Reducing Tension through Progressive Scales
Many well-written exercises are practiced poorly due to the lack of conceptual framing by the author. If students don’t understand the means by which they are to accomplish the written exercise, little will be learned. It’s akin to running a new computer program on an old operating system. In this spirit, I offer a brief preface.
Reducing tension is the means by which we play with greater ease. Early in my studies I was encouraged to practice slowly because music is easier to play at slower tempos. Once a passage is under your fingers, the theory goes, move the metronome marking up one click at a time until you’ve reached your target tempo. While this method is useful in certain contexts, I consistently found that as the tempo increased, so did my level of tension. This led me to approach the problem from the opposite direction. Beginning at a fast tempo makes the player immediately aware of tension instead of allowing it to build gradually over time. Instead of simplifying the music by slowing it down, the scales in the following exercises are built progressively at tempo. Of course, the faster you wish to play, the more free from tension you must be.
The first step we will take is to gain mastery of the requirements of the right hand by learning the bowing composite. By reducing sensory input through isolating the bow, the player affords all of their awareness to tension present in the bowing motion. The exercise starts with the first note in the scales and adds a new note each time. This way, the player is able to evaluate the problems presented by each new note in the composite and ensure it sounds the way they want it to before proceeding to the next iteration.
Once comfortable with the bowing composite, it’s time to add the left hand. The scale passages follow the same progressive pattern as the bowing composite to allow the player to evaluate their tension and intonation. In the first iteration, the bow moves in constant 16th notes while the left hand fingers the scale in a dotted eighth, sixteenth pattern. In the second iteration, the left hand fingers the scale in a sixteenth, dotted eighth pattern. Between the two versions the left hand will perform every shift needed to play the scale at the top of the page in time, however, breaking the shifts up rhythmically allows the player more time for preparation while still requiring that the shift be performed at tempo.
Thoughts on Shifting and Pivots
Each note on the fingerboard has a corresponding position of the body, arm, and hand which is unique to that note. When moving between them, the motion is similar to that of cracking a whip. The body moves first, followed by the arm, and lastly the hand. This sequence begins before the change in note which necessarily creates tension, the shifting motion is the means by which the tension is released.
Shifting to higher notes is more intuitive simpler than to lower notes because the shift operates in the direction of the gravity. Players often experience difficulty with shifts referred to as “hand-over-hand” in which rapid and successive downward shifts are played on a single string (in repertoire, excerpts from Mendelssohn 4 and Beethoven 3 are familiar examples). In these scenarios, try using a shifting motion in which the hand rotates out; such that the fourth finger rotates clockwise from the player’s perspective. This allows the elbow and forearm to precede the hand in raising to the new position on the neck and facilitates rapid, successive shifts. If this motion is unfamiliar, begin implementing it with 1-4 finger replacements before applying it to scale practice.
In pivots, the hand moves in the same direction for two consecutive notes; for example, a 1-2-4 pivot to play the notes B, C#, and D. From B to C#, the arm moves in the direction of the bridge preceding the finger placement. Moving from C# to D, the arm must move again toward the bridge. This requires it to come back toward the nut during the C# before it can move again towards the bridge. This motion happens rather quickly and feels similar to playing with vibrato. Without this motion, moving from C# to D, the fourth finger lacks the support added by the arm motion.