Worksheet For Pressure Distribution Systems Short: Fill & Download for Free

There’s no one way to better one’s tone. Generally, better tone comes from longer experience playing, but what does that actually break down to? In other words, what are the components of good tone? Most professional violinists will agree that there’s a default good tone, what one of my teachers called concert sound. There’s ways to modify this sound artificially through strings/instrument, and many professional violinists, and especially soloists, have a somewhat unique sound. In this day and age, unique individual sound is very contested. Modern soloists are criticized for the unique tone they produce. But it wasn’t always that way. The older greats (Ysaye, Heifetz, etc.) were often highly regarded for their unique sound! As fun as this tangent was, unique sound is not what we will focus on.I will give you the chronological order that I use. Please keep in mind that every teacher is different and will likely explain things differently, or use different techniques to produce tone.BeginnersI find the best way to mitigate thin, scratchy tone is to avoid it altogether. My first few lessons with a beginner are just pizzicato to let the student get comfortable with the instrument before we use the bow. During this pizzicato stage, I immediately start them on pencil bows, where they practice their bow hold on a pencil with markings for their fingers. This is important because bow control is incredibly important to controlled tone. We will then have a week of practicing bow holds on the bow to get the student comfortable with the extra weight, with exercises to work on finger strength (especially the pinky) and independence, two important contributions to bow control. The sole purpose of all this extra work is to give the student all the information they need to succeed in creating a good tone the first time they draw the bow across the string. If I did not scaffold up, the student would lack the strength, muscle memory, independence, and looseness to draw a good sound.I’d let the student play on the string a little bit, just because they’ve worked hard so far and deserve some fun before I show them what they are doing is probably wrong. The most important habit to set up now is having a straight bow. Beginners are very difficult to work with I find, because any slight derivation from perfect technique will compound itself in the future and present problems, which is unfortunate. The violin is so expressive and malleable but to play it well requires great discipline, something that many beginners just do not have, nor the patience to understand that things will feel stagnant at the beginning because of how calculated everything must feel. I’m still researching and trying to find ways to make beginning violin feel more organic and less controlled. Anyways, continuing with the straight bow. It’s imperative it be straight because all attempts at working on sound in later stages will be futile without a straight bow. Many systems are available, such as wire rods that attach to the violin that guide the bow to stay in between the bridge and fingerboard. Personally I have a strong dislike of such artificial means. I would rather my students learn with everything in their case, it feels like the learning is more permanent and it feels more natural. One thing that I’ve used to much success, both in forming a straight bow and in fixing a crooked one later on, is to have myself hold the bow to THEIR instrument, where the bow is touching the string at the tip, is straight, and the stick mimics the line the student needs to draw with their hand. Then I’ll have them put their best bow hold on the stick, in the place where they would normally be if they were starting at the frog. I’ll have them move their bow hold up and down the bow and ask them to feel all the muscles in their arm and hand, and notice how they move. I’ve had success with very young kids using this method. The reason I like it so much is because it (1) has an easily seen visual component of the path of the bow (2) has a concrete path that the student can follow (3) promotes loose fingers since they cannot grip the bow to glide up and down (4) promotes using the whole bow.I will do listening exercises comparing good and bad tone and have the student identify and comment on the qualities of each one. First I’ll have students use their own vocabulary, and eventually I’ll introduce the technical terms we generally use such as: scratchy, loud, soft, whispy, resonance, etc. I’ll then transfer the exercises to them, having them make a sound and commenting on it. At this point I introduce the idea that sound is something to be drawn out of the violin, not forced. This imagery generally does wonders for tone, and almost immediately lessens the scratchy and thin tone to one with a bit more volume.The last thing about beginner bowing. I’ve noticed that beginners tend to use about 1/8–1/4th of their bow for every single note, no matter how long or short it is. Initially I’ll encourage the student to use the whole bow in their practice, and once they’ve reached a maturity with the bow, I’ll introduce a very simple worksheet for bow distribution. We’ll talk about Full, half, and 1/4th bows, how to plan ahead, where to place the bow before playing (frog, middle, tip?), etc. I find that worksheets, or visual examples, are really helpful in making things concrete for younger students. This goes into the learning of young children, which we don’t need to go into.IntermediateEveryone has a different definition of what intermediate means, but I tend to think of beginner lessons has having a series of goals that provide the student with a basic set up for tone, bow control, intonation, posture, and looseness, and probably a few other things too.The first thing I’ll talk about is the pop. We’ll place the bow at the frog and try to wiggle the string without making a sound. Then very simply, I’ll release the bow and it will make a pop sound and then ring. We’ll do the frog a few times, and then work our way to the tip, which is much harder. We’ll do up and down bows when releasing the bow. Then instead of pulling the bow up to release, we release by drawing the bow on the string. Make sure the student is using their arm weight instead of pushing down, it’s very important to make the distinction. We’ll pick an easy piece and have them wiggle the string before they play each note. Then I’ll play the piece for them without wiggling, but make the pop as audible as I can, since it still happens. We’ll work on that for a while too, to get a popping sound before every note. Then I’ll label it, and call it arm weight (not pressure!)A good exercise I learned is called gorilla bows. Kids especially love these, but they require some space. Start by doing down bows that go all the way down and then some. Start at the frog and do a down bow really fast and keep pulling down after you’ve reached the tip, and keep the circle going to bring it back the frog. That sounds complicated but when you demonstrate it, it’s much easier to understand. Then we’ll do up bows that go all the way up and some more. Start at the tip and go up really fast, keep going after the frog (make sure the frog nib doesn’t pluck the string!) and all the way up and keep the circle going. Have them notice how down bows are generally louder than the up bows. Why is that the case? Gravity! (Hurray interdisciplinary teaching!) So then, and this is the fun part, I’ll invert my upper body so that my violin is as upside down as I can make it while still standing up. Now try the up bow, which should have gravity on it’s side. Do similar up bows to before, where they use the whole bow and keep going. Have the student do it and have them notice how it feels. Revert your body position and try the up bow again, but keep the same feeling as when upside down. Wow! It’s the same both ways now! This helps teach equality of sound between up and down bows.After that, one of the first concepts I’ll introduce is the triangle of tone. Speed, pressure, and placement. I have a very good graph for this I created somewhere, and I will edit it in when I find it. Speed is how fast the bow goes, pressure is how much you push into the bow (different than weight!) and placement is where you place the bow between the fingerboard and bridge. Generally I introduce one at a time, although adult students can usually handle all at once. First we’ll start with pressure, then speed, and eventually placement. I like the 2nd book of Sound Innovations by Kirk Moss because it has some great exercises on all 3 of the above, and on different pages! The only I don’t like is he uses non-standard notation to help students remember to do certain things, which I think might encourage too much dependency on such notation. It’s usually easier to work on the extremes of each category, and then hone in to the finer things. We’ll do really fast bows, and really slow bows, and then find all the ways in between. Same with pressure and placement. Placement is the hardest, and sometimes I wait to talk about it until later when they have better control of their bow. Placement is when I’ll introduce sul tasto and sul ponticello. It’s not important that they remember the terms, or accurately demonstrate them. But they are the extremes for placement, and having the student understand what they sound like will help them self-correct (which is another book in itself…)I’ll do more listening exercises also, this time with finer ideas. We’ll listen to different kinds of string pieces, styles, and tones, and talk about what the different tones mean, how they might be produced, and maybe even try a few! This contributes to what will now be hopefully evident as my over-arching argument, that the best way to have a student produce a good tone is to help them to notice things, which leads to self-correction.I’ll also be using more refined finger exercises for the bow. We’ll do more exercises to strengthen the fingers, while maintaining independence. We’ll talk more about what each finger does for the bow. We’ll talk about the triangle of bow fingers (so many triangles.) We’ll talk about levers as simple machines (even more interdisciplinary learning!) and how the thumb is the fulcrum, holding the entire weight of the bow. We’ll talk about how curved bridges are stronger than straight ones (so much physics) and how this translates to fingers. Hopefully the student has maintained a good bow hold, but often times this isn’t the case for a variety of reasons. By going in depth on how the bow hold functions, it can help correct bow holds, as well as make correct ones even more solid. So the thumb should be curved. We also need another finger to balance the rest of the stick so we use the pinky. Hopefully the students pinky is strengthened enough to take this weight, but it can vary. Sometimes for fun we’ll try playing with just these two fingers and see how it doesn’t work very well. So we need another finger to add control, and to place the weight of the arm. Pointer finger! Maybe we’ll experiment with where on the pointer finger we should put the bow, and then settle on the correct one. I’ll explain how the arm weight we talked about before travels from the shoulder, upper arm, elbow, and starts to narrow down the forearm INTO the pointer finger. We can try playing with just the 3 fingers and see what it’s like. At this point, I wont go into full detail about the remaining two fingers other than mentioning that they add further control and security.I’ll also include more complex bowings, bow distribution exercises, and expect a higher general level of tone. I’ll introduce the basic bowing terms such as detache, martele, etc. How is that important to tone? Because each new bowing requires at least some work to help maintain tone, so it’s important to make sure you’re drawing connections between the new and the old. Bow distribution exercises will now be focused on the solo repertoire instead of worksheets, and we’ll be creative in how we work. This is also probably a good place to have the conversation about how sometimes we can break slurs, what slurs really mean, etc. At this point in their playing, I’ll expect the tone to be at a certain level.I think it’s helpful to note that in repertoire that uses different bowings and tones, I’ll not expect nuanced playing. If there’s an accent, we won’t really talk about how it might be different than other accents elsewhere. But I’ll expect to hear a general accent.AdvancedFirst I’ll apologize this is so long, but playing the violin is very complex and I figured anyone asking this question is in need of advice for either themselves or a student. My hope is you can use this chronology to place yourself, and use the remaining advice to further your tone.Similar to the difference between beginner and intermediate, the difference between intermediate and advanced is similar. I have certain goals for intermediate players and when they achieve all/most of them, then I’ll consider them an “advanced” player.At this point I’ll be doing spot work. I’ll notice any deficiencies in how the student attempts to meet my expectations (are they in tune, can they correct out of tune notes, how do they practice, how is their tone, can they use different colors and tones?) I’ll introduce specific pieces, etudes, and exercises to correct these deficiencies. My first goal for any advanced player is to double check that they have all the basics down extremely solid. For example, I had a student with a bouncy tone. Their bow stuttered, and they had a lot of tension. So I assigned them The Swan by Saint-Saens, which is all lyrical playingOnce I’m affirmed that they have a solid foundation, we’ll begin to explore advanced repertoire and, gasp, advanced bowing techniques. For the same reason as before, it’s important that the student recognizes that playing an advanced bowing technique is only good when the tone is also good! Barriolage only sounds good when there’s good tone!Just to clarify, to work on tone during bowing techniques, usually taking it slowly can help, and really feeling each note.Now I’ll start working on refining the tone to concert sound. Concert sound is what soloists use. It’s mainly based on projection of sound, instead of tone, and there is a difference. Scratchy, thin tone is a lot harder to project. I tend to refer to projecting as a density instead of a volume (3D space). Volume, to me, is more based on dynamics. Density means that no matter where someone is sitting in the concert hall, listening to you, they can hear whatever you’re doing regardless of how soft it is. Projection and confidence are often interchangeable. Concert sound is achieved through drawing the bow through the string, not on top, and pulling the sound out sideways instead of vertically. This is where analogies really help, because the technical explanations can be a bit much, especially through text.I’ll introduce the next big concept. First we started with straight bow, then popping, then the triangle of tone production, and now pronation/supination. Anatomically, pronation and supination refer to a counter-clockwise/clockwise rotation, respectively. I’m going to edit in another diagram that will help explain the following. Starting at the balance point, the arm should be relatively neutral. As we pull the bow down, the Right Forearm should pronate (turn counter-clockwise) more and more as we get closer to the tip. I’d say the forearm rotates about 40–60 degrees during this time. When rotating, you should be putting more pressure on the pointer finger. This will help even the tone between the frog and the tip, since it’s naturally harder to have it sound the same at the tip. We’ve had other exercises help with this, but this is what we are working toward. Now, starting at the neutral balance point, we use and up bow to get to the frog. Our forearm should supinate (rotate clockwise) slightly. Only about 10–20 degrees by the time we get to the frog. What this does is puts the pinky in a better position to hold more weight, because of physics. So, starting at the frog, doing a full bow starting at 10–20 degrees clockwise from the neutral position, and then start pronating, first by a little, and then to the 40–60 degrees as stated above. It should be a fluid motion, which the diagram will help show. And when one does an up bow, start with the 40–60 degrees pronated at the tip, and then just do the opposite of the down bow.Sometimes students naturally do this because of the bowing exercise I gave at the beginner section, and sometimes students have stutter at the balance point. The balance point is unique in that it’s where the elbow is open at a 90 degree angle. This means that at this point, the part of the arm the moves the bow the most is transferring from the shoulder/upper arm to the elbow/wrist. Students stutter at this point often, because they don’t understand how to transfer the weight appropriately. Pronation/Supination will help this stutter, but be careful about when to apply it. I wouldn’t teach it to someone who just picked up the bow.I’ll continue listening exercises, building off of what I did before by including recordings of the same piece by different performers and comparing them. The whole purpose is to get the student to (1) notice and express what they hear in terms of the professional lingo (2) attempt to imitate things they hear and (3) learn how to experiment in their playing to get the sounds they want.After AdvancedSometimes this means college, graduate school, or whatever.There will be another cycle of checking for deficiencies, and assigning pieces and etudes to correct them.Often times this stage is about freeing the student from tension, regardless of how much they had before. Very few players entering this stage have naturally low tension in their playing, unless they’ve been specifically groomed for low tension. Tension gets in the way of tone and sound, and can affect performances nerves which is a death spiral.After tension is released, there’s now more we can do for sound! Usually the student has matured enough to notice a lot more, and have more independence in their learning. All stages should encourage thoroughness and meticulous practice, but it’s especially important to encourage it at this stage so that the student makes sure that every single note they play has good tone. If a note doesn’t have good tone, it’s cause to stop and fix it.Instead of elaborating on every single difference, I’ll just generalize and say that I do all the things I did before, just with higher expectations, harder repertoire, and continuing learning with more advanced concepts.Some general themes:A. My general philosophy is to increasingly put independence and correction on the student the further on the study. In later levels, in lapses of tone I will only mention it and expect it to be fixed, unless it’s a deeper problem that needs more work.B. Helping students notice things will help them become increasingly aware of how their tone sounds, and how they can improve on it. Often times players play with poor tone because they don’t understand that there’s a difference between their tone and good tone. It seems obvious to us but it isn’t always for them.Sorry for such a long post, but I get really excited about violin pedagogy and I hope you learned something in addition to your asked question!Tim