What’s in My Hand

Just now – as of the past several days – I’ve been quite caught up in the beauties of renewal and rebirth. It’s a particularly refined version of ‘spring fever,’ me thinks.

Anyway, today I’d like to chat a little about getting some renewal into your sound vis a vis something we call vibrato.

Now, in my Beginner’s Circle program I dedicate time over several lessons to the technique. I go step by step through it, starting with the best place to begin on the violin, the basic motion of the hand and fingers, and a very simple exercise. In the process every detail of a wrist vibrato – arm vibrato as well, actually – are gone over.

Except one, perhaps.

And today you get it from the horse’s mouth right here.

You see, think of how clouds form. It turns out that water vapor in the atmosphere must have something present in order to coalesce into water droplets.

Well, the same is true for a seed to begin growing; that is, water must reach out to touch it.

The same is true of vibrato. In order for the wrist to spring to life there must be an intention that reaches into the hand.

Now, what I’m finding is that some adult beginners have difficulty getting the intention to vibrate to activate the muscles of the forearm that actually do the work.

So I’d like to give you something to ‘prime the pump’, if you get my drift. And here’s what you’re going to do.

You’re going to practice a little squeeze and release, squeeze and release exercise with each finger. Do it just with the finger and keep it gentle don’t even press the string fully to the fingerboard.

At first you want to do it slowly. Even try doing in rhythms; quarters, eighths, triplet eights, sixteenths.

After you have the hang of it try allowing this flexing of the hand muscles to expand across your wrist into the forearm muscles.

Et viola, you have your wrist vibrato up and running.

And the nice thing about this is A) it gets your hand relaxing, and B) it can be used to narrow and focus the forearm muscle movements.

All My Best, Clayton Haslop

P.S. As I said, the biggest part of the vibrato story is found in the Beginner’s Circle program. In fact there is so much in it I think it should be a part of every violinists video/audio library. Here’s where you can get your copy.