Violin Video Lesson: A deep look at right elbow's movement

Okay, let's try to keep this simple, I always try to do that. You see the right-hand elbow should precede the arm, wrist and hand during string crossings. Did you see that? Elbow, wrist. Elbow, hand. Elbow, fingers. You see, as the elbow moves upward or downward, the rest of the arm follows. This allows everything from the fingers in the hand, to the wrist, to all of those muscles, it allows them to be loose. It also produces these figure 8 that I spoke about in one of my previous videos, which was called Discovering Figure 8s for the bow on the violin.

So, shall I break it down for you? Let's go from the E string to the A. Did you see what happens? First, my elbow moved, then the wrist, the hand followed. Here we go again. And what about from the A string to the D? Same thing occurred. And the D to the G, absolutely the same thing occurred. Now, how much motion is needed? As little as possible. Let's exaggerate it here, elbow there. Now I'm going to reduce that and make it very smooth. Another way to look at it would be suppose I want to play the A and the E together and try to...I'm trying to see just how far I need to go. Now, let's go back. And you see, it becomes very smooth.

So what about the four strings? Let's go. Did you see that? First, the elbow and it pulled the hand all the way across. I've been going from here to here. What about the other way? Same thing. Elbow down. Hand. Wrist. Allowing my fingers to be very free. What about up bow? Elbow, hand. So I guess the rule would be elbow first, hand, wrist follow. And what about my left elbow? Does the same thing follow as I go from the E string to the A or the E string to the G? Why yes. You see, my elbow leads my fingers across the strings, either going from the G to the E or the E to the G. It's very curious. One might even say that the elbows follow each other. Look at that. Because when I go from the G to the E string, my elbow over here is going like this, right? And when I go from the G to the E, my left elbow goes from here to there. Geez. What do you know? They follow each other. Hah, how is that for a concept?

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