Play Out the Top of Your Head

Got the fiddle out this morning and had a go for the first time since my wee-BOOM last Tuesday. Pretty much a non-starter, unfortunately.

But I Can type with both hands now, and I just learned from my doc that the MRI did NOT reveal any tearing of my rotator cuff.

No Surgery required.

Now I’ve just got to settle in, let the nerves, ligaments, and muscles get over the nasty little stretching I gave them, and I’ll be good as new. The only question is, will this take place to the extent I can demonstrate in this month’s course installments. My guess is I’ll be up and running in another week. Not to worry.

Anyway, there’s something I’d like to share with you today that is quite removed from my left arm.

You see, as a teenager I did a lot of singing. And I was extremely fortunate to live in a school district having the finest choral teacher in California. During my junior high years – before the advent of middle-school – I arrived at 7:30 every morning to sing madrigals for an hour.

It was during this time I learned to breathe, and before long it seemed quite natural to do it whilst playing as well – you know the importance on it today.

But that wasn’t all.

In my ninth grade year I also took private singing lessons from a very knowledgeable vocal couch. And he spent a good deal of time with me on tone production.

Now, a trained singer does something the average belter knows nothing about. A trained singer effectively raises the soft-palette – the roof of our mouth – and directs the air stream toward the back of it. A vibrating soft-palette is what generates a focused tone with great carrying power.

So in an effort to get me to do this, my coach told me to envision the tone emanating through the top of my head. Bare in mind, a 14 year-old kid isn’t too familiar with the ways of a soft-palette.

And to this day, when I want to produce a clear, singing tone on the violin – and that’s about 90% of the time – I find it very useful to think of the same image. Of the tone coming through my arms, into my body, up the back of my neck, and out through the top of my head.

I’ve found that playing with this image in mind really transforms my posture. And my tone resonates beautifully as a result.

You can bet I’ll be doing a lot of ‘long tones’ this way real soon.

All the best,

Clayton Haslop

P.S. And after I warm up with long tones I’ll be takin’ out the ol’ ‘violinist’s Bible’. Now you can beat me to the punch, and get all the insights and practice techniques I’ve honed to a razor’s edge, in Kreutzer for Violin Mastery.