Books and Articles by Katharine Rapoport

With all of its different parts and its beautiful, delicate-looking body, the violin can feel a bit intimidating at first. This Cheat Sheet helps you get to know your instrument by introducing the most important parts of your violin, provides some easy steps to keep it in tip-top condition, and takes you through the process of taking the violin out of its case for the very first time.

You know that tuning your violin is something you need to do, but what exactly does it mean? The word tuning refers to adjusting the strings of the violin to their proper pitches. All sorts of factors can affect the pitch of each string — temperature and humidity changes, drafts, playing loud music where the bow pushes heavily on the string — so you need to know how to tune effectively, right from the start.

A good time to start on vibrato is when your violin hold, bow hold, left-hand balance, and some shifting skills are comfortable and working well. Although it may seem almost magical when you see and hear a player making a beautiful vibrato, the approach to vibrato is logical and involves some step-by-step preparation.

When it comes to the violin, you need to have certain accessories, while other accoutrements aren’t necessary but may be really cool to own. How do you separate what you need from what you want? Necessities A whole lot of accessories are available on the market to keep your violin healthy and to make your practice time easier and more fun.

Playing sad music might make violinists feel like the weight of the world rests on their shoulders, but a good, comfortable shoulder rest can give some much needed support without that heavy feeling. A shoulder rest is a bracket or cushion that fits onto the back of the violin and helps the player to support the instrument.

Finding a violin teacher to work with is a great step to enjoy some helpful feedback on your practicing. A whole lot of teachers are out there. Finding the right teacher for you involves a combination of finding someone who is knowledgeable and having a good dose of the right chemistry — you and your teacher need to get along well and to enjoy your time together too.

Often at the very end of a piece, the composer asks for an even richer sound from violins by writing three and four notes to be played at once (or as close as possible to at once), which means you’re actually playing chords on your violin. You use your bow in special ways to make these chords sound as clear as a bell.

Once you know some basic moves on the violin, you need to know how to find the positions you need to play music of all kinds. Pick up your bow, and away you go! Open-string shifts An open-string shift is a sneaky little number where your left hand shifts (the most shifty shift!) while your bow— which you have now picked up again— is bowing an open string.