First open strings in the middle of the bow.

So the big moment has arrived. Now that we have the violin in place we’ll add the bow and we will start playing. By the way for these exercises you may want to put little stickers on the ball and divided into three equal parts. Something like this this way it will be very easy to control how much you are using and which part of the ball you’re playing. I borrowed stickers from my 4 year old son’s collection. So that’s why I have a frog and a ladybug. But he can pull anything you like in my case every time I see the stickers they make me smile. And I like that. So all we’re going to do with the bow. We already did with the pencil. Now let’s line all the fingers on the ball itself. For the thumb we have a very convenient place very special place. It’s right here just at the edge of the frog between the frog and the thumb letter the middle finger will come across the thumb as we did earlier the index finger will touch between the first and the second knuckle that ring finger with the first knuckle and the little finger on top of the stick. If this feels uncomfortable go back and do a little more practice with the pencil exercises. OK. Let’s put the ball on the second string from the left. This is the string to end on the note D. Do you remember the exercise in three parts. We did one two three. Here we start with number two the middle of the bow. All right. Let’s play a few notes. So just to make sure. Find a mirror and look at your arm at and check that you’re not moving the whole arm. But mostly the forearm like this. We want to isolate the middle part of the whole motion if the upper arm is moving it should be minimal OK let’s play a few more days. OK. Now let me describe very quickly how the notation works and more add some music to look at. The first thing you need to know is that we use the music staff which is simply five lines evenly spaced on which we write the notes the note D stays right under the first line of the music staff. Let’s play some more Ds in the middle of the. OK. Now let’s switch the string. How do we do that. Well remember the funny exercise we did lifting the arms to the sides very slowly. That was so you can warm up and strengthen the shoulders but also because this is one of the most common ways we change from one string to another. So it is the level of the upper arm that controls on which string we play from the string level which is slightly lower in the upper arm and the ball will move to the extreme. OK now we are on a string then of a is written on the second space. What is the space. Well as we said the music staff has five lines and they make four spaces between them. We named the notes in the spaces with the first letters of the word face F A C D Ok a string keep playing in the middle of the bag here. We are still using movement number two. Upper arm is relaxed. We’re moving the fore arm a string is thinner than the string and may require a little bit lighter. But make sure you’re not pressing more than necessary. Now let’s go to G-strings lift the upper arm higher until it moves to G level and let’s play there the notes we’re playing now are coronets. Each of them has one big long. That means that depending on the tempo they can be on the slow side. If the tempo is slow like this one two three four four they can be on the fast side if the tempo is fast like this one two three four. But there will always be exactly one B long. Let’s play a few more of them on the G string. One last thing before we go to E-string What are these two little extra lines about the no g. Well these are called ledger lines and they’re short just for convenience. Imagine what the music staff would look like if we continuously have all the lines for the notes we can play on the violin. It will have something like 12 or 13 lines and it will be extremely hard to read the notes in the middle. So the solution is to still have only five lines all the time. And to add short lines for the notes that go lower or higher than the music set. So for g this goes like this. Here is D. D. C B A G Let’s play a few more G’s in the middle of the boat check the violin check the bar hold. And let’s go. OK. Now let’s slowly lower the upper arm and go to E-string the is the thinner string we have. So be very careful to not over press also seventy point for E-String is very close to the bridge Ferragut. Now let’s look at the note is written on the OF SPADES. Remember face here this F A C D. Also how do we know that this is the No. Why is it not G or a flat Well because of this little fancy sign the treble clef or the G clef the dot in the middle is always the indicator of the note G. So once we know where the note G is we can figure out the other notes as well. In the case of ean that’s G A B C D E. That’s how we know it’s the No. The Ok that’s playing.