Why is violin scratchy

Regularly check your right arm position in the mirror and adjust the angle of your bowing arm as necessary. There are lots of exercises to help you with your bowing technique in Violinworks Book 1 see chapters 5 and 6.

Scratchy sound, part 1. If the violin makes a high pitch sound in addition to the scratchiness, most likely the bow is placed too close to the bridge. If it makes a choking noise like a dying chicken! Check the amount of rosin dust left on the fingerboard. If it looks very white, then your bow is too close to it. Scratchy sound, part 2.

The lack of balance between the bow speed and bow pressure largely contributes to the scratchiness. Pressing the bow with the arm aggressively into the string will doubtlessly make the sound scratchy. Scratchy sound, part 3. Scratchy sound, part 4. If all of the above cannot help you, have a violin repairman check if the bridge is placed at the correct position, and if the strings are false or simply out of tune.

Whistling when hitting on the E-string. This is a notorious problem known to the E-string since steel strings became popular in the 19th century. However, technical issues and playing habit also largly contribute to the whistling. If the whistling appears when playing a rolled chord such as the beginning of the Saint-Saen violin concerto, 3rd movement , place the bow away from the fingerboard will fix the problem. If the whistling appears when playing an ascending scale or scale-like figure, replace the open-E with the 4th finger will avoid this issue.

Rosining The amount of rosin you use on your bow also affects the tone and sound of your violin. Bow Grip This is another factor that has a subtle, yet distinct impact on the tonal quality of your play. Share this article. Search StringOvation. Connolly Music Home About us Shop our brands. StringOvation Latest articles Submit a guest post. Subscribe to StringOvation. Check all that in a mirror. Importantly, you should see an approximate square from your bow-to-string "contact point" to your right hand to your right elbow and back to your neck.

With little kids, the teacher will often tape a 6" plastic drinking straw onto the middle of the bow so that the child knows visually to only use that section. You can accomplish that with a couple pieces of masking tape as well. As you are drawing your bow back and forth, you may notice that your contact point moves around between your fingerboard and your bridge -- sometimes that's caused by movement in your right shoulder, so bring that under control first.

Then you may notice that it is hard to keep your bow perpendicular. It's the job primarily of your wrist to adjust that angle, so if your wrist is totally stiff or locked, you'll need to loosen it up so that it can help with your bow angle.

The violin is study in subtlety. Once you have those basics you can experiment with bow speed and gentle downward pressure on the bow which you do with your right hand, at this point mostly by twisting your index finger against your thumb.

Try to get five or six nice ones in a row that aren't scratchy. Then try it with the other open strings. Once you get a hang of that then you can experiment with stopped notes and with using more than 6" of bow. Drawing a long, whole bow even on an open string is not the first lesson in violin playing. It's very hard to coordinate all those movements along the whole length of the bow.

Take it a step at a time. You can play the first few pieces in Suzuki Book 1 with 6" of bow, that's perfectly fine. It's not the best but I'm starting to feel motivated again. It's not a drastic change but it's there. I can feel it while playing. It hasn't been too long since I started, so the frustration I felt is still fresh in my memory.