RIGHT HAND TECHNIQUE

 The right hand is your voice. Learn the left hand: notes, shifts, vibratos. Then, create music with your right hand: articulation, dynamics, colors, and all the changes of these things. Do not think because you play the viola that you don’t play the bow! If you are spending a lot of time thinking about your left hand you are not existing in the realm of artistry. It is so easy to forget about the right hand’s instrument, or to think of it as an accessory to your “instrument”. It is true no sound comes out of a bow, but (almost) all sounds, colors, and articulations come from the bow. (Exceptions to this principle are vibrato and expressive shifts.)

Most of your problems (once you’ve set up your left hand to play in tune in one position and then learned how to shift properly) will be right hand/left hand coordination or strictly right hand problems. Look to your right hand when something isn’t working or even if something just seems hard. Look to your brain to make sure you’re thinking about your right hand, use your brain to manage your ideas and then your focus. Philosophically, consider what it would sound like to tell someone your qualifications as an artist are that you learned all the notes. I mean, it’s a great start, but really it is assumed before any artistic conversation begins. The point of learning the notes is to do something with them. That all happens with your imagination for your right hand.

A FEW RIGHT HAND AXIOMS:

  • STOPPED STRINGS AND OPEN STRINGS DO NOT RESPOND THE SAME

    • You must “grab” an open string with the first finger of your right hand more deliberately than a stopped string (a stopped string is one where you are playing a note with a finger of your left hand). An open string is slightly more likely to get a skating sound from your bown than a stopped string if you don’t change the way you use the bow.

  • STRING CROSSINGS MUST BE MORE “ON” THAN NOTES ON THE SAME STRING

    • Any bouncing stroke (which is almost always from the string) must be more “on” during a string crossing than if you stay on the same string

  • SHIFTS DISRUPT THE RIGHT HAND

    • If you shift during passagework you need to make sure not to allow it to disrupt your right hand/left hand coordination

  • VIBRATO HELPS LAUNCH THE SOUND

    • If you vibrate before you play your bow, the instrument will be in motion ever so slighly, but if you kick off the vibrato with the bow it can help you accomplish a louder sound without burning or crunching the sound.

  • YOU MUST BE ABLE TO PLAY EVERY BOW STROKE IN EVERY DYNAMIC AT EVERY SPEED WITHOUT DISRUPTION

    • slow bows, fast bows, repeated bows, backwards bows, without swells or unevenness, and you must be able to do them all in every dynamic. This is VERY IMPORTANT

  • STRINGS RESPOND TO THE BOW DIFFERENTLY DEPENDING ON STRING THICKNESS AND LENGTH

Learn how to create a consistent sound across your instrument: pick a dynamic, sound character, and bow speed and then practice (a scale) to keep those constant from low to high, on all four strings; look at your tracking point to see where your bow needs to be on thick and thin strings, lower on the strings and in higher positions, and notice if there are differences between your first finger string length and fourth finger string length (in the same position on the same string). You may be surprised at the micro-changes you are naturally executing to maintain a consistent sound, or you may be surprised at how much variation in sound you are getting by accident. You do not need to be hyper-aware of the tracking point, but you do need to be hyper-aware of the sound quality you are actually getting, and if you recognize how very specific the tracking point (for whichever sound you are imagining) must be, you can fix anything that doesn’t sound the way you intend. Once you can maintain a consistent sound you can use your observations about how your strings respond compared to each other to make informed choices about how you want your playing to sound.

ADDING COMPLEXITY

Tackling complex techniques is a great idea, but you have to master the basics first before adding complexity. When you add complexity (open strings, string crossings, shifts) things tend toward disorder. There are a few reasons for this. One is that there has been a literal change that requires tiny adjustments in your technique. These disruptions and adjustments are so small that you may actually think the problem is your left hand. After all, fast disruptions often happen during passagework where your left hand is changing notes in a way that requires more attention than something slow. But it doesn’t actually mean the problem is the notes. Secondly, when you add complexity you have changed your brain’s focus from one thing to more than one thing, which brains are not very good at. You must manage these disruptions by noticing them, understanding them, and then managing them. See my page about Mastering the Metronome in the section about Changing the Number of Clicks for Subdivisions for more on adding complexity. When something is complex, look for ways to simplify the elements before you build the complexity back up again.

Contact: integratedviola[at]gmail.com