Hi, I'm Beth Blackerby at ViolinLab.com,
and this video is a tutorial on the Sad Romance
or Sad Violin. Either title, you put that in the YouTube
search engine and you will find this lovely piece.
Someone drew my attention to it and now I use it as a teaching piece. It's
wonderful for practicing
long sustained bowings and and melodic phrasing.
So the second part of this video, which will happen very soon
is a demonstration. And there will be a close-up of the fingerboard. I have tapes
on the fingerboard. You may not have tapes but this will help you stay
oriented to where
the notes are. I will be saying the note names, and I will have the graphic
of the music along with it. Now I do have
a transcription this piece with bowings and fingerings that I've done
and as a PDF file and I have mp3 file of
the accompaniment to practice with. Both you can find
at ViolinLab.com. Just go to the Resources page
and and you will be directed to to the page where all the PDF in mp3 files are
and you can download those yourself for practice.
So, without further ado, this piece starts on
E: open E - fourth finger on the A string,
either way, that's not an ideal fingering.
We usually don't play open Es for long note values because an open E is so shrill.
We are going to start with our hand
in fourth position. Don't be afraid if you haven't shifted or you don't know
positions. It's okay.
This is a really simple way to start. It's just for this introduction.
So you will put your first finger
where the fourth finger usually goes on the A string.
That's an E so I will put my
first finger where that E goes and then
than after we planned introduction we come back to first position.
Later in the piece there two spots we have to shift
again. We will be shifting to third position.
The notes will be on the E string and so we'll be moving
our first finger to where the third finger usually goes,
which is an A. And you'll be substituting first finger so that
first finger will be playing an A
in third position. The second finger will be playing A B,
and then the third finger will be playing a C.
It's really close to the B. It's a half step away, so
if you can play these three notes, and just get used to these notes
it will make that shift
much easier. After the demonstration I'll give another
tutorial on and how to make it sound really beautiful.
So this is the demo.
now shift.
open A
get your 1st finger ready.
2nd finger is hovering.
1st finger ready on the D.
crossover
3rd finger hovers to get ready.
Now it repeats.
Get your first ready.
2nd finger is hovering.
Get 1st finger ready on the D.
We are going to shift.
Now shift up to the C.
down we go.
Now like to give you a couple tips on how you can make this
sound very beautiful. This is in a slow tempo.
It in 3/4 time. So we have 3 beats in the measure,
and frequently you have 2 beats in one bow
followed by a bow with only one beat in it. That's
unequal bow distribution - unequal bow speed,
because for 2 beats our bow has to go slower,
and then it's followed by
a quicker bow, because we only have 1 beat.
You see this all through this entire piece.
So 1 2 3
1 2 3
So when you how something like this, typically what can happen
is that that third beat is too loud because that quickened bow speed
will make that note louder, so we have to compensate.
We have to make the first bow a little heavier,
and then that up bow, the third beat lighter. So what I want to do is to think
that you're moving your hand through water,
and on the first 2 beat, your hand is
underneath the water, and on the 3rd beat it floats
on top of the water. So basically what we're doing is
were altering our pressure, the amount of weight going into the string.
So sinking down
and now floating on top.
sink
And you can practice this with a scale.
It's always good to take a technique that's presented in a piece of music,
take it away from that music, put it in the context of a scale.
That way you can put all your focus into that technique.
I would have students play and A minor scales. it's in A minor,
so why not, and play that bow stroke.
1 2 3. Heavy - light
Hopefully you're using full bows.
That's the way we're really gonna get a beautiful, legato sound, as you have to be
using the whole bow.
Whole bow strokes are more successful if they're going straight.
Because when a bow is traveling in a straight path, and what I mean by
straight
is a really mean, that its really going perpendicular to the strings.
So when the bow is moving in this path that creates
this perpendicular movement, in relationship to the strings,
then we have a consistent
contact point. It means that our bow is consistently
the same distance from the bridge and fingerboard. It's not changing around.
So when the bow goes crooked, then our sounding point changes, and then it
alters the sound.
Now there are times when we purposefully change the sound,
but ideally we would have this consistency. So
practice just that Bowing. Practice these full bow strokes.
with really paying close attention to the weight,
how much weight you're putting into the string, how the bow is traveling,
and it will make this more beautiful. The slurs. We have many slurs in here.
Tere's the first one.
There's another slur. Alot of times
with my students I see that slurred figures tend
to stop or hesitate with a bow in the middle of the slur.
So the change of finger puts a little
disruption, a teeny little pause in the flow
of bow speed. pause..
And string crossings can do the same thing.
So you want to be aware of that and make sure your not
stopping the flow of bow speed. So keeping that momentum going
through the bow
Another thing that I see
with students is that they will divide the bow into unequal lengths.
So for these for these slurs. Here's a common
mistake I see. My students will sometimes
use all their bow on the first note of the slur, and then there's just a teeny amount of
bow left for the second part the slur.
so that's called unequal bow distribution.
Bow distribution is a very broad topic and
it applies to many different scenarios. But in this case what I mean is,
is they are not distributing the bow evenly. So if you have 2 equal
note values, those were equal notes. You want to try to divide your bow into equal
parts.
So half-and-half. You have 2 notes, so divide the bow into halves.
So half of the bow, half of the bow.
Now 3/4 of the bow because this note is longer.
One quarter of the bow.
Half and half.
3/4 1/4
So if you give a little attention to that, to how your distributing those note, how
much
bow you're using and your bow divisions, it will make the sound very
smooth, very
even, very legato. Continuous. We want to develop the ability to play
very melodically. It sounds very musical that way.
I hope those tips will help you, and help you play this piece
beautifully.