Do you ever find yourself landing on the wrong string, or hitting other strings whilst playing? Do you find that your stream crossings are not consistently smooth? These could be […]
Do you ever find yourself landing on the wrong string, or hitting other strings whilst playing? Do you find that your stream crossings are not consistently smooth? These could be […]
We place the fingers on the strings of the violin to create the notes. Here are some 'finger numbers' and grid patterns that you can use to make it easier!
Here is a tune to sing whilst you bring the violin into playing position. Try it without the violin first!
How do you learn where to place your fingers on the violin? One of the easiest and quickest ways to learn how to get the right notes is by learning FINGER PATTERNS. Here's Finger Pattern 1 ...
We've just added the digital notation player to 'Pull Some Strings', a useful set of introductory exercises to help first-time players recognise the notes for the first time.
Tricky Trills will help you to practise double-stopped trills. Trills in thirds … trills in sixths … trills in octaves … and more … Very tricky trills indeed!
Here are some exercises for practising the G Major scale in thirds. Make sure you practise slowly, and be very aware of the position of your bowing arm.
These incredibly useful left hand exercises will help you to get really familiar with the placing of your fingers in the first four positions.
Give your 1st finger a proper exercise session with this first-finger-focused exercise based on quaver and dotted quaver rhythms!
These exercises are brilliant for practising double-stopped sixths! Use them for intonation work, and to develop a really solid left hand technique!
Is this the ultimate workout for advanced players? If your left hand can survive this, it can survive anything! To prevent cramps, keep your left thumb relaxed...
Hook, Line, & Sinker is a great study to use for practising hooked bowing. We use this technique to avoid unwanted accents or using too much bow when playing uneven note values. (such as dotted rhythms) in order to avoid unwanted accents on the shorter notes and to stop us from running out of bow!
For a happy marriage of aural and muscle memories, keep the first finger down and learn the distances to the other notes within the hand ‘frame'.
Practise your scales with different rhythm patterns, to make your left and right hand movements more independent, and improve your coordination.
Violinists often play portato (slightly re-articulated notes) instead of legato (smooth and connected). This study will help you to play as legato as possible!
