Smooth string-crossings

How to anticipate and execute string-crossings with maximum fluidity and control

Teaching & Playing

DAVID GILLHAM

Associate professor of violin at the University of British Colombia and string tutor at Domaine Forget, Quebec, Canada

COURTESY UBC HR

BORN Guelph, Ontario, Canada

STUDIED WITH Martin Beaver, Franco Gulli, David Stewart, David Zafer

TEACHES Conservatoire students and private students aged 14+

When playing string-crossings, last-minute, jerky movements of the right arm can disrupt legato and détaché passages, and a left-hand finger placed too late can lead to poor coordination with the bow. To overcome these issues, I recommend practising in double-stops to prepare the left hand, and using exercises at the frog, middle of the bow and forearm to activate the right fingers, wrist and arm. String-crossings should be beautiful, smooth and artistic, but many players neglect them in their practice and so produce unnecessary bumps in their sound.

EXERCISES

To produce smooth, well-coordinated string-crossings, it is important to prepare the left hand before the bow reaches the new string. Practise playing with maximum clarity and rhythmic regularity in exercise 1:

• Place the left-hand fingers down on the notes either side of the string-crossing at the same time, to prepare the pitches before you move the bow on to the new string

• To do this, lift the fingers flexibly from the base joints, keeping your hand as still and relaxed as possible. Imagine you are swinging from a monkey bar, without squeezing or grabbing with the fingers or thumb

• Practise the same idea using any of the opening exercises from The Dounis Violin Players’ Daily Dozen

You also need to prepare the vertical level of the right arm, so that you don’t press down or create bumps in your sound. On a down bow, the arm should drop down and open up. On an up bow it should rise again:

• Imagine a deflated balloon attaching your right arm to your side and begin an up bow from the tip. Pretend that the balloon inflates as you move to the frog, so that it lifts your arm up to the level of the bow

• With the balloon fully inflated and your arm still level with the bow, change smoothly to a down bow. During the down bow, imagine the balloon deflating again so that your arm sinks back to your side

With that same feeling, practise the maximum possible string-crossing motion of the right arm:

• At the tip, silently rotate the bow on the spot from the E string to the A, D and G and back again

• Move the arm in a smooth arc level with the bow. Again imagine the balloon inflating and deflating

The next exercise will help you to cross strings even more fluidly:

• Play a down bow on the left side of the G string, almost touching the wood of the violin. Imagine pulling the string with the bow, and that there is a weight hanging from its tip

• On the up bow, ‘push’ the G string from as far to the right side as you can without touching the D string. Imagine a weight at the heel

• Adapt your arm level as you move between the two sides of the string, to create a circular motion at each end of the bow

In exercise 2, anticipate each string-crossing with your vertical arm motion and bow on the side of the string closest to the string that comes next, for smoother string transitions with a better tone.

STRING-CROSSINGS FROM THE FINGERS

To prepare the right-hand fingers to play at the extreme heel of the bow, practise string-crossings using just the pinkie:

• With a relaxed hand, released first finger and curved pinkie (figure 1), play a down bow on the G string at the frog by making a tiny horizontal stroke with the fingers

• Give a tiny push down with the pinkie to move into an up bow on the D string (figure 2) and a down bow on the A (figure 3)

• Practise moving between these three positions. Release the weight of the pinkie to rock the bow back down to the next lowest string

Work on this motion in exercise 3. Notice how the pinkie and ring finger bear most of the weight at the frog. You don’t really need to use the first finger until you reach the middle of the bow.

FIGURE 1

FIGURE 2

FIGURE 3

STRING-CROSSINGS FROM THE WRIST

To play string-crossings in the middle of the bow, you will need a loose and flexible wrist. Practise exercise 4 with hardly any finger action but with an exaggerated wrist motion. Follow the curve of the bridge and really feel every clockwise and anticlockwise movement of the wrist as you cross between strings.

REPERTOIRE

The character of the music you play will always dictate the type of string-crossing that you need to use. If a passage is fluid and smooth, the string-crossings should be fluid and smooth too. In fast passages you will have to anticipate every movement.

IN YOUR PRACTICE

Begin by working on one Dounis or Sammons exercise (see box) daily for a few weeks. Apply that idea to your repertoire and etudes, producing the smoothest sound possible, then gradually add new exercises until you can incorporate every string-crossing approach into your daily practice. Once you know how to prepare your left hand and right arm for smooth string-crossings, you can make active decisions about how to use these motions in everything that you play. Search for musical solutions and compromises, experiment and make changes until you are happy with the result.

TIPS FOR TEACHERS

For students struggling to play smooth string-crossings in a passage, I often write that passage out in its corresponding open strings, to give their left hand a break and allow them to focus 100 per cent on the right arm. Once we’ve worked together on all the different ways to change string in different parts of the bow, I encourage them to work on string-crossing exercises from a variety of different books daily, to keep things fresh. I also remind them to be patient, because really smooth string-crossings take time to achieve.

INTERVIEW BY PAULINE HARDING

FURTHER MATERIALS

Ivo-Jan van der Werff’s A Notebook for Viola Players is primarily for violists, but I’ve been using his simple, effective string-crossing exercises on the violin for years. I also use The Dounis Violin Players’ Daily Dozen, Albert Sammons’s The Secret of Technique in Violin Playing, Carl Flesch’s Basic Studies for Violin and Paul Viardot’s The Bow: Twenty Etudes for Violin, which are all excellent books that work on the same principles in slightly different ways.

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