Bow-swingers, what type of vibrato do you use?

I'm just starting to learn wrist vibrato with my teacher, and it's slow work. Has me very frustrated and it also got me curious --- for all the violinsts here, and maybe violists too (does 'cello apply also?), what type of vibrato are you most comfortable with or is your favourite? Is there a certain technique that is more popular in your area with your local teachers?

I'm a violist, but I learnt on the violin first. The way I learnt it was first finger vibrato - basically practicing rolling the finger back and forth in a specific rhythm - and gradually it naturally morphed into something that involves the finger, my wrist and my whole arm to an extent. I only had a couple of teachers for a very short period of time when I was first learning - a total of maybe 8 months - but the teacher I consulted for a few months last year to fine-tune some things had nothing adverse to say about my vibrato technique at all; she was much more concerned about some bad habits I'd picked up in my shifting technique, which was too jerky and not fluid enough, and the fact that my many years as a choral singer had me trying to tune my viola playing the way singers do, instead of a modified pythagorean system, which still sounds out-of-tune to me, yet has improved my unity with the ensembles I play in (go figure). Honestly, I didn't know there was such a thing as differing vibrato techniques, as you've laid them out in the poll.

I can't answer this poll since I use both arm and wrist vibrato to my whim (they can both be suitable in their own way.) In fact, any decent violinist has more than one kind of vibrato.

Interesting, J. Lee, that your shifting technique was also deemed as jerky: my teacher refers to that as one of my problems all the time - it comes from all the unecessary tension I have while playing.

I'm not a bow-swinger, but as a trombonist, I tend to use full-body vibrato.

I can't answer this poll since I use both arm and wrist vibrato to my whim

Yeah, that's why I answered Other.

Interesting, J. Lee, that your shifting technique was also deemed as jerky: my teacher refers to that as one of my problems all the time - it comes from all the unecessary tension I have while playing.

I can hardly believe that you have tension going on...it doesn't sound like it too me. You may not have as much as a lot of players, but probably more than you should ideally, and your teacher wants you to be the best you can be. The whole left-hand technique has to be really fluid, and that's one of my problems too. I tend to clutch too much, based on an irrational subliminal fear that I'm going to drop the instrument, and also the fact that I don't practice nearly enough. I also taught myself to shift improperly; at least some of the time, when shifting from first to second or third position, I would leave my thumb anchored in the same place on the neck, when proper technique dictates that it must follow the first finger wherever it goes up to fourth position, where it meets the curve (one of the ways to know you're in the right place for fourth position is if you feel the curve against your thumb, and as long as your thumb and first finger are aligned - another of my problems - you'll be in exactly the right place). None of this I knew before last year, and still I somehow managed to play principal viola in the local orchestra for over 25 years - though I could aspire to nothing higher. This is pretty common among even professional musicians...lots of players compensate for a glitchy technique with musicianship and musicality, but it's no pathway to greatness.

It's ironic. Before the invention of the chinrest, keeping your thumb in one place and freely moving about the fingers was the right way to do it. The main scales were 1 finger scales to develop your ear. Your thumb, being static, would serve as the only guide to the fingers. Violinists like Paganini and Wieniawski played this way.

Really??

I knew that Louis Spohr didn't invent the chinrest until about 1820, and that it didn't come into widespread use until later, but I had no idea about the fixed thumb technique - much less it being common until the second half of the 19th Century!

I remember you mentioning Spohr's technical innovations before. Was the moveable thumb technique something he pioneered?

This is pretty amazing, yet it makes sense. In the 18th Century, with no chinrest, violinists held the instrument on the right. When did the switch to the left happen, do you know?

I don't think he was directly involved in pioneering new techniques, but his invention of the chinrest did lead to the moveable thumb technique, and to the concept of positions. The violin was in fact held by the hand, leaving the head to move freely, before the chinrest. Ruggiero Ricci talks about all this in his book Ricci on Glissando: The Shortcut to Violin Technique, which advocates the pre-chinrest technique (glissando technique) to learn the violin. Simply putting down the next finger (1-2-3-4) bypasses the ear, hence the use of 1 finger scales as means of practice. Fascinating stuff - and the way all the old virtuosos played.

Being the walking anachronism that I am, I find it fascinating that I was somehow automatically and naturally drawn to a technique that was the correct approach 200 years ago.

I think I'm going to have to get Ricci's book.

Does Ricci advocate the cultivation of modern moveable thumb technique once the student is established, or does he believe we should all go back to the old way of playing?

B

Does Ricci advocate the cultivation of modern moveable thumb technique once the student is established, or does he believe we should all go back to the old way of playing?

It's never completely clear, but it feels like the latter. Book also comes with all the exercises you'll need to develop that technique. It rocks.

Depends, I usually use finger vibrato in like the nose bleed registers of the violin..but in regular positions I use hand vibrato.

wrist vibrato is best;granted you dont shake the fiddle in the process...

It is most effective and-more importantly-its pleasing to the eye of the audience member

wrist vibrato is best;granted you dont shake the fiddle in the process...

It is most effective and-more importantly-its pleasing to the eye of the audience member

You know how much the eye of the audience member matters?

*does the ok sign with hand*

That much.

(Wrist vibrato *is* generally preferable, though definitely not always. Kogan, Menuhin and Elman made finger vibrato work, and Ferras made arm vibrato work as well.)

Vibrato?! :horrified:

People still use that stuff? :longface: