amateur orchestra

I think I can answer this, as someone who has played in amateur orchestras. Violin sound is the hardest thing to learn and the first thing to go when you don't practice. I had no idea about all this until I was introduced to Ruth Palmer (google her).  She gave me a few lessons in 2011 (I've been sawing away since 1975) and on the second one she stopped and said ' Enough, I'm going to teach you the hardest thing of all, if you are up for it'.

It's all about pushing and pulling the bow without using hand and forearm muscles.  I struggled for months and we both found the whole thing very difficult.  One day I was playing Saint-Saens 3rd concerto and all of a sudden the sound came. Then I realised it was possible.  I'm made huge improvements since but it is very difficult to overcome years and years of bad habits. 

I went to a masterclass at the RCM a couple of years ago and Abragimova was making the same points to one of the students. If certain muscles are not relaxed then you struggle to make a good sound. 

As far as quality of instruments goes, Ruth has played my violin and it sounded the same as the famous 18th century masterpiece that she used for concerts.  And there is that story about Heifetz teaching in California and he criticised the sound of one of the students who answered that students don't all have del Gesus. Heifetz took the student's violin and played it.  To the gathered students, it was 99% all Heifetz as usual.

And then it can all go.  My neighbours put up a very good professional soloist and chamber music player for yearly recitals. One day I came home and my wife said " I heard so and so practicing. He doesn't sound as good as you". Very flattering but unlikely. But we went to an ensemble concert and they were awful. And I can only assume that set in their ways they hadn't kept up the practice that have for them their reputations in the first place. Scratchy and out of tune.

I've found that the same applies to the piano. The more you can use your weight without pressing with your arms, the more the piano sings.

And if anyone learning the violin wants to try this, I'd describe the technique as such:

Try with a pencil on a table.

Sit at the table and rest the pencil on the table in front of you. Lay the figures of your right hand on the pencil. Just using the weight of your hand and friction, push the pencil around the desk. Now, with you hand still on the pencil, stand up using your right arm to control your balance. See how much force you can put on the pencil without using and arm and hand muscles? Somewhere between the two examples is the violin bow 'grip'. It's anything but a grip. If you are engaging more muscles than you need to push a pencil around a desk, you are compromising your sound. Take special note of the thumb tension, forearm tension and the muscle under the shoulder and in front of the arm pit. If these are tense, do something about it.

thanks for your informative reply. I'm familiar with Heifetz only from disc. The soloist I heard was Yuka Ishizuka and she was excellent. The orchestra played enjoyably despite a few rough edges.

Though I would not say that good technique is the sole preserve of the professional musician by any means, it is usually the case that in an amateur string section there will more often than not be a proportion of players whose technique is somewhat below par.

No professional orchestra is going to engage any player who does not have not only a a top notch technique but also nerves of steel. 

The route to good tone on a stringed instrument is two-fold. Firstly bow control and secondly a strong left hand technique that allows the strings to be stopped accurately and firmly. 

Unfortunately too many string players are started off without first addressing good tone. this requires hours of rather tedious practice firstly on open strings playing notes of ever increasing length till perhaps a note of thirty-two beats may be sustained at a a metronome of 120 beats per minute. Some people manage much longer! The bow must float on the string and not be forced into it. Only sustained practice of long open string notes can bring this prime requirement, and it is certainly tedious unless one enjoys the ever increasing quality of the tone produced. 

Secondly the strings must be stopped firmly or else the focus of the pitch will be poor. Once again this requires hours of practice right at the start of learning to ensure bad habits are not learned in. 

Unfortunately this insistence on good tone is by no means always demanded by teachers. 

I was lucky with the double bass that I seemed to have the knack of getting good tone straight off, and this was further developed by three teachers over a ten year period. All of them insisted on ten minutes of open string long notes and the ten minutes of scales and arpeggios, to generate a good tone and firm muscular memory of where the notes are on the un-fretted finger-board. All maintained that if all the time you had was twenty minutes in any given day the whole time should be devoted to this tedious exercise. After that you can work on pieces of music, and different bowing exercises that bring variety to the timbres and articulation that the player can master.

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The truth is that there is no substitute for daily practice of the technical aspect for creating and maintaining a fine clear and focussed tone and forming a fine technique that becomes the servant of playing well. Without that basic building block nothing useful can be achieved on the musical front. No gain without pain as the old saying goes.

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Once the player has a fluid and properly formed technique the next step is to tackle orchestral excerpts, as these bring technical demands that often need to be cracked on a one by one basis. 

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When one considers the professional soloist, you must also consider that many of them practice as long in a day as most of work for a living, quite beside preparing music for performance!

It is no sinecure!

ATB from George

Jasha Heifetz showing how not to play a violin for some students.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...list=WL&index=90

Unfortunately his aim at poor technique rings all too true!

Ignore the written commentary. Most of it wildly wide of the mark!

ATB from George

As a guitarist (sort of) I can relate - although in my mind the violin "family" of instruments being unfretted takes everything to a different level.

But my Maestro back in Dallas could make my $350 classical guitar when he played it sound better than my $5,000 classical guitar when I played it, tonally speaking.  The principal still applies on steel strings and electrics, but to a (far, IMHO) lesser degree.

Dear Mark,

I taught one younster the bass, and he had an East German Meinel student bass, while I had a hand made five string commissioned instrument. He always said that my hand-made instrument had an extra octave of bass tone compared to his student [factory made] bass. I said that all that he was hearing was the fundamental - the real note - on my bass. I played his student bass and he again heard the extra octave! He played mine and the extra octave disappeared. I told him that this was why he needed to do do the tone exercises I mention in my post two up! this is what brings out the fundamental note, and is what is the difference between good tone and thin tone. 

The real difference between my hand made five stringer and his student bass was a question of absolute volume of tone. My hand made bass could be played extremely forte and extremely quietly, so it was a very useful instrument. And the big five stringer had a lot less wood in it so it was easier to carry than his student bass!

Best wishes from George

Similar thing with wind instruments - technique has to be developed by steady and focused practice.  It's particularly noticeable with sax fme; it takes a long time and a lot of practice for amateurs to develop the full sound one hears from good semi-pro and pro players