Hi, I'm Beth Blackerby from violinlab.com
and in this video I'm going to show you vibrato
super up close and in slow motion.
I'm going to point out some “don'ts” as well as the “dos”.
What I hope we convey to you
is that for a really warm, luscious, romantic style vibrato
and this is the vibrato that you love to hear from soloists
this is what you recognize as a gorgeous vibrato
and that the range of motion is very large, the amplitude is big
and that’s what you work for.
It’s easy to scale that back to play Baroque music or Classical music.
But you want to be able to have that really audible warm luscious vibrato
for playing romantic style music.
I'm talking about this kind of vibrato:
We are going to start with the 1st finger
we're going to do the different fingers, different speeds.
So hopefully you’ll get a lot from this video.
This side shot gives a nice view of that 1st knuckle joint.
And you can see how flexible it is.
This is something that’s too difficult to see with your own hand while you’re playing.
In this slow-motion clip on the left
you can see just how relaxed and flattened the knuckle is
when the hand rocks back to the far side of the pad of the fingertip.
Here is a closer view of the 1st finger.
There is no audio because the camera doesn't capture audio
when the slow-motion feature is enabled.
But that’s good. It gives you the opportunity just to focus on the movement.
In this next clip, I want you to see a “don't”.
I see this frequently with students who grasp the neck
who maintain contact between the inside of the hand and the neck of the instrument.
This completely restricts the movement of the vibrato
almost precluding vibrato motion with the finger.
This is what happens.
You can barely detect that vibrato.
Notice how restricted the motion is.
The inside of the hand is hugging to the neck
which anchors the hand and doesn't allow the knuckle to move.
In this next slow-motion clip, I release the hand.
The hand comes unglued and is able to sweep back and forth alongside the neck.
Then the knuckle is able to bend, and you have a nice audible vibrato.
Again, see that really wide range of motion with the 2nd finger.
In the learning stages, it’s easier to do the vibrato with the 2nd finger than the 1st finger.
The hand is more balanced with the 2nd finger acting as a fulcrum at the center of the hand.
The hand swings back and forth around that center.
Along the same lines as the previous “don't”
I see a compensation when students are maintaining this contact.
I see the wrist moving back and forth, so this is pretty common.
The person thinks that they are doing a vibrato
it feels like a vibrato because the wrist is moving.
But it’s moving in the wrong way. First of all, the hand isn't moving back and forth this way.
So when this is locked and then this is moving
really essentially nothing is happening with the finger.
I can't really demonstrate this very well.
It's amazing how fast someone can vibrate like this.
So really the hand pivots back and forth on top of the forearm in this way.
You can see this in slow motion.
In this clip, I am hugging the neck with the hand and only moving the wrist
so you can see how this is just a wasted effort.
The finger itself is not being affected.
Like the 2nd finger, 3rd finger is an easier finger for vibrato in the beginning stages of learning.
For one, the joint at the end of the finger, or that first knuckle
already approaches the string at a more relaxed angle.
You can see that in this slow-motion clip.
You can see that angle has a built in flexibility.
I want to point out something about the thumb, and I hope you can see this in these close-ups.
When the thumb is relaxed, there’s not a lot of tension in the thumb
the skin of the thumb is able to move.
When we have a wide vibrato, it is going to pull and push
it’s going to tug on the thumb.
The thumb doesn't move, it doesn’t release its contact with the neck
yet the skin has a lot of mobility.
So when the thumb is too tight, then it prevents that movement
and it also it makes the violin move.
I get a lot of e-mails saying that when I do vibrato my violin moves back and forth.
That is because if there’s too much tension, it is going to pull and tug the violin
instead of allowing for the skin to be that layer in between the thumb and the violin.
This absorbs the motion and it moves very freely. I hope you can see that.
Taking a closer look at the thumb, you can actually see a little movement
in the base joint where the thumb joins the hand.
Which of course is going to allow for a broader hand motion.
So you can see that if the thumb is squeezing the neck
that joint will lock too and will in turn inhibit the motion of the vibrato.
Now hopefully you can see that little give of the skin against the neck
right at the pad of the tip of the thumb.
Here it is from a different angle.
The wiggling is a byproduct of the force of the vibrato motion
but it’s so important in preventing the violin from moving, and from being tugged.
Here is a vibrato that I would classify as too tight.
When there is just not enough flexibility in that 1st joint.
Sometimes it can get very fast and it’s narrow.
In this clip, notice the stiffness of the 1st knuckle
and how restricted the movement is.
This kind of vibrato comes off sounding narrow, tight, and a little dull.
If the finger itself is pressing too hard on the string
and with too much pressure then it sort of locks this 1st knuckle.
I get a lot of e-mails saying "I just don't have the flexibility in my knuckles”.
Unless you have joint problems, unless you have arthritis
you can move this joint. Just do this with your finger.
I can do this with the other hand.
I’ve never done vibrato with my right hand, but yet my joints move just fine.
The problem is that when there’s just too much pressure
and underneath the finger is too tight
it keeps the knuckle from bending.
So finding that magic combination:
enough pressure to keep the string down
and a light amount of pressure enough that the knuckle will still bend.
Experiment with this. You can see how you can still have tension
you can still have tensile strength in the finger
but yet the knuckle still can be flexible and move back and forth.
For most people, using vibrato on the 4th finger is the hardest.
The finger is naturally weaker, and is less balanced
and as it's the shortest finger and the farthest away from the neck
and is especially difficult for people with small hands.
We have to stretch the finger out further giving less leeway for movement.
Now I am going to freeze the shot.
Notice the angle of the finger to the string.
It’s almost perpendicular.
And you can see the indentions of the strings on my fingers in this still shot.
You can see how the string intersects the 4th finger
almost on a horizontal axis rather than the diagonal.
Now if you look closely at the fingertip you can see a slight circular motion.
The finger is sort of massaging the string in a circular fashion.
At the beginning of this video I played the opening of the Bruch violin Concerto.
And with this kind of piece we use a very large vibrato.
In all these slow motion examples
I am using a vibrato appropriate for a forte dynamic
where we need a large amplitude to project the sound.
So I have been using this style and this particular speed.
However, we don't always play forte.
In places where we use a softer dynamic, we need to narrow the vibrato a bit
or else it sounds too exaggerated.
In this example from the famous Meditation from Thais if I use a large vibrato
it is too much and sounds a little cartoonish.
So I narrow the vibrato a little, still staying flexible
and then I can vary the width of the vibrato as we sculpt our phrases
adding crescendos and decrescendos.
In a crescendo, we can widen the vibrato.
Returning to piano, the vibrato becomes more narrow.
I am going to crescendo here.
I made my vibrato wider to help give richness to the sound.
So in this next example you will see a narrow vibrato getting wider
and you can hear the difference in dynamic.
Soft dynamic at regular speed
–here comes the louder dynamic–
the vibrato gets wider.
You can see the amplitude difference
between the “piano' vibrato and the “forte” vibrato.
There is quite a bit.
Now I want to bring up "continuous vibrato".
As classical musicians we want to try
to keep the vibrato going all the time.
Even with fast note values
you wouldn't think you had enough time to use a vibrato.
However, once we have the vibrato motor running
we can still change fingers, and this is called Continuous Vibrato.
The question is, “is it really continuous”?
I think you will see in the next clip the answer to this question.
It's very interesting.
It sounds as if the vibrato continues from one note to the next.
However, what you will see is that we actually cannot multi-task with vibrato and finger action.
You can see there is a split second where the vibrato stops when we placed the finger down
and then likewise when we lift the finger up.
In this last clip, I want to show you vibrato in higher positions.
There is really nothing different
it is the same motion, only the angle of the wrist is changed.
This is normal, this is for high positions.
So we have to bring our hand around.
We have to get around the shoulder of the instrument and that creates this bend in the wrist.
But we still have flexibility in the joint, we still have freedom of motion
and it is important that the thumb comes down and around the neck.
When we do that it elevates the hand.
When the hand is elevated, and the elbow comes around
then we create enough room and space for a nice vibrato.
So if I pull my thumb back, and just reached with my fingers
it puts my hand against the shoulder
and I am not able to have enough freedom of movement.
So remember that: try to create as much space as you can
to maintain your same vibrato in higher positions.
I hope that you've learned in this video that freedom of motion is the most crucial ingredient
for developing a good vibrato motion.
Hope you have enjoyed this video, we enjoyed making it.
Don’t give up on the vibrato exercises.
It takes a while to build regularity and speed
But don’t sacrifice that lovely loose, warm, flexible motion
for the sake of trying to speed it up too quickly.