How to Hold a Violin
Have you ever thought you might like to learn how to play the violin? Great decision! Awesome Instrument! You’ll never regret learning one of the most versatile instruments on the planet!
OK – so first things first – Do you know how to hold a violin? Really think so? Well what looks easy isn’t as easy as you might think.
You might think at first glance that you are holding the violin with your left hand and just sitting it under your chin for balance – but you’d be wrong. The proper way to hold the violin is with the chin and shoulder. In fact if held properly, you don’t even need your left hand at all!
This poses a bit of a problem when you consider that you usually don’t go around holding things with your chin and shoulder much. In fact this can be quite painful. So the violin has a chin rest for the chin – which is visible to most people – it’s the black pad on the top of the violin. What most people don’t see is the shoulder rest underneath. This is designed to fill the gap between your shoulder and the violin.
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The shoulder rest is a relatively new addition to the violin, put in place because most people couldn’t hold the violin comfortably long enough to play one for very long. The shoulder rest is a very controversial piece of equipment however.
Many concert violinists insist that the use of a shoulder rest could take away more than half of the violin’s natural volume. But to me, the issue is comfort. Many classical violinists never use a shoulder rest, however most modern violinists, including most fiddle players do. The bottom line is – do what is most comfortable for you.
Just mastering how to hold a violin can be a challenge for most people. But once you are able to figure out how to hold a violin comfortably, the fun part begins. The reason why you need to be able to learn how to hold a violin with just your chin and shoulder is because you need to be able to have your left hand FREE to move up and down the neck of the violin freely and quickly. If you have to balance or otherwise hold the violin with the left hand, you will not be able to do proper fingering.
Next up in how to hold a violin is the bow. Again, you’d think that it’s a pretty straightforward task – and again, you’d be wrong. Actually, although there is a classical way of how to hold a violin bow lightly with the thumb and fingers, usually people hold it in a way that allows for ease of movement while still allowing for comfort. The bow should be allowed to rest lightly on the strings allowing gravity to pull it down doing most of the work. You don’t want to add any additional pressure to the strings.
As you can see – there is a lot that goes into this – in just how to HOLD a violin, let alone playing one. This why you need the proper instruction of a master. But who can afford to have instructions from a master violinist? Well, you can now – thanks to a new online video lesson series designed and taught by a master violinist from the Manhattan String Quartet – Eric Lewis.
It’s called Violin Master Pro and it’s a revolutionary series of lessons that incorporate streaming online videos and MP3 jam tracks to create the best and most cost effective way to learn how to hold a violin (not to mention, play one) available today.
I highly recommend that you click here to get the violin master pro so you can learn how to hold a violin and play it like a master!