Perfect Poise, Perfect Life
Bring your body into balance and revolutionise your life
By Noel Kingsley
Publisher Hodder Mobius
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Learning vibrato

Fritz Kreisler

It's now about 8 weeks since I played any music on my violin, but I've been doing lots of practice, indeed between 1-2 hours a day as usual and the focus of my attention is on vibrato.

It occurred to me that all the pieces I am playing, Handel sonatas and some 'simple' pieces by Fritz Kreisler always sound like Noel doing his best to play them.....and that's not very well. I have not yet found vibrato easy and when it does appear it's lacking fluidity and has become more of an issue for me as I see this as being one fundamental (amongst many!) that is preventing me from sounding better. So rather than trying to 'play the music' which is always magnet to 'try too hard', I am working on 'how' I am playing the instrument and practicing long random notes, sometimes a scale, but looking at basics from how am I holding the instrument, the finger pressure on the strings, the freedom of the fingers, the freedom of the wrist and arm to move; all of these aspects affect my ability to play fluidly with ease. This can be likened to learning to drive a car in an empty parking lot with lots of space and no traffic to worry about. Once familiar with the controls, then we can go out on the roads. Or learning to swim by standing on the ground and learning the arm movements before getting in the water, Well, I'm familiarising myself with the process of playing what must be the most difficult of all instruments, before I start playing music again.

There are a number of different types of technique used for vibrato, from the finger vibrato, the wrist vibrato and the arm vibrato. Many violinists switch from one to another during a performance to give different colour or mood to the music. There is another type of vibrato which was used by Fritz Kreisler who had one of the most beautiful sounds and also by other violinists of the early last century and this is called the 'Fingertip Impulse Vibrato'. Rather than 'simply' shifting the pitch of the note by 1/5 of a tone up and down to make the note oscillate, the Fingertip Impulse Vibrato involves a small massage of the string which changes the harmonics within the note, apart from any variation in pitch from oscillation. It can give wonderful rich and infinitely variable sound qualities and apparently helped give these old masters their distinctive sound. I understand that for some reason this technique is becoming almost a lost art. Anyone interested should refer to Steve Redrobe who is helping to keep this type of technique alive.

As F.M. Alexander said, "You can't do something you don't know, if you keep on doing what you do know." That means I must stop doing the 'playing' in the way I know, in order to discover a new way of playing that allows the vibrato to come more easily. It means pausing to consider 'how' I am doing it and relearning. I've written before about 'Changing your Technique' as I've tackled various problems that I have encountered, from doing away with the shoulder rest (that is now second nature after many months. It's the best thing I did but required a great deal of relearning) and using less effort. It's an ongoing process.

You could ask am I not frustrated by not playing music, surely that's what it's about? Indeed I have been playing music..... to the best I can. But wishing to enhance my abilities, I need to be patient and work on the manner in which I am doing it. Once the new way becomes familiar then I can get back into playing music again.

If truth be told (and when would I never tell the truth?!) I have played some small excerpts of what I was tackling before and they sound completely different and I'm excited by the possibilities. I will come back to playing again, maybe in a few weeks, but there is no rush. I have to learn the new way. When I can do the vibrato in the way that I have glimpsed (and I shall set aside any modesty and say it's wonderful and thrilling!), then this hopefully will characterise my playing of all pieces of music from there on. It will be great.

But for now, I continue with my basics, learning the technique. It will come. :-)

Posted by Noël on June 11, 2007 8:06 AM | Permalink