"I find tone is like
someone's voice," says virtuoso violinist Jaime Laredo, conductor
of the prestigious New York String Orchestra Seminar, "and like
appearances, no two sounds are alike." In other words, your tone
is your musical voice, as individual as you are, and you want it to
speak for you as clearly and articulately as possible.
While a great sound is difficult to define, since
to a certain extent its beauty lies in the ear of the beholder, top-caliber
players tend to agree that imagination plays a far more important role
in tone production than does technique. In their efforts to play well,
many less-polished string players lose sight of this and focus instead
on technical skills, in effect putting the cart before the horse.
Internationally known concert
violinist and educator Ida Kavafian describes the process more eloquently:
"The first thing that is responsible for a good tone is what each
individual has in his or her ear, heart, and mind. Each individual has
his or her own concept of sound and its importance. While many technical
things are important in creating a good sound, the most important aspect
is a person's concept of sound.
"If you can define
and hear what kind of sound you want then you will find ways to get
it."
German violinist Viviane
Hagner agrees that you must first figure out what you want to hear to
achieve great tone. She is the winner of the 2000 Young Concert Artists
International Auditions and has been hailed by the New York Times
as having a tone that is "special: vibrant but slightly dark in
color, almost plaintive."
"I produce the sound
I want to hear on the violin, but it may be something else that listeners
hear," she explains. "It's the greatest compliment if people
like it. The violin is probably closest to the human voice—it's
probably easiest to touch someone's heart. One must listen really carefully
to the sound one produces—this is really most important. Listening
is already an improvement. If you can notice that the sound is not nice,
that is already an improvement.
"It is so personal
and individual what someone likes—and that's the way it should
be. In trying, you find out what you like, or what others like and are
moved by. After I play, if I provoke some kind of emotion, I think,
OK, that's what I am trying to do."
Despite their emphasis on
identifying the sound they want to hear, Hagner and Kavafian agree that
the music itself should be the driving force behind one’s tone
production. "It is vital to have different sounds for different
repertoire," Kavafian says. "What you use for Debussy is not
what you want to use in Brahms, and vice versa. Everything should originate
from the repertoire one is playing—using the appropriate sound
for the repertoire, and the character you want in and within a movement."
In other words, you don't
want to settle on a generic sound for your entire repertoire. "I
don't like the one-size-fits-all beautiful sound," says Muir Quartet
violinist and Boston University professor Peter Zazofsky. "It
is very unsatisfying in the end—it's just skin deep. You have
to do something with a beautiful sound. You must vary the sound
to understand the mood of the music.
"It is the manipulation of the sound that makes
the superstars."
Many superstars play on
phenomenal instruments, but how much does the instrument shape a player's
sound? According to Laredo, "The instrument helps, certainly, but
people sound the way they sound. A great player can make a cigar box
sound great. But a great instrument helps with colors more than the
sound."
Cho-Liang Lin offers an
illuminating anecdote on the subject. A few years ago, Lin was just
putting away his Stradivari violin at the end of intermission at an
Italian festival concert, when Salvatore Accardo appeared back stage
with his own Strad sporting a broken string. "Accardo asked if
instead of taking the time to change a string, he could just borrow
my violin," Lin recalls. "I agreed and went into the audience
to hear the results. For the first four or five minutes, I heard my
violin. But by the end of the first movement, my violin sounded like
Salvatore's.
"It's the player, not
the instrument, that makes the sound."
The Tools of Tone
Laredo, Lin, and Kavafian—all
of whom judged the 2002 Indianapolis International Violin Competition—agree
that the player is responsible for creating great tone. During the competition,
Lin says, "the first place winner [Hungarian violinist Barnabas
Kelemen] didn't have a great instrument, but he managed to get so much
out of it that his performance was very impressive."
Keep in mind, Lin adds,
that you want to be at home with your instrument. "Many competitors
have loaner violins," he explains, "but then they don't have
a lifetime affinity with their instruments."
In a competition setting,
Kavafian adds, the judges ultimately pay closer attention to the skills
of the players than to the quality of their instruments. "All the
finalists had different approaches to sound; you could definitely hear
the differences," says Kavafian of the competitors at Indianapolis,
a rigorous event that has come to be known as the Olympics of the violin.
"While it was obvious that some participants had better instruments
than others, most of the jury took that into consideration. It didn't
put people on different levels if one had borrowed a great instrument.
Also the judges were knowledgeable—they knew how good a person
was—whether or not they had a great instrument."
The tools of sound production are few, the experts
say, but their effects are endless. Sound depends on bow usage, and
to a lesser extent, on vibrato. "To make a good sound, there are
three basics: speed, pressure, and sounding point," says Zazofsky.
"The variety of each will present you with your best sound. What
percentage of each depends on the context, but to find the right balance
you have to manipulate each of these three variables."
To shape your tone, Laredo adds, you need to think
about vibrato, the kind and amount of bow pressure you use, and most
importantly, the bow speed. "I find that students often are concentrating
on getting a big sound," he says, "but they should look instead
to their bow speed. They often forget that they can get many varieties
of sound by varying their bow speed."
A good tone, says violin
teacher Emlyn Ngai of the Hartt School of Music, should have resonance.
"If we approach the instrument and bow in the appropriate manner,
we set the whole instrument vibrating," he explains. "A good
tone should have a core in it for projection and warmth to please the
listener’s ear. A good tone should ring like a bell, pure and beautiful,
even without the use of vibrato."
Getting Started
So how do you go about improving your sound? Kavafian
suggests that "warming up on long tones is a really good idea.
We concentrate so much on the left hand, we forget to warm up the right.
Work on smooth bow changes, loosening your fingers so that they can
be responsive."
Hagner recommends experimentation
as a way to investigate different tones. "Try to feel your bow
arm, and really try all different kinds of pressure, go close to and
far from the fingerboard," she suggests. "See how many different
kinds of sounds you can produce. Try this in the pieces you play. You
should always try to be creative, and avoid playing the same way all
the time. When I play the same piece many times, I try to find different
sounds. Also, a lot of it you can find by really listening carefully.
That's how I go about finding the right bow speed. Listening back on
tape is very helpful. And you have to remember that it's also different
to play in a big hall—the sound does change from little practice
rooms."
Ultimately, the best source
of inspiration may be your own voice. "When you talk to someone
about producing sound, you have to
talk about the human voice," Zazofsky says. "The bow has a
light tip and a heavy frog. It is easy to make a diminuendo as you go
to the tip, even if you don’t plan to do so. People tend to sing
better than they play because the bow is a foreign object, not a natural
part of you. You don’t want to be phrasing by the bow instead of
by the music.
"You want to play the
way you sing—always go back to singing."
The vocal model is probably the most successful
in that it teaches string players to phrase and shape sound like the
natural human musical instrument, says Ngai. "When we think in
terms of singing (or speaking) we are attuned to the free, open, relaxed-yet-supported
control of air necessary for a good vocal tone. Creating such a tone
on the violin is much like this in that the bow arm becomes the pair
of lungs and diaphragm," he says.
"Bow speed, weight,
contact, and distribution are the equivalent to a singer's breath control."
Weight Training
To understand tone production,
Ngai adds, players should learn a bit about the physics and the physiology
involved in playing a stringed instrument. Applying the bow to the string,
for instance, most players know that motion and weight produce sound.
But only uninhibited motion and a natural amount of weight—not
pressure—produce good tone. To ensure a free range of motion,
Ngai points out, we must rely on our large muscle groups to play the
violin. The smaller muscle groups have more complex responsibilities—finding
notes, tilting the bow—but they cannot operate easily for any
length of time without the support of the larger muscles. At a performance
we may see only the violinist’s arms and hands moving, but the
player's shoulders, back, legs, and feet are undoubtedly involved as
well. "In a sense, we see only the tip of the iceberg," he
says.
Relying on the larger, slow-twitch
muscles of the shoulders, back, and legs to sustain our playing allows
the small muscles, those fidgety, fast-twitch devils, to stay relaxed
and unfatigued—in a word, uninhibited. "Fluidity and ease
of motion are the most important things in achieving a good tone,"
says Ngai. "If there is a 'lock' in the right hand's first-finger
base knuckle, we hear it in the sound. If our right shoulder is tight,
we hear it. If the chin is clamping down on the chin rest and causing
tension in the neck, we hear it. If our right wrist is tight, we get
a seam or crease in our bow change.
"Every sort of tension seems to be reflected
in our sound."
Weight, he adds, occurs naturally because of gravitational
force: "The weight of the right arm is more than enough to create
a good full tone." Pressure, on the other hand, requires the exertion
of force, in our case, flexing muscles. But constant muscular exertion
causes tension and fatigue, and produces unwanted results. "Applying
pressure to the bow does not create a good tone, but rather stifles
or dampens the sound," Ngai explains. "The string is not allowed
to vibrate under the hair with ease, precluding the occurrence of overtones
and thus resonance."
Warming Up
Once you grasp the physical
aspects of playing, it's time to think about putting your warm-up sessions
to better use. Dan Stepner, first violinist of the Lydian Quartet and
concertmaster of the Handel and Haydn Society, points out that daily
practice and warm-up sessions offer regular opportunities not only to
learn new pieces but to explore the tonal qualities of sound. "It
seems to me one needs to have or develop an appetite for a good tone,"
he says.
"Recorded or live models
are useful," Stepner continues, "but one needs to enjoy one's
own sound every day. Any instrument has a range of sounds, and it is
good psychology to seek out an instrument's 'best' sounds and learn
how to reproduce them at will. I have found it helpful to try to 'find'
my bow sound early in each practice or warm-up session by keeping a
steady, resonant sound while constantly varying the three 'dimensions'
of bowing: bow speed [width], pressure [height], and distance from the
bridge [depth].
"I also do some homemade
exercises that vary the frequency of changes from up bow to down bow
without changing bow speed. For instance, try alternating groups of
16th notes with long, slow notes—bow speed never changing. These
exercises can be done with open strings or harmonics and by simulating
the string lengths used in passage work, but without the distraction
of left-hand problems. When my sound seems warmed up—pleasing,
resonant, almost tactile—I begin to play scales and arpeggios.
"The best fingerings for these are the ones
that can be done semi-automatically, so that I can continue to monitor
my sound."
Zazofsky agrees that warm-up
sessions are a good time to explore new sounds, and he warns against
relying too heavily on vibrato. He starts his warm-up with slow scales,
looking for maximum sound in terms of clarity of tone with the least
effort. "If you start practicing after a really good nap, your
muscles are nice and relaxed. That's when you get your best sound,"
he says. "When you've had a good rest, you get your natural arm
weight. I try to get that feeling all the time. Listen to each string
without vibrato. A beautiful sound has to be that of bow against string.
Vibrato is a color, an enhancer. Vibrato won't make up for sound that’s
lacking. We really have to produce sound with the bow, so don't go automatically
to vibrato.
"I carefully listen for the core of the sound
when I warm up. I like really slow double stops, fingered octaves, fourths,
and fifths, which stretch the left hand and let you hear the overtones
really clearly. In the double stops, I aim to allow the instrument to
ring as if I were playing on open strings. Also, you want a slow bow
with enough pressure to produce a big sound, right on the edge of becoming
scratchy."
Hagner reminds us always
to keep the musical context in mind when considering vibrato. "Something
marked dolce is very different from espressivo in
terms of vibrato," she says. "I think dolce means
a slower, more relaxed kind of vibrato. If something is espressivo,
though, you press your fingers more on the fingerboard, and increase
your vibrato speed."
In your search for your own great sound, it might
be helpful to keep this thought from Kavafian in mind: "In terms
of sound, your imagination is the most important component. Keep an
open mind and explore every possibility.
"A person's imagination
is his or her biggest asset."
Photo of Jaime Laredo: © 2003 Garrison Beau Scott, www.garrisonbeauscott.com
