Violin Video Lesson: Finding That Right Spot

All violinists spend an enormous amount of time working on playing in tune.

But what does that even mean to play in tune? Is there just one way to play in tune? One universal in tune way of playing? I mean, once we can play an A major scale in tune, does that mean that every piece we play in A major will now automatically be in tune? I'd love it if that were true, but something tells me that it's wishful thinking.

So, if that's the case, how do we even approach playing in tune? How many different ways can we work on this? Well, in thinking about it, I came up with six ways to approach it.

Those being aural, visual, tactile, theory, body awareness, and intuitiveness.

So let's start with our aural perception.

You know, what we hear.

It sounds sort of obvious, but we adjust our playing based on what we hear.

But hearing isn't just about hearing. It's about recognizing relationships from note to note and placing them into a context.

Then there's visual.

We use our eyes more than we might think. We can watch our finger placements, become aware of how we arrive there, and see how we moved on to the next finger.

All of this being an important part of our memory process.

And what about the feel of it? You know, that tactile element.

How the string feels under the fingers. How you feel the spacing between the notes. These are the subtle adjustments we make based on what we feel and have felt.

And this too fits into our memory process.

Of course, now theory plays a role too. I mean, we just don't place our fingers randomly.

We make choices, and these choices are based on harmonic context.

For example, that leading tone, or that suspension, or that perfect fifth.

You see, knowing the function of a note has an effect on how we tune it.

And thinking about the whole picture, that brings us to how our body influences playing in tune.

How we shift, how we adjust our elbows, how we bend our knees. I mean, playing in tune isn't just about where we put our fingers.

And finally, we arrive at the least rational way.

That being playing in tune shaped by intuitiveness.

Sometimes we stretch a note higher because it feels right.

That leading tone, maybe it just wants to reach a little further.

These kinds of decisions on where to put our fingers based on intuition can be as valid as anything else.

They are simply choices we sometimes feel compelled to make.

So these are some of the ways to look at playing in tune.

Perhaps you have other ways as well.

You know, the more I think about it, the more I see just how difficult it is to have this discussion.

But a while back, someone said to me that playing in tune was actually simple.

They said, to play in tune, you just had to place your finger in the right spot, and then keep putting it there.

I laughed and thought, if only it was that simple.

I mean, after all we've just explored, we know better, right? Or do we?

Automatic video-to-text transcription by DaDaScribe.com

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