JAVS Summer 1998

33

Warm-Up Routine All exercises should be practiced with vibrato, unless it is impossible, or eliminated for a specific reason. (I believe that vibrato is an essential part of tone and cannot and should not be thought of as "icing on the cake." Stressing continuous and "automatic" vibrato helps to prevent a lazy left hand, allows the hand to be loose, and prevents tension caused by static motion.) 1. Open Strings I like to begin my practice day with slow, long bows on open strings to get my whole upper body loose and limber without having to worry about the left hand. Since I believe the bow to be the real "meat and potatoes" of playing the viola, this approach seems appropriate. a. Play long, whole notes, setting the metronome to a slow, steady beat if necessary. b. Draw the bow as slowly as is comfortably possible without the tone "cracking." 2. Finger Action Exercises Once I begin my work with the left hand I like to start with basic finger action movements to loosen up the knuckles and joints and establish a good "plop-release" finger action-that is, allow the finger to firmly strike the fingerboard and release after the "plop," so that the finger does not remain "drilled" into the fingerboard. a. Start these exercises on the C string and transpose to other strings. b. Make sure to allow the lower fingers to lift slightly when playing with the upper fingers; this can allow the hand to "rebalance" for each finger and discourages unnecessary stress on the upper fingers. (This is particularly important for students with large instruments or small hands.) c. Keep a moderately full tone, about mf c. Draw the bow from frog to tip (literally, from "silver to ivory''). d. Play at least four full bows on each string, starting with C. e. Play with a full tone, mfto f

Figure 1.

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