Violinist Answers Violin Questions From Twitter

Hi, I'm Andrew Bird.

I'm a songwriter and composer.

And I'm here today

to answer your questions from the internet.

Welcome to Violin Support.

[upbeat music]

First question, latelordchatham.

Have just had my violin lesson.

I cannot get vibrato.

I actually cannot.

What is the secret?

Vibrato takes a long time.

As with every little technique, you kind of get it

and then you're doing one little thing wrong

and then it all kind of falls apart.

Vibrato is when you're...

[violin playing]

You can see my last knuckle is kind of flexing a little bit

and I'm moving the hand like this, not like this.

And...

[violin playing]

But just be patient.

It's just muscle memory.

It takes a long time.

You'll get it.

Okay, this is from cowboiklaus.

How expensive are violins?

Like I'm asking for a friend.

Violins are quite expensive.

Baffles me sometimes like a vintage guitar

that's super cool

and sexy-looking is still somewhat affordable.

To get a violin that starts to be just playable

and decent, not much under eight grand or 10 grand.

They just don't sound very good.

I don't know why that is.

It's an art.

It's really tricky to shave down the wood thin enough.

There's a lot of nuance to making a good violin.

The market is very, it's very high.

EmKenWheel.

I've never understood how to hold a violin bow properly.

Another one that takes longer than almost anything

to get with playing the violin,

more than figuring out where your fingers go

is the bow technique 'cause it's a bit abstract.

When I used to teach, I would tell my students

to pretend that they're lying in a canoe

and they've got their arm draped over the side in the water

and they're dragging their arm through the water.

You got a very light touch on the bow.

Any kind of like, death grip on the bow makes it not work.

So you got the bare minimum pressure on the bow,

and your wrist is a hinge.

And you're kind of leading this way

and everything's trailing behind,

like dragging through the wind.

This one's from _Aware_Wolf.

Is there a difference between a fiddle and a violin?

Or is it that one of the players is classically trained

and the other has a recipe for possum?

Well, you don't need to get into stereotypes here.

Let's just say it's basically function of it.

Violin is listening music,

and fiddle is functional, dance music.

And the techniques,

creating your own backbeat, that's fiddle playing.

It tends to be a little rougher around the edges

because the point of it

is to drive social dance situations.

So social music versus like, listening music.

Violin versus fiddle.

But otherwise,

there's no difference in the instrument itself.

And this one is FishyIrfan.

I should have attended a pre-concert explanation

about the difference between baroque violin

and modern violin technique.

The main difference is there's little to no vibrato

in baroque violin.

And that means Mozart

is really not supposed to be played vibrato

if you want to be accurate

'cause it sounds a little more like fiddle music in a way.

[violin playing]

And it's very resonant, and early music is very.

[violin playing]

Like, that's a sympathetic resonation of I'm playing

a D on the G-string.

So I have an open D next to it

so it creates this extra resonance.

[violin playing]

Whereas I would play a C right below it,

there is no sympathetic sea stringing to that saw.

[violin playing]

It's a little more dry-sounding.

So it's like natural reverb,

when you get that extra string vibrating next to it.

'Cause the sound waves go off of the string

and hit the string next to it,

and if it's the same note,

it'll start vibrating sympathetically.

This is from pateverman.

I must know the secrets

of how to make the Stradivarius violet.

Well a lot of people have been trying to figure that out.

It's a beautiful sound, but it's a very specific sound.

It's not always what you want.

The Stradivarius is an ancient instrument,

and it is a more focused and goes into other senses.

It's like a, you know, succulent kind of sound.

Rich and dark, very dark.

I mean first of all,

they were made in the 16 hundreds, generally, 17.

It was a family business,

so it stretched over a period of time.

Some say it's the particular wood that they sourced

or the way they treated it or the way they've varnished it.

Scientists have taken this on as like a little project

'cause they think, Oh there must be some quantifiable way

to recreate the Stradivarius.

And they've learned some interesting things,

but no one's really been able to quite pull it off.

Colin, it's 7619.

The violin doesn't work because there's no rosin.

WTF is rosin.

The rosin is what makes the horse hair on the bow

grip a string and cause it to resonate.

You take this stuff, some sort of a resin,

just go like that.

Comes off and you don't need much.

If you touch the bow with your hand,

the grease or oils from your hand will cause it to slick

and it'll just go [shushing].

It'll just be like, it won't grip.

This one is from aileenyhaha.

Would anyone please teach me how to use a loop pedal?

Could be key for solo gigs.

I've been using this loop pedal for years.

It's from the mid nineties.

The chip in it is apparently ancient.

And it has a loop function where you get either 26 seconds

to make a phrase

that once you click record again, it starts over that phrase

and keeps recording so you can layer on top of that.

That's our loop.

I usually start with pizzicato.

It's like playing the violin like a guitar.

[violin playing]

So I'll start a phrase like this.

[violin playing]

So I just sort of improvised

something that's sort of polyrhythmic, has a groove to it.

So I've got my rhythmic skeleton here,

and then I might improvise something on top of that.

[violin playing]

So that just started out as like a novel way

to expand this otherwise linear instrument

into like a cordal instrument, and just to try out ideas.

SamSaltyScience.

Anyone know how to properly tune a violin?

Googling and tuning apps are only getting me so far.

Usually you start with A.

[violin playing]

The violin is in fifths, the interval is fifths.

Guitars are in fourths, so...

[violin playing]

You get used to the sound

of what a fifth being in tune sounds like.

[violin playing]

You can actually hear this like [chattering] sound of these,

the sound waves fighting against,

and being out of sync with each other.

But when they get in sync, it all...

[violin playing]

So there's flat.

[violin playing]

When I'm turning the tuning peg up,

bringing the D-ring up to the A string

and you hear dissonant dissonant undertones,

doesn't sound right and then suddenly ah,

you know, satisfaction.

It's a perfect fifth.

StayMoment.

How do violin players not go effing deaf

with that shit near their ears?

Since the advent of amplification,

we've got worse things to worry about

than the acoustic instrument

being somewhat close to your ears.

But they do.

Most violinists have hearing loss in their left ear

from playing, you know, right here.

And that's just a fact.

I'm sure I do.

W-L-W kaeya.

This is a genuine question for violin players

'cause I don't know

if y'all just can't follow tempo for some reason,

but why is it that every violinist I've ever seen

speeds up any song they play?

Any instrumentalist might have trouble speeding up,

especially when you get in front of a bunch of people

in a performance and the adrenaline kicks in.

The natural inclination is to speed up.

All players have to develop a good sense of time.

Playing with a drummer certainly helps.

That's why a lot of live records, it feels great

for everybody at the time, the audience and the players,

but you listen to the recording, you're like,

Oh, this is not gonna stand up on an album

because it's too exciting.

It doesn't stand up to repeated listens.

But it doesn't mean it's not right in the moment.

I'm guilty of it sometimes,

but it's usually when I'm playing a big show

for thousands of people and like, your adrenaline's way up.

The whole band gets that feeling.

All right,

that looks like that's all the questions for today.

Thanks so much.

Carry on.

[upbeat music]