Reply To: Fat fingers with double stops

[AJ]

Hi,
I too have been struggling with this – trying top get flow into the Lover’s Waltz with a couple of double stops.
I do not have a teacher and am learning mostly from internet observations and cannot thank Jaso’n enough for the hours of playing pleasure he has given me ands sense of satisfaction. Long-term follower of Fiddlehed.

So I’ve read what sense Jaso’n said herein (and trimmed nails again – of course) and also looked at and considered what Nathan Cole says about MVP (Minimum Violin Pressure) and then I found and listened very intently to what William Fitzpatrick on http://www.virtualsheetmusic.com says about the angle of the wrist coupled with his descriptions to do with the evolution of violin strings and how they require less finger down load as their construction has changed over the years. All this put my had at a better angle with less stress in it.

To explain:I was trying to play 1st position staying down on D3 (staying down) and double stop on A2 then lift A2 to play D3 and A1on the next note. It just would not work for me.

I then put together what I knew of the physics of the string with the how to’s (a bit baffling at times when the body gets in the way) as adding a node (a point that is stationary) only to the string length and not push down so hard: getting finger pressure closer to right has allowed me to more easily push the string away so that my fat little digit doesn’t touch the A string and make a dead point where it brushes the D string on the up bow (effectively a false node).

At first I was kind-of solving it by playing two consecutive down bows but that was pretty hopeless.
My biggest issue was on an up bow dragged the string closer to my offending finger that was in the way and I could not seem to bend the string out of the way until I eased up on the string pressure.

After much practice it is slowly starting to come together now so I don’t have that awful pause setting up for the double stop – well it’s getting more smooth anyway.

Hope that helps and isn’t too jumbled – hard to explain a very long process to fix it.

Cheers
AJ