Elements of sound production.

A lot of my friends you’re still with me. I congratulate you. And I feel so honored that you find this course worth of your time and effort. We were just about ready to put the bow on the strings and start playing. I just wanted to spend a moment to explain why we started with the bolthole first and why we’ll first play with the bow. Only very simply because the bow is what creates and controls the sound of the violin. It seems counter intuitive at the beginning because the violin is the one getting all the attention it belongs to the violin family it is all about the violin sounds like and so on. But for us the performance the most special thing about the violin is the bow the bow makes the string vibrate controls the dynamic softer or a louder the articulation long short the intensity of the sound calm or energetic the temper of the sound mellow or aggressive. All of that which are the most important characteristics of music is controlled by the bow. So if we establish even from the very beginning and attention to the way we work with the bow it will be easier later on to keep these qualities of the sound as the most important aspect of our music making. Let me give you some more information about how the sound production on the violin works on one side. We have the bow with its hair coated with rosin for better friction. On the other side we have the strings of the violin We already talked about how the little teeth of the hair catches the string pull it and as they release the strings starts vibrating then they catch it again. Who is on. So here is the catch moving the ball on the string makes the string vibrate but it stops it in the same time right. Think about the moment when the string is caught and pulled. This is when the boss stops the string. This is very important to realize because it changes very much the perspective on how we create the sound. The best resonance is achieved not by making a lot of sound but by allowing the sound and the string to vibrate creating a vibration and then letting go. That’s why we spend so much time on learning how to use the muscles and keep them relaxed because relaxed muscles can easily let go of a string to resonate. This leads us to the three major ways we can control the sound of the violin. First we have the sounding point. This is the point of placement of the bow between the bridge and the fingerboard. In general the closer to the bridge we play the louder the sound and the closer to the fingerboard the sound gets softer. Here’s why. As we said earlier the boat vibrates and stops the strings at the same time. You can easily see the amplitude of vibration on the G-string. Look at the belly of the vibration right in the middle of the string. The closer the ball moves in the direction of the belly of vibration the more it stops the string from. But the further away it goes. In other words closer to the bridge the more the string is free to move and the amplitude of vibration gets bigger of course the closer to the bridge we go the harder it gets to make the street vibrant. That’s why we need better contact a little bit more pressure and slow or both. And the sound is definitely louder another way to change the sound of the violin. Is the speed with which we move the boat. This is not the speed of the notes we play but the speed with which we move our bow arm. We can use the same amount of bow and play for ten or twenty seconds or use the whole length in less than a second. Here is an example of a Slobo as you can see I have plenty of gold left because I’m moving my arm very slowly. And here is the faster version. I use the same amount of dough in less than a second. You can easily see how this affects the sound. The Slobo makes the string to vibrate with a narrower amplitude. So it sounds softer and the fastball creates big vibration and is louder onto the third one. The pressure of the bow. The more pressure we apply the harder the tip of the bow hair catch the string and the harder they post. This again makes the amplitude of vibration bigger and the violin sounds louder. The lighter the bow less contact with the string less poor last vibration less sound these three the sounding point the pressure and the speed are the three major ways to control the sound of the violin and they have infinite number of combinations. Especially at the beginning. If you are not happy with the sound you are producing the answer it is usually in the balance between them. For example too much pressure combined with sounding points away from the bridge and Slobo speed will be stopping the string too much and won’t allow the string to vibrate. Something like that. Libo closer to the bridge. No matter the speed one have enough pull of the string and will have a surfaces and there are different exercises to practice these. But we will talk about them after we get comfortable with moving the ball on the strings.