Everything You Need To Know For Learning How To Play The Violin

The violin along with other stringed instruments (viola, cello, bass, etc.) is very difficult to perfect. It takes a long time and a lot of patience. I have been playing for almost eight years now, and I still am no Lindsey Stirling, unfortunately. In this blog, I am going to go through the string names, note names, posture and hand position techniques, bowing, rhythm, reading music, and what you will need to be successful.

Learning The Notes:

Learning the names of the notes are actually fairly simple as they all follow the alphabet, going A through G. Take a look at this picture:

In this, you can see you start with G, which is the name of the thickest string, then D, A, and finally E. The thicker the string, the deeper the pitch. Now lets talk about half steps and whole steps. If you can see, there are little b's and hashtags next to some of the notes. Those are flats and sharps. b's mean the note is flat, and hashtags are sharps. It may be confusing right now looking at this why some are flats and some are sharps, but a key thing to always remember is, any note that is flat is a different note sharp. For example, if you look at the G string, it says a C sharp, but it can actually also be read as D flat. It all depends on the key of music you are playing, which is something that takes a lot more time to comprehend, so I suggest just starting with the basic knowledge of flats and sharps.

Posture And Hand Position:

When you first start to learn correct posture and hand positions, it is going to feel completely weird. No matter how uncomfortable you feel though, just do it how you should, because trust me the longer you play incorrectly the harder it is to break that habit.

If you are holding your violin like the image on the top, you are holding it incorrectly. As minimal as it may seem to be, this can have a huge affect on how you play, especially when you start leveling up. It will be hard to shift your hand into different positions, hard to do vibrato, and you will most likely play out of tune. To fix this, look in a mirror and make your wrist connecting your forearm and your hand straight, just like the bottom picture shows.

When playing your instrument, it is also very important to be sitting up straight, on the edge of your chair, with you violin up high. You don't want to slouch when playing or have your instrument low, as it will make you look lazy and will take down the confidence of your playing immensely. To help with keeping your instrument up, every violin player needs a shoulder rest:

Bowing:

Bowing is one of the most important elements in playing a stringed instrument. It controls the overall sound. The correct bow hold looks like this:

To describe the perfect bow hold, your pointer finger should be placed on top, curling slightly over the bow, sitting on either the leather or the silver wrapping. On most bows unlike this one shown in the image, the "frog" as it is called, or the base part where the ring finger is placed, there is more room. Because of this, typically your middle finger and your ring finger would rest on the frog. Your pinky would then rest lightly on the top of the bow, never wrapped around like the other fingers. You shouldn't be putting hardly any pressure on your pinky, some violinists don't even rest it on the bow at all. The pressure should come from your pointer finger and your thumb the most. You also want to make sure your hand is resting at an angle as shown in the picture.

Knowing The Instrument:

Study this image below to get a better understanding of your instrument and the parts of it:

Starting To Play:

Now that you are in position, and have the correct bow hold, you can begin to learn how to play the instrument correctly with good sound. Most beginners music is at Forte dynamic which means you are to play loud. To do this, first rosin up your bow. You most likely were provided with rosin when you first got your instrument, but if not you can buy it at most music stores. Rosin looks like this:

I suggest using dark rosin, it tends to create a better and less scratchy sound. You have to scratch the surface of the rosin, which most people do with the end of the bow as it is pretty sharp. Now slide your bow through the rosin like this:

Go back and forth a couple times, especially with a brand new bow. When your bow is all rosined up, it should make sound when pulled on the strings. Now to play, begin placing your bow at the frog end of the bow hair. Pull your bow to the right going straight across the strings. This is extremely important, you need to make sure your bow is going straight across the strings, otherwise you will develop a very bad habit of poor tone. Here is an example of what I am talking about:

See how her bow is straight between the bridge and the neck of the instrument? This will produce the best tone, and will help you in the future when trying to play faster and slower music.

Starting Scales:

In my opinion, scales are the best way to start. Look up some scales online, or try the ones I will provide below to start understanding placement of your fingers and to begin understanding different key signatures. Use the chart provided in the learning the notes tab, and start learning where your fingers go in different scales.

D Major Scale: D E F# G A B C# D C# B A G F# E D

G Major Scale: G A B C D E F# G F# E D C B A G

C Major Scale: C D E F G A B C B A G F E D C

Starting To Read Music:

Reading music is something that looks difficult in the beginning, but overtime becomes a second language. There are some key components that you must learn to understand though before you can become a true expert at reading music. First, you have to understand the names of the notes. Before this though, you have to know what the notes sit on, which is a staff. The 5 lines in sheet music makes up a staff. Here is an example of the staff, and the names of the notes on the staff:

Here we can see the notes start from G, which is your G string, so it is an open string (you don't put down any fingers). Then it goes to A, which is first finger on the G string. Then, B, second finger; and C, third finger. D is your next open string, and then you continue on with the pattern. Here is a fun and easy way to remember the names of the notes:

Once you know the names of the notes, you can start to begin learning how long to hold out notes.

Here's the basics, quarter notes, half notes, and whole notes. When you begin learning music, you will learn about rhythms and keeping in time. A way to know how long to hold out each is to use a metronome to keep a steady beat. A quarter note equals 1 beat, a half note equals 2 beats, and a whole note equals 4 beats. This only applies to music with a time signature of 4/4, which the majority of beginners music is. Don't worry about time signatures yet, just try to learn how to count with beats. Here is what a time signature looks like:

If you are wondering what the symbol next to the time signature is, it is a treble clef. Violins, pianos, flutes, and some other instruments use treble clef music.

Here is a key signature:

This is what sharps or flats you need to play. They line up with the note names. In this particular photo, there is a C#, F#, and a G# which means it is in the key of A major, but you don't need to worry about that right now. Once you start getting into more advanced music, you will start running into a lot of different key signatures and accidentals, which are sharps and flats that are on the staff, but not in the key signature. You will also start running into different counts of notes such as 8th notes and 16th notes. Here is an 8th note:

8th notes are half of a beat, or if it makes more sense to you, half of a quarter note. A sixteenth note is half of an 8th note, or a quarter of a quarter note. Here is an example of a bunch of sixteenth notes that equal one quarter note:

Tuning:

This, in my opinion is the most important thing in playing any instrument. You may be able to learn all the techniques and be able to play the violin beautifully, but no one will want to listen to you if you are not in tune. To make sure you are in tune, I highly recommend buying a tuner. You can get them for free on your phone if you have one, or you can go to a music store and buy one. They will tell you if your strings are out of tune, in which you will need to adjust them with the pegs and the fine tuners (I suggest not doing it yourself when you are just starting out!). Tuners will also tell you if you need to adjust the placement of your fingers on the string based on if you are sharp or flat. Do not become reliant on a tuner though, you want to be able to tune by ear, so make sure when you reach that pitch of perfection with your tuner, listen to it so you know how it should sound in the future.

What You Will Need:

Some of the things I will say have already been mentioned, but there are also new things that are very important.

Violin
Bow
Rosin
Shoulder rest
Tuner
metronome
(possibly) Cleaning supplies: Cleaners and Polishers

My Advice:

My advice for you if you are truly passionate about learning the violin, is to keep going with it. There will be days you get extremely frustrated because you don't think you sound any better than you did before, but I promise you you're wrong. It is a slow growth learning an instrument, but it will happen if you keep practicing every single day. I suggest practicing with a metronome and a tuner from the start, because eventually you will get to a point where you will no longer need those things, but other violinists that are ahead of you just might because they have adapted poor habits from not starting doing the right techniques. When you have finally mastered the basic elements you can move forward into learning dynamics, vibrato, and understanding key signatures and different time signatures. Just keep going, and know that it is possible, otherwise there wouldn't be a Lindsey Stirling or any other professional violinist.

***I hope this article helped you on your journey to becoming a violinist! If you want a video tutorial for anything you are unsure about, comment what you need help with and check out my YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHwYUvoe_nfh-yVje_h_y1g

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