Playing the Violin

The standard way of holding the violin is with the left side of the jaw resting on the chinrest of the violin, and supported by the left shoulder, often assisted by a shoulder rest or a sponge and an elastic band for younger players who struggle with shoulder rests.

Left hand and pitch production

As the violin has no frets to stop the strings, the player must know exactly where to place the fingers on the strings to play with good intonation. Through practice and ear training, the violinist's left hand finds the notes intuitively by muscle memory.

Beginners sometimes rely on tapes placed on the fingerboard for proper left hand finger placement, but usually abandon the tapes quickly as they advance. Another commonly used marking technique uses dots of white-out on the fingerboard, which wear off in a few weeks of regular practice. This practice, unfortunately, is used sometimes in lieu of adequate ear-training, guiding the placement of fingers by eye and not by ear. Especially in the early stages of learning to play, the so-called ringing tones are useful. There are nine such notes in first position, where a stopped note sounds a unison or octave with another (open) string, causing it to resonate sympathetically. Thus, "when unaccompanied, [a violinist] does not play consistently in either the tempered or the natural scale, but tends on the whole to conform with the Pythagorean scale.

Vibrato

Vibrato is a technique of the left hand and arm in which the pitch of a note varies in a pulsating rhythm. While various parts of the hand or arm may be involved in the motion, the end result is a movement of the fingertip bringing about a slight change in vibrating string length. The "when" and "what for" of violin vibrato are artistic matters of style and taste. For example if you overdo the variation of the note's tone it may become very distracting and overwhelm the piece.

Pizzicato

A note marked pizz. (abbreviation for pizzicato) in the written music is to be played by plucking the string with a finger of the right hand rather than by bowing. While for normal players pluck the violin strings with pizzicato technique is always done with the right hand finger, But there are also players who pick with your left hand and the special songs that require a high speed between swipe with a bow and plucked with the fingers so that the left hand finger is used.

Right hand

The right hand as the holder of the bow has an important role in creating the sound. The right hand is responsible in terms of tone quality, rhythm, dynamics, articulation, and timbre. By knowing the techniques of bow a good rub, then a player can adjust the sound produced by the violin.

The most important technique in violin is a way of holding the bow. Usually the bow is held with the thumb is inserted in between the lower end of the bow. Other fingers placed on the top bow.

The resulting sound will be louder if the bow swiped with a high speed or by putting pressure on the strings of a violin. The resulting sound quality is different, if increasingly pressed by the bow string, then the resulting sound will be more rough.