. But how is it possible? Some would say we can only do one thing at a time. Well, suppose we explore programming, two or more things, two or more events to occur at the same time. To do this let's have a look at the G minor Fugue by Bach in the first sonata.

As you can see, we're putting two fingers down, sometimes three at the same time. We were doing one and three, three and four, two and three, three and one,and now all three. They're all three. We're figuring out how to put down in place more than just one finger at a time. So to help develop this kind of thinking, I use eight tunes that have chords, three or four chords as this prepares the mind to place the fingers all at once.

I can consider that I have to have my second finger and my third finger down at the same time. Here, my first finger. Here, my second and third again. Now, I have my fourth, my first and first again and here we go. I have to have my second finger on two strings, third finger and now my third and first, my first, third and second. I am learning or developing now this skill of having fingers down at the same time.

Also in Dont Opus 37, there is another eighth tune which is number 18. This one takes a linear approach and turns it, in fact, into learning again how to take a line but how to prepare two notes at a time. Here, listen to it. Now, what's happened is that I'm playing C sharp and an A, but I'm going to playing them at the same time. I'm playing an E and a G sharp, I'm going to play them at the same time, going to put my fingers down at the same time. Here we go. I'm doing two things at once.

I do hope that this video helps you to understand how the development of this kind of timing will help you to play cleanly as a violinist. If you have a comment or a question to ask me, please feel free to post it below. As always, here's to hoping that your practicing is becoming more and more efficient and that this is leading you to even better and better performances.

Automatic video-to-text transcription by DaDaScribe.com

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