Developing a controlled vibrato

Exercises and ideas to build finger strength, improved tone and a continuous arm or wrist action

LIHAY BENDAYAN

Professor of violin at Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance, Israel, and master teacher at the online iClassical Academy

• BORN Ashkelon, Israel

• STUDIED WITH Ilona Fehér, Tibor Varga, Miriam Solovieff, Michael Gaisler, Rodney Friend

• TEACHES Conservatoire/academy students aged 17+; exceptionally talented children

Vibrato is an important expressive tool that we can use to intensify the sentiments and colours already within our playing. To apply it well, we need to develop hand and arm vibratos that we can control absolutely on all fingers, in terms of continuity, speed, width and variety, in every millimetre of movement that we make. This will help us to shape and vary our sound in every phrase of music that we play.

EXERCISES

A good vibrato should start on the pitch, move back towards the scroll and return again, clearly and freely, with control in the hand and between the fingers. To improve your vibrato skills, practise the following exercises using first a ‘pianist’s’ touch, where only the active finger is on the string, and then with a normal touch, with all possible fingers down. If at any point your hand becomes ‘stuck’, play a slow, easy scale with separate bows. On each note, crescendo dramatically while increasing your vibrato speed and width. This may feel counter-intuitive, because usually we decrease vibrato width when we increase the speed, and vice versa, but it will help to free you up again. If you feel any pain or stiffness, stop immediately.

RELEASING TENSION AND EXPERIMENTING WITH SOUND

For a violinist, tension means less resonance, worse projection and greater risk of injury, so to begin:

• Hold the violin under your chin, with relaxed shoulders and your thumb around second position

• With the left elbow, make small circles that gradually increase in size, without tension in the shoulder

• Now hold the violin using the weight of the head. Drop the arms and release any tension in your neck

• Finally, play exercise 1 without vibrato. Keep the fingers in place after each note, but slowly draw out the thumb until it is perpendicular with the neck. Release any tension between the thumb, wrist and fingers

To experiment with your sound, play exercise 1 without vibrato again, now with several full bows per note:

• Angle the fingers in different ways on the string. Flatter fingers give a warmer, wider tone

• Try pressing different amounts with your fingers. A softer touch will allow the strings to resonate more freely. Notice how much tension is introduced in the hand and arm when you press too hard

• Play using fingers 1, 2 and 3, while moving your 4 into different places relative to the other fingers, to find where it exerts less ‘pull’ on the hand. This can have a significant impact on finger flexibility and sound

HAND IMAGES LIHAY BENDAYAN

• Notice how the sound changes when you move the thumb higher and lower relative to the line of the wrist and lower arm

Figure 1 shows an ideal left-hand position. Release tension between your fingers and keep them well spaced, to improve resonance. In a balanced, central position, the hand and fingers can more easily oscillate forward and backward in vibrato with maximum efficiency and momentum, and with minimal tension.

ARM VIBRATO

A good arm vibrato relies on freedom of the fingers, which provide the ‘hinge’ from which the arm moves:

• Begin a one-octave scale with separate bows, with a relaxed, centred left-hand finger position (figure 2). Rock the finger backwards so that it is at a 45-degree angle to the fingerboard (figure 3), allowing the arm to follow. Keep the wrist in a straight line with the back of the hand. The action should feel elastic and controlled, led by the fingers and not the arm

• Repeat this motion on each finger, using the following pattern: 1; 2; 2–1; 3; 3–2; 3–2–1; 4; 4–3; 4–3–2; 4–3–2–1

• Practise the same exercise beginning from a forward position (figure 4) and rocking back to the centre

• Once you are confident, work with a metronome to build up from one oscillation per beat to two, three, four, six and then eight.

HAND VIBRATO

For hand vibrato, again begin each note from a relaxed, centred position and develop a controlled movement from there.

• In fourth position on the A string, with the first finger centred on an E (figure 5), repeat the one-octave-scale finger pattern above

• Play one oscillation per note at q= 60, by rocking the hand back from the middle position (figure 6) and to the centre again. Alter the angle of the fingers on the string only by moving from the wrist. Keep the finger joints and arm as still as possible

• Begin the exercise again from the forward position (figure 7), rocking back to the centre. Work up to eight oscillations per beat.

CONTINUOUS VIBRATO

Vibrato should add consistently to the shape and sentiment of every phrase, always leading into each new note without stopping.

• Play a long note with a 2, in any position. Steadily and repeatedly lift and drop a 1 lightly behind it, using only natural weight

• On the next long bow, hold down 3 while lifting and dropping only 2, and afterwards dropping 2 and 1 simultaneously

• Continue this pattern for the fourth finger: hold down 4 while lifting and dropping only 3, then 2 with 3, then 1, 2 and 3

Now try playing a scale with continuous vibrato. To begin, repeat each note several times on the same finger, pushing down the string using weight rather than force to avoid getting stuck. Phrase the scale by varying your dynamics and vibrato, and make sure that your vibrato is just as continuous when you shift, or play in détaché or spiccato, as it is in a beautiful legato. This is important to keep a sense of connection between the notes.

FOURTH-FINGER VIBRATO

Fourth-finger vibrato can be difficult because the fourth finger is weaker than the others, but it is important to develop it to match the others’ expressive range. With a strong, more capable fourth finger, your vibrato will be freer and you will have more control.

• Practise scales with a continuous, wide vibrato, using just 3 and 4

• Practise chromatics on 4 alone, from third position up. Up high the finger angle is flatter and it takes more pressure to push down the string, so widen and speed up your vibrato as you ascend

Work on extensions in parallel to build finger range and flexibility:

• In a high position, play a left-hand 1 followed by a 4, very slowly in alternation, with long, separate bows

• Move the 4 up half a position each time, always with a relaxed hand, wrist, fingers and thumb, and using minimal pressure

• Gradually shift down the instrument so that the intervals become larger. Try the exercise with vibrato and different fingerings.

FIGURE 1 Keep all fingers spaced above the string, with a free thumb

FIGURE 2 Begin with the arm in a balanced, central position

FIGURE 3 The arm in a ‘backward’ position, to the scroll side of centre

FIGURE 4 The arm in a ‘forward’ position, to the bridge side of centre

FIGURE 5A centred, balanced hand in fourth position

FIGURE 6A ‘backward’ angled hand in fourth position

FIGURE 7A ‘forward’ angled hand in fourth position

TRIGGERING THE VIBRATO

To sharpen the impulses that you need in order to trigger vibrato, practise the following exercise. This is like throwing a pebble on the lake: once you can make the pebble skip once, the other skips will follow automatically. A good impulse will give you momentum, so that you can get better results with less effort:

• Play a scale in martelé, with full bows and maximum projection

• For each martelé impulse, start a very fast vibrato, to give a simultaneous burst of energy from both hands

• Lift the bow in an arc to end the stroke, then curve back down for the next ‘attack’

• Practise with different finger pressures and in legato, to check you can control left-hand impulses without disrupting the bow.

REPERTOIRE

Once you have developed controlled arm and hand vibratos, you can choose how to use them to intensify the emotions in your playing. To begin the Franck Sonata, you could try a hand vibrato that is narrow, fast and a little nervous; for the Tchaikovsky Concerto (example 1), you might prefer something warmer and wider, or to use several types of vibrato within a single line. The possibilities are endless! Evaluate your vibrato width, speed and colour continuously within the context of every phrase.

IN YOUR PRACTICE

Spend five minutes releasing tension at the beginning of every practice session, to improve awareness of your body before you begin. After this, it is a good idea to start without vibrato, to ensure that when you do introduce it, it is controlled and intentional.

To improve your vibrato, practise the exercises in this article daily for at least a month. When you can do this without tension and with absolute control, practise the exercises again using more complicated material, such as all the variations in Flesch’s scale system. Don’t overdo it: effective practice is about teaching ourselves how to achieve maximum output with minimum effort. From the moment we try to do too much, we add tension, lose control, and make everything more difficult.

TIPS FOR TEACHERS

When we work with students, it is important always to begin from a balanced, tension-free position, with a correct arm, hand and finger position relative to the strings. In all of these exercises it is not the notes that are important: it is understanding how the body works, so that we can help our students to create new exercises through which they can continually advance their techniques in increasingly complex contexts.

Teaching our students to develop controlled hand and arm vibratos, even if naturally they find one far easier to play than the other, is important to give them better control of their movements and the sound that they produce on the violin.

INTERVIEW BY PAULINE HARDING

FURTHER MATERIALS

I share technical videos, articles, photos, exercises and personalised feedback about vibrato and other topics on my course Master Your Violin, at iclassical-academy.com.

Look on YouTube to see how great violinists use vibrato, from Heifetz (pictured) to Oistrakh, Perlman, Stern and Milstein. Each one has his own distinctive style.

NEXT MONTH Cellist Ophélie Gaillard on bow technique