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The order of sharps and flats on the violin. The order of sharps on the violin are F, C, G, D, A, E, B. And they’re in a circle of fifths. So five from the F: F, G, A, B, C. So, then that’s five notes from the F.

If you’re starting on the C, to find the next circle of fifths note: C, D, E, F, G. So, you have F, C, G and so forth. You just count on your fingers, starting on that note, five above, and then that’s how you can figure out your circle of fifths in the sharps.

The flats. The order is B flat, E flat, A flat, D flat, G flat, C flat and F flat. And those are the order of the flats in the circle of fifths. Just backwards from the order of sharps.

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How do you find good violin music for practicing? Obviously it depends on your level. It depends on whether you have a teacher, or if you’re just doing it yourself, but mostly on your level. Hopefully you have a teacher who’s guiding you in the right direction.

When you’re choosing music to practice the violin, you want to make sure you have a scale book, an etude book, and one or two pieces that you’re working on. That is the most important that you want to choose. Now when in terms of scales, I like the Scales Studies Book by Hrimaly H-R-I-M-A-L-Y, and in the back there’s a terrific three octave scales, and fingerings. Also Carl Flesch Scales. That big book is very, very helpful because it also not only does it have scales but it also has thirds, and sixths, and octaves, and fingered chords, and so that’s very, very helpful to also have in your library.

After your scales you should also have etudes. Left hand finger exercise etudes like Schradieck, right hand exercises like Sevcik, and you should also have, depending on your level, again, intermediate level, and you want to start with a little bit of Kreutzer, and Fiorillo, and before Kreutzer I would start with a little Wohlfahrt. So, all these you can find at your local music store, or online at sharmusic.com.

And then a couple of pieces I would try, depending on your level a gain, you may want to start a concerto. If you’re playing a concerto you also want to pair that with a shorter piece. For instance, you might be playing the Bach concerto, and a good compliment to that would be a romantic piece from the Chrysler book, that has all this great little pieces like Sicilian and the Gideon, and the Meditation, or Liebes Lied. Meditation is not in that book, but the Liebes Lied is in that book. So there’s lots of different options, but that variety should definitely be there when you’re picking music.

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So, there’s a lot of different, beautiful, sad music for the violin. Here’s one of them. This is ‘Meditation on a Theme’ from Thais by Massenet.

That’s the beginning of a beautiful, sad piece, that you can play at all different kinds of events on the violin, and it’s so beautiful.

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So let’s talk about good violin songs for beginners. The way I was started when I was a little girl; I started on the Suzuki method which is a very popular method to begin children on playing the violin. What it is is specific songs in books. And there’s book one, book two, book three, book four, book five. And there’s certain pieces that you have to play in order.

But you don’t learn them by reading music at first. At first you’re playing the tape over and over again in your house. And you’re learning it like that, just by ear. So whether you’re learning it by ear or whether you’re learning it by looking at the music at first the most popular, popular piece to play on the violin is “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star”.

And what’s so great about this piece is that there’s lots of variations you can do on it; different rhythms, which is very helpful for children, learning different rhythms. I like to call this rhythm “Mississippi Hotdog”. And there’s other rhythms like “Stop Listen”.

Another great song to learn on the violin from the Suzuki method again is “Lightly Row”. So it’s very important that you learn pieces especially at the beginning. But always that you learn pieces that are at your level. You don’t want to go too high because then you’ll just get frustrated. You want to wait until you hit the harder pieces when you really really can do them no matter how exciting it is to go faster. So really those two pieces were in Suzuki book one. And I believe in that whole book. It’s just terrific for beginners.

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The difference between a violin and a viola, is that they do have different strings. The violin has the E, A, D and G string. The viola does not have the E string, but it does have the C string. So, it goes A, D, G, C is the lowest string; whereas, A is the highest string for the viola. And on the violin, the E is the highest string for violin, and the G is the lowest string on the violin. So, that’s one difference.

The other difference is that they also play from different clefs. The violin is in the treble clef, and the viola is in the alto clef.

Another difference is the sound quality. The viola has a real mellow sound to it, a little deeper; whereas, the violin has a higher, sweeter, high-pitched sound.

So, those are the differences between the violin and the viola.

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The Canon in D is very popular piece played by quartets, at weddings and things like that.

I’m going to teach you just the very beginning in 1st position, a very easy part of playing Canon in D so you can learn it at home. You put your first finger on F#, in 1st position E string.

Then open E, then D on the A string, 3rd finger. C# on the A string, 2nd finger. 1st finger on the A string, B.

Open A, First finger B again, C# on A, 2nd finger, and you can play that a couple of times through. Here it is a little faster.

That’s the beginning of the beautiful Pachelbel Canon in D.

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Okay, so once you know where to place your hand on the left hander’s which is what we touched on in a previous video, then you need to think about where does your arm fall when you’re playing. It depends, that’s the answer. Because it depends whether your fingers are on the E string, the A string, the B string or the G string.

Now this is first position. It also depends on whether you’re going to different positions. The third position up here or even second position your arm has to come around a little bit more. But let’s just stick with the first position for now and say that when you’re on the E string, your arm is at the lowest level. Probably a little nit under the violin, right about here, you should feel your elbow hitting. And then, as you go to the lower string, the A string for instance, here I go. First finger on E string is now going to first finger on A string, the elbow comes around a little bit more.

Now going to the D string, first finger. Now going to the D string, first finger. As you can see, the elbow did have to come around a bit in order to compensate for the lower strings. It’s not so important to thin about your arm position if your fingers are really hitting the strings in the right place. Fingertip placement is even more important because, especially for a younger child, you don’t want to think too much about the arm but it does move a little bit. Again, though, if your finger is in the right place on the string, the elbow will follow. So that’s how you position the left arm on your violin.

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Okay. So now, I’m going to teach you how to hold the bow properly. When you’re teaching a beginner, you want to first hold the bow so that the hair is facing you, and the bow is vertical and the tip is facing the ceiling. So this is what it looks like. This way, you can really place the hand correctly, hair facing you.

You want to hold the bow, simply, sort of like you would take a cup. You would pick it up, not too tight, not too loose, because it would spill, but, you know, gently, but with a little bit of firmness.

Now, the thumb and the middle finger, I call him the tall man, because he’s the tallest. They are the ones who are right opposite each other. You can make a circle with them. You can teach that and do a little tapping with a beginner violinist.

You take the thumb, and you put this thumb on the silver part of the frog, with a bump. You don’t want it flat like this, very bad, with a nice bump.

Then, like I said, the tall man comes around, right across. They like to eat lunch together, I like to say to my little students. Then you take the ring finger, and you put him right next to the tall man.

Then your pinkie goes on the top. And usually, you’ll put a little pad here, so that the child knows where the pinkie should be. And then the index finger falls right about there.

It’s very important where your index finger falls. You don’t want it to fall on the second knuckle crease, because then, you’re going to have too much tightening. You want it to fall sort of in between the first and second knuckle for the right balance.

Your pinkie needs to be curly. You see how all the fingers are nice and curled. And this is the proper way to hold your bow.

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So, now I’m gonna play the D major scale, two to a bow.

The D major scale, as you can see, that was a three octave D major scale. That goes up pretty high on the E string. So it’s one of the more difficult ones. And if you get really good at the violin, it’s very useful for all the great concertos: Beethoven, Brahms, Tchaikovsky. So, practice your D major scale.

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3/4 time in the violin is a really great meter, because it’s like a dance. One, two, three. One, two, three. One, two, three. One, two, three. And as you can tell, the big beat falls on the one, the first beat. One, two, three. One, two, three. One, two, three. One, two, three. So, one of the beginning pieces by Bach called ‘Minuet 1’ is 3/4 time. Try to listen to the ‘one, two, three’ swing.

That’s a perfect example of a piece of violin music in 3/4 time.

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Okay. Now, I would like to show you about bow direction, and bow arm movement.

In previous segments, we touched upon drawing the bow in open strings, and we said that it was very important to curl our fingers on the bow arm. And then we also said it was very important to stay in lane two, like this. But something else is very important, in order for the bow not to slide, you know, like this because that won’t give you good sound.

The very important thing that you also have to think about, besides staying in lane two, is how your bow arm is moving down and how is it moving up. I like to think of it like this. When your bow is at the frog, you sort of make a little triangle with your arm, your body, and your instrument. And then when you pull the bow, and stop at the middle, you’re making a square, four sides, right here. And then when you reach the tip, you are making a big triangle. So it’s the small triangle to the square to the big triangle. And that will give you a beautiful straight bow as well as thinking about these other things. So here it is.

Okay. Those are the shapes of your arm that is important to know when you’re doing bow direction. T

here’s also something you need to think about, in terms of your elbow. Your elbow is going to pull back. And then, when you get to the middle, and then, it’s going to pull forward, push forward when you get to the tip. When you go back to the middle on the up bow, your elbow is going to go back again. And then when you get to the frog, it’s going to come forward.

All of these things work in conjunction with each other, but it is a good idea to practice all these step separately. And then you are comfortable with one, you can then add another, or do them all separately, and then sort of join them together. And this will help to get your beautiful sound.

And so that’s my thoughts on bow division, and bow arm movement.

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So now I’m going to talk about vibrato. First you need to set up your left hand position the right way. Now we spoke about how to set up your left hand in the first position but now we need to talk about the left hand positioning in the third position because that’s where I like to start learning vibrato. Your hand in third position is rested at the shoulder of the instrument. I like also doing the second finger on the A string to start because it’s the most centered finger, the strongest finger. My finger is on the tip of the fat of the finger, there’s a nice platform here and that’s how you start.

Then to vibrate what I usually do is, I put a little arrow on the finger going this way; that’s the direction the finger has to go in. Back and up. So back and forth, back and forth. And as you can see the knuckle is going down and then it’s going up. Going down and going up. So an exercise you can do is, that’s an E on the A string, third position and then collapse it, back, back. Then you can do a slur. That’s a two note slur. We can do four notes. Or you can do six. Then eight. And until you reach normal vibrato speed. You need to do that kind of vibrato for each one of your fingers.

When you vibrate also another issue that you have to think about is your arm position. Now we spoke about correct arm position is you’re flat as a pancake here, everything is straight, nothing’s sticking out. When you vibrate you do need your wrist; the most popular vibrato is wrist vibrato. So then you would do, this does come out when you flatten the finger a little bit. So the wrist is moving back and forth when you’re doing that finger-wrist vibrato. You need to do that with all of the fingers.

The only exception is the pinky. The pinky fourth finger does not use as much wrist just because of the physicalness of the actual finger. You’re still doing the same motion but it’s just a little bit smaller. It’s mainly the finger vibrato with just a little bit of wrist. That’s how you would start to learn vibrato. Start slow. That’s the vibrato.

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Okay. So now, I’m going to teach you about right hand, finger exercises.

Once you have mastered your bow grip, then you need some flexibility in your fingers so that when you are moving the bow on the violin, your fingers are nice and relaxed, and they can balance at different points on the instrument.

I definitely want to stress that, if you are a beginner, it’s very important just to hold the bow like this, and not move your fingers too much because you want to really get the feel of this perfect bow grip with the thumb being bent, and the pinkie being curled on top. If you add too much flexibility to it, the bow grip sort of falls apart.

So this is for a more advanced player who’s been playing a while and has a nice bow hold, but wants more flexibility in their bow grip. So here are some exercises.

What you do is, put your bow, again, very straight, vertical, and the hairs face you, and you have a very curly bow hold, at first. Then, you see, you go, actually you put your left hand at the bottom of the bow, and try to reach it. It’s about couple of inches away. You straighten your fingers like so. Then you go up again and curl. Straighten, curl. Straighten, curl. Straighten, Curl.

This is a lot harder than it looks. So you need, the way that it feels is pretty firm, but with some looseness. But you do have to really hold the bow with a nice firmness for it to work. Not too loose, not too tight. And this is a really good exercise for the fingers on the bow, because when you’re playing on the violin, this will really come in handy.

So those are some exercises for flexibility in your right hand.

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The A string is the most important string on the violin. All the strings are important, but the A string is the note that you tune to. So, when an orchestra is tuning, the oboe gives an A to the concert master.

That’s the A. Here’s an example of a piece on the A string.

The beginning of ‘Meditation’ by Massenet is mostly on the A string, as you heard, the beautiful string on the violin.

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Let’s talk a little bit about finger strike. And what that is, is on the left hand when you’re playing the violin with your fingers, there’s different ways to put your fingers down.

It’s important at some point to learn about articulation. And what that means is the clearness that the note strikes the instrument. So, in order to get a really nice strike of the fingers on the left hand, it’s important to practice different kinds of exercises.

There’s a great book, etude book, called Schradieck, and in that book, there’s a very popular etude like this. Now, the trick is to make the fingers go down quickly and to raise up quickly. So, I’m going to give you an example of, you know, a very mushy, non-articulate stroke. That sounds mushy, it doesn’t sound clear and it’s because the finger is going down too slowly. It’s not so much about how hard it goes down, it’s more about how quickly it goes down. It can go down very light, but it has to be quick. So, listen to this one.

If you do this exercise enough, you will build a lot of finger strength and over time your fingers will get stronger and more accurate and articulate and it’s great to practice in your pieces. Fast passages that need to be clear would need this and so, you practice the fast passages slowly with the fast strike and then build the tempo a little bit and see some good results. So, that’s a little bit about finger strike.

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There’s lots of different bow strokes when you play the violin. There’s legato, there’s staccato, there’s sautille, there’s martele ; I’ll explain some of them.

Here’s legato strokes. I’ll do it in a scale so you can really see.

That’s just really smooth bow changes. You’re going from a down bow to an up bow with no real stop.

You can do the same thing but with detache strokes, it’s called.

That’s smooth bows with a slight separation. That’s what detache is.

There’s also martele stokes. You catch the string and then you release it.

Then there is staccato.

Here’s sautille. It’s faster and it’s not as controlled.

The way that you play a staccato stroke, you’re controlling your bow arm like this. You’re sort of keeping your arm in the air and the rest of the weight of your hand goes does down and up, down and up, and you’re using your fingers and your wrist to control it.

Now, sautille is about…it’s around the same stroke but it’s going so much faster that you’re not really controlling it. You set it up, the arm, and then the hand just does it really fast by itself.

Those are some of the strokes you could actually see in a simple song, some of these strokes.

That was a combination of staccato and martele. Listen again. Here’s the staccato part.
Here’s the martele part.

Because I caught the string. Catch, release.

Catch, release.

Catch, release.

Now here comes legato.

All the varying strokes is what makes playing the violin so versatile and beautiful, and you have to perfect each one.

That is an introduction to different kinds of bow strokes on the violin.

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Okay, so now we’re going to talk about applying fingering tapes for young beginner violinists.

What they’re used for when, you know, a child first starts the violin, it’s very difficult to know where to put your fingers, your left hand fingers, on the instrument. Because, as you can see, if I took off these tapes here there would be absolutely nothing on the fingerboard. So, I mean, how, you know, can a child really know where to put them? You do want to use your ear eventually to know where to put your fingers, absolutely. But in the beginning, it’s a nice guide for them that you use for a short time so that they’re understanding good pitch and they’re getting used good pitch. And then, after a while, you can take them off.

So, this is what they look like. I get these at a company called Shar.com, S-H-A-R. Actually, I think it’s SharMusic now, .com, SharMusic.com. And they are a great company, actually, for a lot of different things. Sheet music, teaching supplies, a lot of different things.

They come in rolls, so this is already cut. And it’s a fingering tape. And you hold the violin in your lap like this and you put the tape between your two fingers underneath the strings, above the fingerboard like so. And you slide it all the way to the tape to the spot that you want it. Normally the teacher will do this for you. But if you have a good ear, you could also do this yourself at home.

So, now I put it on what I’m hoping is a good B. So, first, you make sure that all the strings are really nicely in tune. I’m going to try it with the bow. Okay. So, now I’m going to play a B on the A string and it sounds good to me. This is the first finger tape, so I’m playing the first finger on each of the strings. It sounds good, so I’m going to wrap it around.

And now, that’s how you apply the tape to the violin. This is the second finger tape that’s already applied, third finger tape, fourth finger tape and you did the same thing with those.

And that’s a little bit about applying fingering tapes for your little one.

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So, the E string on the violin is the highest string and it’s the sweetest string. And there’s lots of different pieces that have the E string. I’m gonna play, just very beginning of, the Mozart Concerto No. 5. And it starts on the E string.

So, I hope you could tell how sweet the E string can be. It’s the highest string.

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So now I’m going to teach you how to loosen and tighten your bow properly, and then also how to rosin your bow. When you’re loosening and tightening your bow, this is the screw that you use. And when you loosen your bow, you want it to be about that loose. Not too loose. I’ll loosen it a lot. See, that’s too much, because then when you put it back in your case, some of the hairs could fall out or, you know, break. So about this loose, right there, where they’re sort of wiggly, but not too wiggly. And to loosen it, you turn the screw counter-clockwise, and to tighten it, you turn the screw clockwise.

Now when you tighten the bow and you’re getting ready to play, you want it to be not too tight and not too loose. You can see if it’s too tight or too loose by using a pencil as a guide.

Okay. At the tip of the bow, the pencil should not touch either the stick or the hair. That’s correct. As you get to the middle of the bow, it should touch. But it’s not touching, as you can see. So this is too tight. And then as you come out, it should not touch again, which is correct. So now let me show you the proper bow tightening. So I’m loosening it, I’m turning it counter-clockwise, and now let’s see if it will work. It does not touch anything over here. Then, when you bring the pencil to the middle, it is touching both the hair and the stick. That’s good. And then as you come out it does not touch, and that’s good as well. So that’s how you loosen and tighten the screws of your bow for the optimal sound on your instrument.

Now, rosin, R-O-S-I-N, this is rosin. It comes in all different shades. Green, this is green. It’s sort of a sticky rosin, but there’s also lighter ones that are not as sticky. I tend to like this even more. This gives you the sound on the hairs. Without rosin, you’re not going to hear anything.

However, you don’t want to put too much rosin on. When you take your violin out everyday, and your bow, you just put a little bit at the frog and then you drag it, so watch, like so. A little bit at the frog, then you drag it up to the tip, and do a little bit at the tip, then you go back to the frog, a little bit at the frog, and then you go back to the tip, a little bit to the tip, and that’s it. You don’t want to do too much.

Now you have a perfectly rosined bow. And that’s how you rosin your bow.

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Okay. So now I’m going to teach you how to place your left hand on your violin.

In a previous video, I spoke about how to place your violin on your shoulder the proper way. So once your violin is up and looks beautiful and it’s just in the right position, you put up your left hand.

Now, the first thing to think about when you put up your left hand on your instrument is, you’re putting it on the neck of the violin. Here’s the neck of the violin.

Now the first thing you think about is where your thumb goes, and what it should look like. Your thumb should look like this.

For a beginner, you may even want to pick up something like a sticker, or even like one of those corn removers from the pharmacy, and put it right about there. And your thumb should point, ever so slightly, in the direction of the scroll, which is here. So in this direction. And the thumb should not be too straight, but on the straighter side, but relaxed, not bent. On the straighter side, but relaxed.

Then the other thing you have to think about when placing your left hand, and after thinking about the thumb, is the arm. Your arm needs to be very, very straight. You don’t want the wrist coming out. You don’t want the wrist coming in. You want it to be perfectly flat like a pancake, all the way from your elbow to your palm of your hand.

And then last but not least are your fingers. Now, depending on which string you’re putting your fingers on, you might want your elbow a little bit in, or a little bit out, but we’ll talk about that in another segment.

When you put your fingers down, they need to be put down right on the very tip of the fat of the finger. Not on the nail, and not off the tip. The tip of the fat of the finger. So let’s say I’m putting my first finger down on the A string. This is the tip of the fat of the finger. Second finger. Third finger. Fourth finger.

Now an example of doing it wrong would be like this. So you want it to be on the tip of the fat of the finger, and if you think about that everything else is in the right position. You have a little platform here. Here’s the platform for the second finger, platform for the third finger, platform for the fourth finger.

If it’s like this, there’s no platform. The pizza will fall right off the platform. So you want it to be nice and tall.

Again, don’t move the thumb. And this is the perfect position for the left hand.

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When you need to replace your strings on the violin either because you’ll see part of the string is unraveling, or the sound is not as ringy, or it’s been several months since you changed it last, it’s time to change your strings. Right here this is the kind of string I use. I use the Dominant for the A, D, and G strings. Here is a Dominant G string, and I’m going to change my old Dominant G to a new one.

First, I’m going to take the G peg and I’m going to unravel the string, and it comes right out. Now I’m going to take the new G. First, when you put the new string on you do the ball at the bottom first. Not all strings come with a ball. Some of them come with a loop, like my E string here, this is a loop string also. So, depending on whether you have loops on your tailpiece or spots for the ball that’s the kind that you get. I put the ball into this little circle and I pull it towards the edge so that it’s just the ball.

Then, I put the string in the groove of the bridge. Then, I take the top part where it’s purple and I find the little hole that it goes into, and reach it to the other side. I make sure on the other end of the hole that I put the string in about an inch or so and then start winding up.

Now, a very important factor is to make sure that the string is wound up close to the edge of the scroll. In other words, if you’re doing the G string, which I’m doing, you want it close to this edge. If you’re doing the A string you want it close to this edge. The reason being because otherwise the peg might be too loose and when you go to tune it it’ll just unravel. But this, if you wind it nice and close to the edge, it’ll stay nice and tight. Winding it all the way up making sure it’s in that groove in the bridge and the groove also on the fingerboard at the top here, and now I tune it.

Then I make sure it’s in tune and it sounds nice and ringy. Tune it better. Now, it’s not going to sound just the way you like it at first. It’s going to be a little bit tinny, but you just keep playing it and it’ll sound beautiful within the next day or two. But it will be out of tune as you can see, and you’ll have to keep tuning it up.

And that’s how you replace your strings.

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Now we’re going to talk about where all the Gs are on the violin, all the Bs and all the As.

First the Gs. Here’s the lowest G. That’s the open G. Then you have third finger on D string, that’s the next G. Then you have second finger on E string. Those are all the first position Gs that you can play. If you start shifting, you can then play more. That’s a really nice high G.

OK. Then you have A. Here’s the lowest A, first finger on G string. Here’s open A. Third finger on E is an A. Then, if you shift up on the E string, you can play the nice high A.

The B note is second finger on G in first position again. First finger on A is another B. Again, first position. Then, fourth finger, first position on E. Then, if you shift up nice and high, you’ll get that really high B on the E string.

Those are all the Gs, the As and the Bs on the violin.

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So, the C natural on the violin is sort of like the sad C, because when you first learn to play the violin, you usually learn to play C sharp, like this.

You have open A. First finger on A is B. And then you have C sharp, second finger. But, if you’re then going to learn a C natural, that is one half-step below a C sharp and it’s right next to the B. So, then you would play this. A. B, first finger. And then, here’s your C natural, right next to the B. They’re touching.

So, then you have a little bit of a sadder, minor feel. That’s an introduction to the C natural on the violin.

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Sometimes you’re going to need to be able to use all of the strings sort of like a roll. In order to do that, you need your elbow to swing back and forth and it is sort of like a child on a swing going back and forth, back and forth.

And this is how it’s done. Going from the G string, rolling to the D, A, and E and then back. A, D, G. This is what your elbow should look like and then I’ll explain a little bit more.

Now the elbow is a very strong force in the right hand. The elbow is very important in that when you first begin, it’s leading everything. When you play, you start with curled fingers like we’ve spoken about in previous segments. And then, in the elbow is about, usually the elbow is about a tiny bit lower than the wrist and the fingers like so. And then as you go, it stays that way on all the strings. So obviously, as you’re going, you know, to the higher strings, your elbow’s going to go lower as well. And then, it goes back up. And you sort of feel it leading both ways so it bleeds down before the strings even hit the next note. It’s an upward motion and a downward motion so down, up.

So, that’s the elbow swing on the violin.