I've been playing violin for about 2 months now and it seems I've hit something of a wall in that I'm having trouble with the fingering when switching from notes on the D string to notes on the A string.
I have difficulty smoothly moving from say G or F# note to A, B, C#. I've been practicing on this one exercise in my book (All For Strings) for about a week now and still can't seem to play the song smoothly at all.
Is there some kind of warm up song or exercise that I could do that would give me alot of practice moving between strings? The Meow-Mix song helped me alot in moving my fingers correctly on one string, now I'm looking for a song that could help me practice jumping from one string to the next, something that I could do for like 10-15 minutes each morning before I start doing my exercises out of the book?
Play your D major scale slow at first then gradually speed up. Scales are sometimes boring, but they work. Once the scales are smooth play your scale in thirds working toward smoother and faster tones. Hang in there! After all if it were easy everyone would play the violin.
The trick to changing smoothly between strings is to have your fingers ready one step ahead. This, of course, takes a lot of practice. Say, for instance, you were switching from G (3rd finger on D) to B (1st finger on A). As you play G, your first finger needs to be prepared on B. Then, it only takes a subtle tilt of the bow to switch from D to A. Good Luck!
Practise changing strings with only the bow first until that movement is smooth, and then have your fingers prepared when you try to play the piece, just as was said earlier. Good luck, smoothness comes with time.
The answer depends on what kind of notation you mean to use. If you aim to play notes without legato, for example, then only practice will help you with that. A good technique that comes in handy for tricky string jumping, though, is learning how to play in the higher positions. When you've learned how to do that, you won't even need to jump strings; you can go from one to the other without a problem. Still, there is no subsitute for practice.
Hey don't worry, you will get it. is it changing the sting, say going from D to A or is it just with the fingering? if it is changing the string then you've got to do some work with your elbow! you are not bending it or anything, its just that if you want to go from D to A if you drop your elbow a bit then the rest of your arm will follow. drop it more and you will go to E. so its the opposite to go the other way, raise your elbow and your wrist will follow and so your bow. the rest of your arm works when you bow you see, not just your wrist. like the others have said, practice a scale, D major, (the notes that you know) and consciously make this movement to change strings. after a while you'll just be doing it.
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