Three exercises to loosen and speed up your violin vibrato

Have you ever been playing a passage and trying with all your might to vibrate, and yet, it sounds like there’s no vibrato at all?! Speaking from experience, I know this is incredibly frustrating. The cause is a vibrato that is too tight and slow. Incorporating one (or more!) of the exercises below will help you free up your vibrato and create the beautiful sound you’ve been craving.

Exercise one

Practice a scale or slow, lyrical passage without the bow and use harmonic pressure with the left hand. Do not press your fingers all the way down into the string; instead, lightly lay them on the string and maintain a soft and loose hand and thumb. Vibrate on each note, and try to keep the vibrato going throughout. Notice how this frees up your hand!

Exercise two

Pick any note or finger, and play a down bow using super slow vibrato. When you reach the tip, stop the bow, and wiggle your thumb. This helps keep the hand loose. On the up bow, play your vibrato as fast as you can. Be sure that you can hear every oscillation (back and forth movement).

Exercise three

This exercise mainly targets the speed of the vibrato, because, let’s be honest-if vibrato isn’t fast enough, it doesn’t quite sound like vibrato! This exercise is simple-work your vibrato up with the metronome. Pick a speed that is easy for you to play 16th notes with using vibrato, and gradually increase the speed. You may find that at a certain point you get “stuck”-you just can’t play any faster. If this happens, take a break from the exercise for a few days. You can also try speeding the metronome up, even if it’s a little messy, and then bring it back down to your original tempo. That speed will feel a lot slower than before!

Leave a comment and let me know your favorite vibrato exercise!