Chris, on bow bouncing (since you changed violin angle and started dropping shoulder and elbow?) -- just be careful that when you drop your shoulder and drop your elbow..

Those motions cause a slight clockwise rotation effect in your wrist. If you don't counteract it by a corresponding amount of counter-clockwise wrist motion (perhaps coupled with a touch more index finger pressure), your bow will start bouncing and it will start to drive you crazy! :-)

This is going to sound terribly technical and full of physics, but (1) if your bow angle is correct (doesn't touch adjacent strings during the stroke), and (2) if your bow bounces along it's length, then (3) the problem is too much net upward pressure on your thumb - meaning that your hand (thumb) is riding a fraction too high in the plane of the bow on the down bow.

This may occur as a reaction to dropping the elbow - drop the elbow and the wrist moves up a fraction because of the slight change in angle.

To stop the bouncing directly, I suggest as a starting point that you aim for zero pinky pressure during the down bow, from about 5 inches from the frog all the way to the tip. Lift your pinky off the bow during that section to get the idea of it.

Technically it's not pinky pressure alone that is the problem in bouncing. You can have both high index and pinky pressures, and still get bounce. But if you drive pinky pressure to zero, there's no way to keep gravity from keeping the bow on the strings, so the bounce will go away. (Unless other fingers (eg third) are replacing the pinky pressure.)

Good luck!

Hi Elke, I think maybe it was you who mentioned the Alexander Technique to me, and I bought a Kindle book called Alexander Technique for Musicians. I found it to be a fairly useful book, especially to people who are not naturally aware of what is going on with their body motions (or tensions). Is that the one you're reading?

On your awareness - throughout my life when doing physical motion kinds of things (ballroom dancing comes to mind), I found that a most useful technique is to do a mental "scan" of key aspects of my body posture and motion. (For example, in dancing, I started at my head -- head up, eyes looking down the dance floor, chin up, shoulders down, chest out and up, left arm hand not dropping, etc.)

Once you get your scan worked out, you can do it in less than a second to catch anything that might be wandering off from where you want it. Maybe that idea can help you.

Hi Chris,

Thank you for taking the time to make up that nice posting on microphones. I'm sure it will help anyone who is considering upgrading their microphone setup.

For the record, your violin sound has always come across very smooth and clear in your videos. Between your playing, room acoustics, and sound capturing, you sound great and have nothing at all to worry about for sound quality (IMHO).

On my computer, I think the Rode mic sounded the best. The camera and ribbon mics seemed to pic up more high end, whereas the Rode mic sounded (at least to me) smoother throughout the violin range.

I hope your violin position adjustments are going well. Everything is so connected to everything else in violin playing that it's often hard to change just one thing without having to readjust everything else a little bit.

Hi Chris, nice video interleaving the three microphones - a little smooth video patching there at the end!

Which microphone do you like? What would you recommend to all of us? Thanks

Chris, just a tip -- if you change the violin angle to make it flatter, be sure to inject more wrist bending when you play near the frog. Right now you're getting away with very little wrist bending near the frog because of the relative angles of your arm, wrist, fingers, bow, and bridge (eg, around 0:22).

If you flatten the violin angle, the bow angle must also flatten out, and that will require various degrees of adjustment in your playing, everywhere along the chain of bow, fingers, wrist, forearm, and upper arm, (ie, everywhere between the bow and your shoulder/upper arm, which cannot flatten out any more).

These adjustments will take some time to get in place, especially for string changes near the frog, where the bow angle must change suddenly at the tempo of the song.

Good luck!

I've been away for a few days, so this is for Elke's comment way back in this chain, regarding her tip about Todd's point about base knuckle angles remaining stable with respect to the fingerboard.

Elke, sorry if I caused any offense about saying that I was surprised that Todd would say something like that. It wasn't that I was questioning your word or Todd's point at all -- instead, I was thinking as a novice -- "Oh my goodness, I know my base knuckle line moves back and forth a lot -- am I doing something wrong?? Do I need to fix this? Ugh." So I apologize if my words caused you any grief. I'll try to phrase things more carefully in the future.

I felt better when you said the gist of his message was that stopping the notes should be done with finger motion, not wrist motion, because then I felt like my playing was ok in that regard. I find my base knuckle line angle changes quite a bit from low on the neck to high on the neck, especially with first finger vibrato.

Gosh Elke, I'm surprised to hear that Todd advocates the same angle between the base knuckles and the fingerboard all the time. For sure, my knuckles open up on the first finger in 1st position, and close up (get parallel to) the fingerboard on the pinky in higher positions. Also the angle varies a LOT between the E and G strings.

My compliments on your thoughts of elbow moving for Chris, given his long fingers. I thought, "Oooo, she's got a really good point there." Long fingers surely help for the far-away G string, but you must move them "out of the way" (to use your phrase) for the up-close E string. If long fingers are a problem, it's surely a high-class problem for violinists! :-)

Hi Chris, here's my two bits on your video:

1. The microphone and violin sounded fine -- very smooth. So you have no worries there, I think.

2. The first thing I noticed was your long fingers, especially your pinky. Looks like you've won the genetic prize for violinists there -- you'll have zero problems reaching the G string with your hands and fingers. Lucky guy!

3. I thought your playing was really good overall, just with the odd intonation and smoothness glitch here and there (to be expected for beginners especially). In particular, I think you easily have all the basics in place to become a really good player. It looks to me like you're got a really nice fluid bow arm, going tip to frog, and a freedom of movement in that arm that is not constrained at all.

Already you're doing some hooked bows and staccato bows quite well.

4. Sure, your bow wanders a bit at the tip and frog, but that's only because  (I think) you have such freedom and range in your bowing that you're having a bit of trouble controlling it at the tip and frog. Your elbow and wrist aren't quite doing enough straightening or bending at the ends of your bow stroke, and here and there the bow bounces because of some tension in your fingers and wrist.

Practice long smooth bow strokes at different speeds on each open string for a week or two, and those problems will go away very quickly, I think.

5. If I was your teacher, I'd say (1) work on those long bows to fix the small wandering and bouncing issues with better grip, wrist, and elbow control; (2) continue to work on keeping it all (bowing and fingering) together on those same songs, and (3) start working on some vibrato exercises.

You are already so fluid that once you get your bow motions down, and your bow/finger coordination down so that you don't lose intonation, you'll easily be ready for some vibrato.

I don't have much to say about selection of music pieces; they seem about right to me for your current playing ability. It's like everything is about 80-90% there, so it wouldn't surprise me to see you advance quite quickly.

Just my two bits -- keep up the excellent playing!