Let’s make an experiment. Imagine the sound of a violin—a violin playing alone, not violin music in an orchestra. You probably thought of a long, expressive note with vibrato, and most likely a high note, too. Did I get it right?
But vibrato has a big problem: some violinists use it all the time, period.
I try to illustrate the use of vibrato with the metaphor of mayonnaise. Think of vibrato like mayonnaise. It works well on a hamburger, and a sandwich too, but on pasta or soup? Right? The same goes for vibrato. We have to learn to use it in the moments that will make the notes shine, not in every single note we play.
But maybe you’re here trying to understand what vibrato is, and I’m here to tell you not to use it all the time. We’ll start with the basics and gradually get more complex.
What is Vibrato on the Violin?
The vibrato technique on the violin is a unique movement that is not the same as on any other instrument. The forearm or wrist moves parallel to the violin, but the finger remains glued to the string, which generates a slight movement of the fingertip on the neck of the violin, with the fingertip being the only point of contact when vibrating.
Let’s remember that music and musical notes reach our ears in the form of waves transmitted through the air. The vibrato movement keeps the note identifiable; in other words, the sound wave remains the same; we only slightly shift its pitch (almost imperceptibly) up and down, giving that note a different texture or sound.
Is there any Vibrato Sign or Notation in Sheet Music?
No sign in musical notation indicates that a note has to be played with vibrato. Some signs can indicate oscillatory movements of a note, such as tremolo, trill, or mordent, but there is no specific sign for vibrato.
What you can find are some expressions written in Italian such as “molto vibrato” or “senza vibrato”, but it is not very common to find such expressions.
How to Play Vibrato on the Violin in 5 Simple Steps
When we are thinking about doing vibrato we have to think about a direction of movement, either up or down, then you will see that the slow type of vibrato is more of a downward movement, while the fast one is upward.
Below, following this 5-step guide, you’ll see how to go from zero to vibrating:
1. Practice vibrato movement without violin
Start by moving your forearms, with your elbows separated from your waist, moving them apart and closer to your body. Aim for a continuous, even rhythmic movement, as I show in the video at the end of this article.
2. Perform the movement with only one arm
Once you’ve mastered it with both arms, stop the movement with your right arm and move only your left arm. And now comes the hardest part: without stopping the movement of your left arm, try to imagine yourself passing the bow over the violin. That is, make the bow movement with your right arm, but without stopping the left. It’s not so easy now, is it?
3. Now violin on the shoulder
Rest the violin on your shoulder and try to continue the vibrato motion of your left arm. You probably won’t be able to do it with the same amplitude as before, due to having to hold the violin. Don’t worry, this is how the vibrato motion should be. Now continue moving that arm while making a “U” shape with your left hand around the neck, still without touching it.
4. We anchor the movement in the handle
Now, lower your second or third finger onto any string and press the string with your fingertip until it touches the fretboard while resting only your thumb on the side of the neck as usual. This means that the only points of contact your hand has with the violin are your thumb and the finger you’ve placed on it; the rest of your hand remains lifted off the neck. Continue this movement without letting the violin leave your shoulder.
5. We add the arc
Now that we’ve got the movement on the neck, all that’s left is to do the bow movement to see how our vibrato sounds. Try to make a single movement, not many up-and-down bows. A long movement, as if you were playing a very long note. If you feel the tuning getting too out of control, slow down the movement a bit.
Practice these 5 steps several times to find the basic movement of vibrato, since later we will have vibrato variants, the different types of vibrato.
Types of Vibrato on the Violin
There are four basic types of vibrato, which are achieved by varying the speed and amplitude of the movement. This results in short and slow vibrato, short and fast vibrato, wide and slow vibrato, or wide and fast vibrato.
Each type of vibrato has a different use depending on the note or piece we are playing and also varies depending on where we are on the fretboard.
For example, if we are playing in the first positions closer to the headstock, we can use a movement of the whole arm, making the vibrato wider, but as we go up the fretboard, the mobility of the hand is limited by the body, so there we will mainly use wrist or finger vibrato.
Let’s look at the different types of vibrato, all of which are possible in every part of the violin. However, in some positions, it will be easier to do one or the other, but that doesn’t mean you can’t achieve them.
The short and slow vibrato is used when we are playing a very long note but at the same time very soft, that is, with little intensity, almost inaudible. I must say that it is rarely used, but it gives continuity to the note while the sound fades, like at the end of a piece.
The short, fast vibrato is the most commonly used, and by far the most advantageous. It also tends to serve as an accent on the note, emphasizing the sound by vibrating very quickly. In the highest violin positions, from the 4th onward, our hand remains anchored by the body, so we have little arm movement to vibrate widely. This is why the short, fast vibrato is widely used in the higher violin positions.
Wide and slow vibrato, like short and slow vibrato, is commonly used for long notes, but in this case, the note can be perceived better because the wide vibrato gives the note greater sonority. Of the two vibratos (wide and slow vs. short and slow), the former is used more often because it allows the vibrato to be heard more as an effect. This is a matter of choice for the violinist, but it is common for different violinists to choose between one or the other depending on the effect they want to achieve. It is a fact that the most virtuoso violinists are those who master all the vibrato variations to use the right one at the exact moment of the piece.
The last is the wide and fast, which, like the short and slow, is one of the least used, because the arm loses stability when trying to generate a wide and fast movement. I think the best way to use it is also for a final note that we want to end with great emotion, vibrating with the entire arm on a note, but it’s not something we usually see for notes in the middle of a piece; for that, we have the two previous types of vibrato.
4 Vibrato Exercises for Violin
If we want to perfect this first basic movement, there are a series of exercises that help our hand better understand the movement, and not just be something we did once, but don’t know how to repeat.
The reality is that violin exercise books such as Kreutzer, Kaiser, and Sevcik, among others, do not have exercises specifically designed for vibrato, and even more modern ones, such as the Suzuki violin method, do not have practical exercises for vibrato.
That’s why, to learn vibrato exercises, it’s necessary to go to a teacher who can teach us some of these techniques, or watch videos or read violin blogs like The Arthaus.
Let’s start by doing the rhythmic vibrato movement.
Exercise 1:
Repeating the movement we learned to begin vibrato, we will use only our left hand and rest our elbow on a wall, which will make us gently tap the wall with our knuckles.
Always maintain a straight line between your forearm and hand, never bending your wrist, but instead using your entire arm, aim to tap the wall with a rhythm to begin to speed up the movement. You can use figure notes, quarter notes, eighth notes, sixteenth notes, or triplets.
Exercise 2:
We’ll do the same movement as the previous exercise, but now smaller. We take the violin, place it on our shoulder, and place our left hand on the handle, still without resting any fingers on the neck, not even our thumb. We just wrap our hands around the neck but don’t touch it.
Just like in vibrato exercise 1, we gently tap the peg with our finger, moving with our entire forearm, again seeking to make a rhythmic movement.
Exercise 3:
Similar to 2, but now on the other side of the handle, i.e., the snare drum. We’ll gently tap the snare drum with the edge of our hand, looking for rhythmic movements.
Exercise 4:
Now we place a finger on the handle, I recommend one of the strongest in the hand, either the 3rd or 2nd, and we rest the thumb on the opposite side to have control of the controller, almost as if we were going to play, but leaving a free space between the palm and the handle, so that the hand can move freely.
With our fingers, we’ll give direction to the vibrato movement. That is, we’ll place our finger down and try to move from the finger downward, for example, as if our arm were acting like a spring. Then, do the same thing, but in the opposite direction. You’ll see that it’s much easier to do it downward than upward, but it’s good to practice both sides.
Then, like the other exercises, it’s important to be able to add rhythm to the movement to practice. Later, in the performance, it’s not necessary to have a rhythm in the vibrato. This way, we develop control over vibrato movement.
How to Improve My Vibrato?
There are not many secrets to improving vibrato other than practice and finding the variation that works best for you from the 4 described above: Wide and fast, wide and slow, short and fast, and short and slow.
If you’re just starting, it’s important to first master the movement and be able to vary between different types of vibrato. Having control over your vibrato will allow you to use the one you like best depending on the song you’re playing, the note, and even the intensity dynamics, whether it’s piano or forte.
You can practice with easy violin sheet music where you have long notes that allow you to perform the movement with plenty of time, and then try shorter notes.
Returning to the example at the beginning, vibrato is a spice we add to music; it’s pointless to use it on every note; the important thing is knowing when to give it more intensity when using vibrato.
This doesn’t mean that all long notes have to have vibrato, but you can play with doing it without vibrato at the beginning and then using it to give a different effect for the end of the note, with emphasis.
When we also switch to the box, the movement becomes more of the finger and not so much of the arm, but of the vibrato movements, if we master the movement of the entire forearm, our finger will only relax and we will see with the vibrato on one of the most complex parts of the violin such as the box, where we lose many references, it becomes easy to perform.
If you have any questions or concerns, you can leave them in the comments section of this article or on the YouTube video, where we have playlists for learning the violin, violin lessons, covers, and much more.