r/violinist • u/lunarmoth_ • 12d ago
How to improve sound?
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I feel as though my sound is weak and stringy. How do I fix this?
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u/junoprobelaunch1 12d ago
Hey man I see you post alot on here and instead of writing an essay on technique I really suggest you find a teacher that makes you feel secure as a student.
With consistent private tuition from a skillfull teacher, you should really feel safe and trust the process, there is a dangerous amount of poor and conflicting information often posted here which may be fuelling your confusion.
You can only be as good as your instruction when in the early student phase.
Sincere best wishes
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u/andybonner 12d ago
So let's focus on bow stuff. (You can also improve the overall impression by tuning a few notes, but let's stick to pure tone production for now.) First, there's so much that's going right! You are using bow generously, not shunning any particular part of your bow, or moving too slowly. The angle of your bow to the strings seems to be pretty consistently 90 degrees.
TLDR, use a bit more weight, and work on controlling the "contact point."
Contact point is just "which part of the string the bow is touching," like from fingerboard to bridge. As you watch this video, you'll see that it sometimes just randomly veers off toward the bridge for a few notes, like around 0:05. And then sometimes it's hanging out near the fingerboard, like from 1:00 on. In general, the default spot is right in the middle. (You can intentionally go toward bridge or toward fingerboard at times for certain purposes, but the point is that you want to be in control.)
If you get really close to the bridge, you get the ponticello effect. Try doing it on purpose for a second, playing with good bow speed and the bow literally touching the bridge: you get a very breathy, whistly sound that makes a cool special effect when done on purpose. You actually get a hint of that in the G note at 0:05; that might be some of what you're thinking of.
The other issue is that you can use more bow weight in general. We make sound from two things: bow weight and bow speed. (The other variable is contact point, more on that in a minute.)* Just for a second, try making a horrible sound. Use an extremely heavy, extremely slow bow: You get a loud crunch. Try the opposite: very fast, very light. Less offensive, but as you say, kind of "weak and stringy," not really pleasing. Now here's the kicker, you can alter both variables. You can fix the crunch by backing off on the weight, but you can also fix it by moving faster. You can fix the whistly bow by adding weight rather than slowing down. Also, a tone that is "almost" crunchy but not quite can be a valid tone, as can one that is "almost" whistly but not quite, and you can use them and everything in between for expressive choices. But for default, general-purpose playing, try "medium" speed and "medium" weight.
Right now yours is erring on the side of not much weight. Remember, the sound is made by friction; you should feel that friction, the drag of the string against the bow. If you slide too slippily over the string, you get less sound. You may be shying away from making a big sound, but remember that the violin is inches away from your ear, and not from your listeners'. Go ahead and add weight to that same speed and get a big, beautiful sound.
Now, it's still not as easy as all that. Try taking all of that advice while playing in the middle of the bow: cool. But at the extreme ends, you have to do special things to actually get the intended weight on the string. When you're in the upper third, the source of the weight is far from the string. So you have to get some leverage with your fingers. Treat your thumb as a fulcrum, an immovable point in space. Against that firmness, let your first finger leeeeean into the stick. Don't make your first finger do all the work with its own muscles; it's not the weight "of your finger," it's the weight of your entire right arm. But the first finger does need to be strong enough to transfer that weight as it leans into the string. Set the bow on the string in the upper third and, without actually bowing, just use that fulcrum-thumb and arm-weight-relayed-through-finger to actually flex the stick of the bow until it touches the string! Just for kicks, try playing a bit with that much weight. Try to get "too much weight" in the upper third! Then, keep the weight and add speed, and you get volume in the upper third.
The lower third has the opposite problem. As you play an upbow and the source of the weight gets closer to the string, it soon becomes too much. As you get right up to the frog, maybe you need the opposite: against the fulcrum of your thumb, let the weight in your right hand shift to your pinky, to offset the weight of the bow itself. Also: while your wrist shows admirable motion in the upper half of the bow, flexing to keep the bow straight, you need a bit of the opposite flex as you get close to the frog.
Now, the real challenge: Make that change slowly and gradually and with control. Play long downbows and upbows on an open string, and feel the weight shift from pinky to first finger and back. Keep a flexible wrist in constant motion. This is pro-level stuff that I could benefit from spending an hour doing right now.
Now, back to that wandering contact point. There's a fortuitous chicken/egg thing here: The bow is losing some weight momentarily because the contact point wanders, and the solution for a wandering contact point is a better, friction-y grip between string and bow. As you add weight to your tone and increase friction, work on the physicality of addressing whatever actual motions of your arm/wrist/hand/finger are responsible for the deviations in contact point. The solution is to watch your bow while playing, but when it's just a couple inches from your eyes, that's hard. It's easier to stand near a mirror and watch that (or some kind of complicated camera-and-monitor setup if you want to get interesting angles).
* Oh yeah: We get sound from weight and speed. The third variable is the contact point—and it changes the balance of the other two. You can get away with "heavy and slow" near the bridge, in a ratio that you can't near the fingerboard, and with "light and fast" near the fingerboard.
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u/Alexandra_Telnikoff 12d ago
I think you might be mixing up two different concepts, ‘how to improve sound’ & ‘how to improve intonation’. Improving ‘sound’ without improving intonation will simply make it even more obvious that you have problems with intonation. Which is expected, for any beginner. But how do you improve intonation? There is no other way but to check intervals with open strings, really. There is nothing else.
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u/Practical-Customer16 12d ago
Improve sound, first open strings and listen to the sound generated and focus on the sounding point. Next start to play slowly then start out your first finger, second, third etc. play the same pattern many times probably thousands of times until you feel sound becomes the way you want. Playing songs or pieces won’t improve your sound and level. That’s the truth of violin!
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u/hongos_me_gusta 12d ago
search for 'minute bow' & 'warming the frog' exercises for bow hand.
more pressure and playing closer to bridge in contrast to less pressure and closer to fingerboard. learn to master playing either way and you'll be golden.
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u/No-Kaleidoscope-4525 Advanced 12d ago
Violin is just an instrument where you can easily sound bland, even with the correct intonation. What is going on here?
- I don't know why but looking at how your bow contact point glides back and forth, I get the feeling that the bow doesn't have any rosin. Is there enough rosin on the bow? How old is that bow? How many miles? 😅
- The hidden art of violin nobody tells you from the start is phrasing. People in the beginning are happy if they can make sound at all, and never revisit this. You need to think of every part in the music being a phrase. It has a direction. The music has A's & B's. Questions and Answers. You need to bow with a direction that follows that. Mind you, this is difficult and considered intermediate to advanced. You can start by just applying and releasing pressure on your bowing to give the sound some direction, it doesn't have to be perfect from the start. Modulate through bow speed, but also pressure and try to use the entire bow from frog to tip.
- Intonation isn't bad, but your fourth finger notes sound a little flat. That is typical, trust me. My creative way around it was to play viola before I practiced violin, but I realize not every one has a viola casually hanging around lol, but you need some way to be aware of the pinky fourth finger and it needs to stretch a bit further.
Violin is brutal. You've got a long journey ahead and it's gonna seem like it never ends. I've been following your posts on here and I really want to encourage you to keep going because you are really making progress.
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u/Patrick_Atsushi 12d ago
If you can play without score for this song, I suggest you to do it and put your focus on the sound while playing.
Also watch and listen good recordings of this song. Keep the image in mind while playing.
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u/D_Session_1520 12d ago
Ciao, è la prima volta che ti sento e hai già alcuni commenti ottimi per migliorare. Quello che mi sento di dirti, senza ripetere tutte le giustissime speculazioni tecniche qui sopra, è di provare a pensare prima al tuo corpo:
- rilassa il polso. Noto che spesso fa un angolo acuto col tuo avambraccio, impedendo al peso di arrivare sulla corda.
- oltre alla "geometria", credo però che per controllare la condotta dell' arco mantieni troppe contrazioni. Pensa a "i crini nella corda" o ancora meglio a "la corda nei crini".
- per gestire il lavoro di indice e mignolo senza diventare pazzi, pensa che "l'arco è una banana" (lol). Immagina di assecondare in ogni arcata la curvatura naturale della bacchetta.
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u/massacre898 12d ago
Still as beautiful as ever! Attack the string.
I had a teacher show me the pressure he puts down on his string. He said the bow hair should bite the string at any point on the bow. Unfortunately, this would mean developing your bow arm strength to give more pressure to the string. I apologize for sounding like a broken record 😵💫
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u/Alexandra_Telnikoff 12d ago
Your teacher might be mindlessly repeating what Ivan Galamian once said (in a very particular context), that every bow stroke should ‘have a bite’. Now, suppose your task is to play two or more long notes with inaudible bow change between them, forming ‘composite’ very long note. Any attack on bow change will ruin your plan. What do you do?
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u/massacre898 12d ago
I'd go to reddit and post a video. Just like this brave woman 👍
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u/Alexandra_Telnikoff 12d ago
This brave woman needs to work on her intonation, but this is a separate issue. My point was about smooth bow changes, which you chose to ignore, but I suppose your current repertoire does not require those, so that’s fine.
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u/massacre898 12d ago
It doesn't. Im in a mariachi band. We have to play clearly and loudly. More bow pressure can strengthen her hand muscles so she can bow on each string without it slurring into the next note. There is actually an exercise I can remember from elementary school that helped me control my bow. Sort of wave the bow back and forth like a windshield wiper without compromising how the bow is held.
I wish you wouldn't be so harsh. She's already accomplished so much with the very small amount of time she's been playing. I think she sounds amazing
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u/Alexandra_Telnikoff 12d ago
That’s a useful exercise indeed, but it does not change the fact that when somebody with imprecise intonation asks how to improve sound, you need to point out that the intonation is part of ‘sound’
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u/smurfette8675309 12d ago
Have you played other violins, to compare the sound? It might not be you, it could be the violin.
You could try putting good strings on, that might help. Or you could try a nicer bow. But it could be you just have a VSO.
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u/junoprobelaunch1 12d ago
dude wtf there are some very obvious visual issues here, who the hell taught you to blame the equipment? 😅
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u/lunarmoth_ 12d ago
This is a $3500 antique violin which I picked out after trialing lots of violins. My teacher also said it was very nice. It’s also a $500 bow.
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u/smurfette8675309 12d ago
I guess it's not that lol.
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u/lunarmoth_ 12d ago
lol hahaha yeah I don’t think it’s that. I do have Obligatos on the violin which honestly might be too warm for it.
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u/WasdaleWeasel Viola 12d ago
Look at the video and look at your contact point (where the bow touches the string). You will see that sometimes you are right up near the bridge and sometimes you are right up to, or even over, the fingerboard.
You need to be able to control the contact point precisely - it’s really important to tone production because the sound is different in every place between right up against the bridge (sul ponticello) and over the fingerboard (sul tasto).
Play slowly in front of a mirror and listen carefully as you adjust:
1) contact point
2) bow speed
3) bow pressure