10 Aug 3 Exercises to improve your sound on the violin

First Exercise: The Son Filé:

The son filé exercise is a very basic but also effective bow exercise that any violinist regardless of their level can integrate in their practice routine. Son filé is a french term and it translates roughly as “never ending sound”. An even never ending sound across the whole violin bow is the goal in this exercise. The difficulty of this exercise is to play the longest possible note for one bow without losing the evenness of the sound. The slower we draw the bow on the string the harder it gets to maintain an even vibration of the string. To succeed in this exercise we need to bow close to the bridge and with a quite heavy bow on the string. It is also important to maintain a perfectly perpendicular angle of the bow to the string for the best resonance. Play a crescendo to the tip and a decrescendo to the frog to make this exercise even more effective. This variation was of the son filé exercise was introduced by the famous teacher Leopold Auer and is also known as the “Auer exercise”:

Second Exercise: Speeding Up The Vibrato

Speeding up the vibrato with controlled number of swings per bow is a very effective exercise to improve the control over your vibrato and to, well… speed it up. Starting in a slow tempo with as little as 4 swings per whole bow with a controlled wrist movement is a good starting point. To count the vibrato beats we use the crest of the vibrato oscillation or in other words the upwards swing in the pitch of the note. We can then do 6, 8, 12 and more vibrato swings per bow. The faster the vibrato gets the harder it gets to control the speed and evenness of the vibrato. My tip is to use more arm movement and a slightly less flexible wrist for the faster oscillations. But the most benefit can be taken away from practicing slow and medium speed vibrato oscillations with a controlled and flexible wrist movement.

Third Exercise: Kreutzer Nr 2 With Asymmetrical Bowings

Kreutzer Etude Nr 2 (In some editions Etude Nr. 1) is the most popular exercise for bowing variations. Asymmetrical bow pattern applied to this etude are one of the best ways to practice control over different bow speeds. With the bowing of 3 slurred notes and one separate note we can push ourselves into using asymmetrical bow speeds for each bow. Both bows, up- and downbow should be played with the whole bow to maximize the effect of this exercise. To maintain a clear sound we have to change the contact point closer to the bridge for the slower bow and more to the fingerboard for the fast bow. To maintain an equal volume for all notes we play with a heavier bow for the slower bow and with less weight for the fast bow.

If you want to learn more about sound production on the violin check out my new course Sound of the Violin.