how do i refrain from making horrible screeching noises when i play the violin?
i have always been interested in playing the violin since i was 5 but my mum didn’t allow becos it was too costly. she finally allowed and i started playing the violin around 3 yrs ago. i stopped about 2 yrs ago becos i couldn’t stand the screeching sounds i always made while playing. well, nt only did it affect me but also my family and my violin teacher couldn’t stand it. but i still had the interest for playing the violin and in fact i have a deep interest for music. can anyone please tell me how to stop those screeching noises when playing?
oh btw, please don’t tell me anything to do with the price of my violin or bow becos i can’t do anything about it. my violin costs around $300-$400. i can’t really rmb the exact price.
hi there. I’ve been playing violin for ten years, I’m a first violinist in my school’s chamber orchestra, and I still make screeching noises every now and then, so don’t sweat it. violin is one of the hardest instruments to learn to play. take a step back and think about it: you’re playing a wooden box with wire stretched over it using horsehair on a stick. the fact that the instrument can produce beautiful sounds at all is a miracle in itself. so if you screech, it’s not the end of the world.
secondly, screw the rest of the world. your violin teacher is obviously not worth what you pay them, if they are unable to listen to a student violinist play. find a different violin teacher. don’t try to learn violin on your own–a teacher is really a necessity for it.
as far as the technical points, I presume you mean high pitch screeches as opposed to scratchy noises. there are a bunch of things that can cause it, here are the most common:
1.) bowing not perpendicular to the string. when you bow at an angle to the string, part of the bow motion is along the string, part is across. try bowing straight down the string and you’ll see that it makes a scratchy noise. bowing straight across will improve this.
2.) there is a sweet spot between the bridge and the fingerboard for wear to bow. the more you go to the fingerboard, the softer and flutier the tone gets, the closer you get to the bridge, the stronger and crisper it gets. but, if you go too far to the fingerboard, it becomes difficult for your bow to grip the string, and if you go to close to the bridge, the string puts out too much resistance to being bowed, because there isn’t enough space away from the fixed point of the bridge. in either case, the string starts to vibrate at a frequency above its fundamental frequency, causing screeching.
3.) lack of rosin can cause screeching. put lots of rosin on and see what happens. too much rosin can be bad, but experiment some.
4.) move quickly and apply more pressure. try to move at a rate where a bow stroke takes about two seconds, and remember that you’ll have to apply more pressure at the bottom of the stroke than at the top, because of the leverage.
5.) try a different violin and see what happens.
6.) lower strings are less prone to screech, so get the feel for those first. also, the open E can be a real squealer when you change to it from a different string, so when you first hit that open E, apply a little more force downward with your right hand.
best of luck to you, and don’t be disheartened. I’ve had music majors who learned flute and piccolo (two of the hardest instruments) "you know, I’ve played everything, but violin–that’s hard!" keep at it. and find others to play with…violin is a social instrument.
