Violinist Andrew Bird answers the internet's burning questions about playing the violin. What is the secret to vibrato? Why are violins so expensive? Is there a trick to properly tuning a violin? Answers to these questions and many more await—it's Violin Support.Director: Justin WolfsonDirector of Photography: AJ YoungEditor: Christopher JonesExpert: Andrew BirdLine Producer: Joseph BuscemiAssociate Producer: Paul GulyasProduction Manager: Peter BrunetteCamera Operator: Lucas VilicichSound Mixer: Paul CornettProduction Assistant: Fernando BarajasAdditional Editor: Jason Malizia
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TechTranscript
00:00Hi, I'm Andrew Bird. I'm a songwriter and composer,
00:02and I'm here today to answer your questions from the internet.
00:05Welcome to Violin Support.
00:11First question, Late Lord Chatham.
00:13Have just had my violin lesson. I cannot get vibrato.
00:17I actually cannot. What is the secret?
00:19Vibrato takes a long time. As with every little technique,
00:22you kind of get it, and then you're doing one little thing wrong,
00:26and then it all kind of falls apart.
00:27Vibrato is when you're...
00:35You can see my last knuckle is kind of flexing a little bit,
00:38and I'm moving the hand like this, not like this.
00:50But just be patient. It's just muscle memory.
00:54It takes a long time. You'll get it.
00:55Okay, this is from Cowboy Klaus.
00:59How expensive are violins? Like, I'm asking for a friend.
01:02Violins are quite expensive. Baffles me sometimes.
01:05Like, a vintage guitar that's super cool and sexy looking
01:09is still somewhat affordable.
01:12To get a violin that starts to be just playable and decent,
01:16not much under eight grand or ten grand.
01:18They just don't sound very good. I don't know why that is.
01:21It's an art. It's really tricky to shave down the wood to thin enough.
01:25There's a lot of nuance to making a good violin.
01:28The market is very... it's very high.
01:30M. Kent Wheel.
01:32I've never understood how to hold a violin bow properly.
01:35Another one that takes longer than almost anything
01:38to get with playing the violin,
01:40more than figuring out where your fingers go,
01:43is the bow technique, because it's a bit abstract.
01:45When I used to teach, I would tell my students
01:48to pretend that they're lying in a canoe,
01:50and they've got their arm draped over the side in the water,
01:53and they're dragging their arm through the water.
01:56You've got a very light touch on the bow.
01:57Any kind of death grip on the bow makes it not work.
02:01So you've got the bare minimum pressure on the bow,
02:04and your wrist is a hinge,
02:07and you're kind of leading this way,
02:09and everything's trailing behind, like dragging through the wind.
02:13This one's from Aware Wolf.
02:15Is there a difference between a fiddle and a violin,
02:18or is it that one of the players is classically trained
02:21and the other has a recipe for possum?
02:24Well, you don't need to get into stereotypes here.
02:26Let's just say it's basically a function of it.
02:29Violin is listening music,
02:31and fiddle is functional dance music.
02:35And the techniques, creating your own backbeat,
02:37that's fiddle playing.
02:38It tends to be a little rougher around the edges,
02:40because the point of it is to drive social dance situations.
02:44So social music versus listening music.
02:46Violin versus fiddle.
02:48But otherwise, there's no difference in the instrument itself.
02:50This one is Fishy Irfan.
02:52I should have attended a pre-concert explanation
02:55about the difference between Baroque violin and modern violin technique.
02:59The main difference is there's little to no vibrato in Baroque violin.
03:04And that means Mozart is really not supposed to be played vibrato
03:07if you want to be accurate,
03:09because it sounds a little more like fiddle music in a way.
03:16And it's very resonant in early music.
03:18Like that's a sympathetic resonation of I'm playing a D on the G string.
03:23So I have an open D next to it.
03:25So it creates this extra resonance.
03:32Whereas if I play a C right below it,
03:34there is no sympathetic C string to that.
03:38It's a little more dry sounding.
03:40So it's like natural reverb.
03:41When you get that extra string vibrating next to it,
03:44because the sound waves go off of the string,
03:46and hit the string next to it.
03:47And if it's the same note, it'll start vibrating sympathetically.
03:51This is from Petter Vermunt.
03:53I must know the secrets of how to make the Stradivarius violin.
03:57Well, a lot of people have been trying to figure that out.
03:59It's a beautiful sound, but it's a very specific sound.
04:02It's not always what you want.
04:03The Stradivarius is an ancient instrument.
04:07And it is a more focused and goes into other senses.
04:12It's like, you know,
04:14rich and dark, very dark.
04:15I mean, first of all, they were made in the 1600s, generally, 17.
04:20It was a family business, so it stretched over a period of time.
04:23Some say it's the particular wood that they sourced,
04:27or the way they treated it, or the way they varnished it.
04:29Scientists have taken this on as like a little project,
04:33because they think, oh, there must be some quantifiable way
04:36to recreate the Stradivarius.
04:39And they've learned some interesting things,
04:41but no one's really been able to quite pull it off.
04:44Colin, it's 7619.
04:47The violin doesn't work because there's no rosin.
04:49W-T-F is rosin.
04:51The rosin is what makes the horsehair on the bow
04:55grip the string and cause it to resonate.
04:58You take this stuff, some sort of a resin.
05:03Just go like that.
05:04And you put it on the string.
05:06Resin.
05:07Just go like that.
05:09Comes off, and you don't need much.
05:12If you touch the bow with your hand,
05:16the grease or oils from your hand will cause it to slick,
05:20and it'll just go, whoosh.
05:22It'll just be like, it won't grip.
05:23This one is from Eileeniehaha.
05:29Would anyone please teach me how to use a loop pedal?
05:31Could be key for solo gigs.
05:33I've been using this loop pedal for years.
05:35It's from the mid-90s.
05:36The chip in it is apparently ancient.
05:38And it has a loop function where you get either 26 seconds to make a phrase
05:44that once you click record again,
05:48it starts over that phrase and keeps recording.
05:51So you can layer on top of that.
05:52That's our loop.
05:53I usually start with pizzicato.
05:55So we're playing the violin like a guitar.
06:00So I'll start a phrase like this.
06:05So I just sort of improvised something that's sort of polyrhythmic,
06:15has a groove to it.
06:15So I've got my rhythmic skeleton here,
06:18and then I might improvise something on top of that.
06:35So that just started out as like a novel way to expand
06:43this otherwise linear instrument into like a chordal instrument.
06:47And just to try out ideas.
06:49Sam, salty science.
06:52Anyone know how to properly tune a violin?
06:54Googling and tuning apps are only getting me so far.
06:57Usually you start with the A.
07:00The violin is in fifths.
07:02The interval is fifths.
07:03Guitars are fourths.
07:05So you get used to the sound of what a fifth being in tune sounds like.
07:17You can actually hear this like sound of the sine waves fighting against
07:22and being out of sync with each other.
07:23But when they get in sync, it all...
07:29So there's flat.
07:33When I'm turning the tuning peg up,
07:35bringing the D string up to the A string,
07:37and you hear dissonant, dissonant undertones.
07:41Doesn't sound right.
07:42And then suddenly, you know, satisfaction.
07:44It's a perfect fifth.
07:46Stay moment.
07:48How do violin players not go effing deaf with that shit near their ears?
07:53Since the advent of amplification,
07:56we've got worse things to worry about than acoustic instrument
07:59being somewhat close to your ears.
08:00But they do.
08:01Most violinists have hearing loss in their left ear from playing.
08:06You know, right here.
08:08And that's just a fact.
08:09I'm sure I do.
08:10WLWKa.
08:11This is a genuine question for violin players
08:14because I don't know if y'all just can't follow tempo for some reason.
08:18But why is it that every violinist I've ever seen speeds up any song they play?
08:22Any instrumentalist might have trouble speeding up,
08:25especially when you get in front of a bunch of people
08:27and a performance and adrenaline kicks in.
08:29A natural inclination is to speed up.
08:31All players have to develop a good sense of time.
08:36Playing with a drummer certainly helps.
08:39That's why a lot of live records,
08:40it feels great for everybody at the time, the audience and the players.
08:43But you listen to the recording, you're like,
08:44oh, this is not going to stand up on an album because it's too exciting.
08:49It doesn't stand up to repeated listens.
08:51But it doesn't mean it's not right in the moment.
08:53I'm guilty of it sometimes.
08:55But it's usually when I'm playing a big show for thousands of people
08:59and your adrenaline is way up.
09:00The whole band gets that feeling.
09:02All right, that looks like that's all the questions for today.
09:05Thanks so much.
09:06Carry on.