The ultimate guide to learning violin vibrato

This blog post accompanies Violin Class Podcast Episode 41. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeartRadio, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Learning vibrato on violin: the 4 stages

There are 4 stages to learning vibrato:

1. Laying the foundations

2. Pre-vibrato exercises

3. Vibrato integration

4. Expanding your range

Let’s look at each of these steps in detail, starting with answering an important question: how do you know when you’re ready to start preparing for vibrato?

Free Vibrato Ebook

If you want to follow along more in-depth, download my free vibrato ebook.

You’ll learn about the historical background of vibrato, arm vs. wrist vibrato, more about the 4 stages of learning vibrato, 3 pre-vibrato exercises, and common vibrato mistakes

When do we start preparing for vibrato?

Setting up vibrato starts on lesson one, because so much of being ready for a broader has to do with having the fundamentals of violin position and posture in place.

Here are some of the things that I am looking for in my students when I am making the decision of whether or not I think they're ready for vibrato.

1. How are they holding the violin?
   Are they using the correct part of their head or leaning down from the neck?

2. Does the violin stay in place if they let go of their hand?
   If not, we need to explore a different setup.

3. Are they completely relaxed in the shoulders, arm, and wrist?

4. Left hand position:

   • Is the left thumb relaxed?

   • Is the wrist straight (not too far forward, not too far back?)

   • Are the points of contact with the violin correct (not too low, not too high?)

Your teacher is the best person to help you determine if you are ready or not to start learning vibrato.

How vibrato works

Vibrato is a rotation of your fingertip on this string in the way that it shortens the length of the string to slightly alter the pitch.

Listen to the video version of this blog post to hear an example.

To play vibrato correctly, you should always be pulling back your finger so that the knuckle loosens and goes from a curved shape to a straighter shape.

Arm vs. Wrist Vibrato

There are two types of vibrato: arm, and wrist.

An arm vibrato is exactly what it sounds . You're moving the arm back and forth from the arm, and that motion is what creates the movement of the finger, pulling the knuckle back and forth.

This is a good for when you're digging into the string, you're playing intense passages and you want that really wide sound.

Wrist vibrato is usually more subtle, and give you a narrower, warmer sound.

I think the biggest thing you'll hear different in both of those is just the overall tone quality.

Each is going to give a slightly different sound and a different color to your playing. No matter which one you learned first, you do want to make sure that you have great understanding and control of both

How to learn vibrato

Now that we understand how vibrato works, physically, let's get into the process for learning: how we learn vibrato, step-by-step.

There are, four stages to learn the vibrato.

Stage 1: Laying the foundations

In a couple of weeks, I'll come out with an entire episode of all the things that you can be doing here in this step to be preparing for the actual pre vibrato exercises.

Here, you are focusing on perfecting your violin technique and staying relaxed while you play.

Stage 2: Pre-vibrato exercises

When you can check off this list:

• You have some experience playing violin

• You feel comfortable with your setup

• Your upper body is very relaxed when you're playing

You are ready to start pre-vibrato exercises.

And these can be done quite a bit before actually going into vibrato and I would recommend to do as much research as you can in this phase, so that when you actually get to it you know what to expect.

In the pre-vibrato exercises, we are building flexibility and strength in our fingers.

We are focusing on a specific muscle group and moving the hand in a way so that we build muscle memory and eventually it becomes like second nature. Spending more time in this phase is going to help you to achieve a true vibrato quicker.

Stage 3: Vibrato everywhere

Starting with one finger at a time, and adding the bow, we begin to add vibrato consistently to each finger. Next, we transition between different fingers, and eventually string crossings. Once you’re able to do all of this, you can move on to playing an entire scale with vibrato.

Once you can play a scale with a slow, beautiful, relaxed vibrato, then we're going to look into playing this in contexts. Here, I will pull out some ieces that my students can then practice their vibrato, and we're listening to a whole bunch of different things at this stage.

We're listening for a relaxed sound evenness and the vibrato and making sure that everything feels very relaxed and wide.

This stage generally lasts a long time because understanding how to play with vibrato and how to do the motions, and actually being able to pull that out on the fly in all of your repertoire is not the same thing.

So, stick with those easier pieces for quite a while, until you really can play through them. Eventually you're going to be able to start integrating vibrato wherever you want it.

Stage 4: Expanding your range

The next step is to add some tools to your toolbox here, and that's giving yourself a bigger range of vibrato to play with.

This is where things get really fun because there are all these parameters like speed and amplitude that we can just slightly modify and each is going to give us a very different effect.

Listen to the range of vibrato in the two following recordings.

In this recording of Memories played by Hilary Hahn, listen for how even her sound is and how this really gives her playing a distinctive personality.

This, along with her very even bow speed, gives this piece a peaceful, landscape quality.

Next, listen to this example of Maxim Vengerov playing Ravel Tzigane.

You’ll notice that he really varies in his speed of vibrato very often. And he uses that along with his bow choreography, the intense crescendos, and the way he's building up their phrase is very exciting. It has you on the edge of your seat, you're waiting for what he's going to do next. And again, a conscious choice in the vibrato it's one of the tools that he is using to achieve this message that he's trying to send with his playing.

This is stage 4: once you’ve learned the ins and outs of vibrato and you're able to apply them to your pieces, the next step it's being able to have full control over a range of different factors that go into vibrato.

It takes years of laying the foundations to have the control to play this way. With training and practice, a violinist can develop their palette of vibrato to create all of these beautiful colors that they can add into their piece.

Practicing vibrato

Vibrato is a long-term project. It's something that you're going to be making incremental progress at chipping away at it over the years.

But if you go about it in a methodical way and you practice regularly, you are going to develop a beautiful vibrato. It is one of the most rewarding things to get to witness as a teacher.

It’s something that I want all of my students to be able to do because it's a critical part of being a violinist— vibrato is what sets our sound apart from other instruments.

It can feel very elusive at first, but it's a skill that we practice just like anything else. There’s a method and a process for learning it, and with practice, you’ll improve.