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You are here: Home / Lessons / Hide Those Shifts! – Quick Practice Tip

Hide Those Shifts! – Quick Practice Tip

Teacher: David Wallace

Description

Hi there, I’m Dr. David Wallace with myTalentForge.com’s Quick Tip of the Week!

And this week’s Quick Tip is hide your shifts!

I don’t know how many times I hear string players play and they’re doing a scale or something and I hear this big […] shift that I don’t want to hear.

Now, this is not like when you’re playing expressively and we want to have a vocal slide.

This is just when we’re doing technical passages. We don’t want those shifts to be audible. So what do we do?

Well, first, with your finger, you come to the surface of the string before your shift. Then you shift, and then when you’re to the new position and the new note, then you come back down.

And so you release, shift, come back down.

So your left hand lets go, and that will help take away some of the sound.

The other thing is your bow should slow down and you lighten the pressure a little bit. So actually, it’s this kind of a thing […].

Now that probably didn’t make much of a fluctuation in sound but you saw it’s almost like I drew a little bit of a wavy line or a smile with my bow, where I dip down and came up. I also slowed down a little bit.

So, if I do these two things, I get a clean shift without the big, gross smear.

For further tips on shifting, check out myTalentForge.com’s Secrets For Shifting Success Series. And that is your Quick Tip of the Week.

Hide those shifts!

About David Wallace

As Chair of Berklee College of Music’s String Department, Dr. David Wallace enjoys leading the foremost contemporary and eclectic string program in higher education. Previously, David served as a Juilliard professor for fourteen years, and a New York Philharmonic Teaching Artist for seventeen years.

Dr. David Wallace is a fiercely eclectic musician, an award-winning composer, and a master teaching artist. A short list of David’s presenters and clients includes Carnegie Hall, The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the New York Philharmonic, and Young Audiences. The New York Times compares his solo improvisations to "Jimmy Page fronting Led Zeppelin."

Known for his mastery of eclectic styles ranging from all classical genres to fiddling, rock, and free jazz, David has also gained widespread acclaim for his ability to connect with audiences in diverse community settings. Symphony Magazine declares his book Reaching Out: A Musician’s Guide to Interactive Performance "an invaluable manual for all musicians.”

David has entered his third decade of teaching violin & viola to students of all ages, styles, and ability levels. He draws from techniques and principles he studied under renowned master teachers including Karen Tuttle, Karen Ritscher, Lawrence Wheeler, Kenneth Goldsmith, Johnny Gimble, Felix Galimir, and Victor Danchenko.

Join Talent Forge and learn from David.

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