Violin Left Hand Thumb Placement

One question that gets asked again and again is regarding the placement of the left hand thumb on the violin. This is an issue over which there is great controversy and needlessly so. The truth is always simple and non technical. Falsehoods tend to be a maze of complicated theories and overlapping principals at the root of which the seeker of truth inevitably discovers a web of lies and half truths.

There is a school of discipline being promulgated by those who subscribe to the use of the shoulder rest, to try to play the violin keeping the thumb off of the back of the neck. This is an absolutely ridiculous, laughable notion and an utterly absurd thing to attempt to “master”.

This idea was stumbled on by yours truely back in the days when I used to use a shoulder rest and I was still searching for the “correct” way to play the violin. This search was due to the acknowledgment that my sound was not that of the great masters I was listening to on recordings at the time. After about one day of practicing this technique it became obvious to me that there was absolutely no value to this ideology. Later I discovered that other students were actually being taught this flawed technique in their lessons, and were attempting to “show off” their skill at having mastered it. Impressive though that it was that they could play that way, the violin failed to sound better and in fact if they had any degree of developed connection between their ear and the sound that the instrument was producing they also would have heard that they indeed sounded worse.

This sort of extremism is the result of attempting to master a flawed technique. A flawed technique can never be mastered truly. Even if the flawed technique could be mastered it is still a flawed technique. Attempting such an extreme technique is a result of hitting a brick wall in one's technical development on the violin. Attempting to master this flawed technique is like trying to break down the brick wall by banging one's head on it. It does not work now, it will never work in the future, and continuing to try to make it work is absolutely futile.

If you are a student of the violin and you have reached this point in your technical development on the violin consider that it is a result of having had the wool pulled over your eyes. Consider that maybe your teachers were wrong in their teachings. Any serious student of any subject necessarily must admit that anything they are taught may be faulty. That so many violinists are unwilling to admit that they have been conned out of their sound by the shoulder rest manufactures and to a lesser extent the chin rest manufactures is a testament to the inherent desire to be right by the ego of the player at any cost.

I arrived at this flawed thumb technique at a time when I, like most students today, was under the false impression that the violin is gripped between the left shoulder and left jaw, the weight of the instrument pulling down on the shoulder via the shoulder rest and the chin rest pressing up into the jaw. I was taught like many other students today that the violin is supported by the left shoulder to free the left hand.

Now, subscribing to this false presumption, and still unable to play in tune or with any speed or accuracy, and already having crossed the bridge that “I just needed to practice more”, the next logical false conclusion at which I arrived, was to take the left thumb off of the back of the neck because the left hand still needed to be more “free”. This is the type of wrestling that must be done when false presumptions govern playing style.

So the idea was to learn to play completely supporting the violin with the shoulder and keep the thumb out of the picture. Wrong. This is not going to improve the sound of the instrument. It is not going to improve intonation or facility. It is only going to make it even more difficult to play at all and as a result you are going to have to practice much more than you should only to sound worse.

Is it possible that we were lied to when our teachers told us that the violin is supported with the shoulder? Is it possible that they were incorrect on that most basic and fundamental point? Could they have been all together wrong? At one time in history this was not an issue at all. Violinists knew that attaching anything to the back of the instrument produced a false tone. This false presumption actually was started by the shoulder rest manufacturers in order to sell more shoulder rests to unsuspecting students of the violin, and with hook line and sinker the students took the bait, and then they grew into adult professionals, and as a result most audiences today have never heard the violin played they way it was intended to sound by it's creators.

If we remove this falsehood from our playing, which acts as a road block in our technical and stylistic development as a musician, then we are left with the now old fashioned style of playing where the violin was held up with the left hand, more specifically, with the thumb of the left hand. Now the most fundamental technical issue confronting violinists of today is solved. You may make an upvote on Steemit for that bit of advise alone.

Violinists who have been playing with the crutch called the shoulder rest clamp all their lives now find that without the shoulder rest they are unable to play the violin. They are like the prisoner who has been institutionalized most of their live and are now set free. They do not feel comfortable with their new level of freedom, because it was not their idea in the first place to lose the crutch. Often they never experienced the violin without the crutch and so the new found freedom is repugnant to them. As a result of not having arrived at the conclusion on their own they are skeptical of any major changes. They have heard all their life by all their teachers that they will not be able to hold the violin without the shoulder rest crutch and the notion that all of their teachers could have been wrong is inconceivable to them. They feel completely helpless, and they think that such a drastic change will take far too long to master. In reality, it only took me about one month to become accustomed to the adjustment. They see no light at the end of the tunnel regarding the adjustment. Their mind is closed on the issue and after a halfhearted attempt at freedom they revert back to the more familiar flawed and confined style of playing. This sad story has been repeated again and again to the detriment of the experience of the end consumer of the music, the audience.

Part Two

The second issue regarding the placement of the thumb on the neck is in regard to shifting from one position to another on the violin. Again we must approach the instrument as two instruments, one with the shoulder rest and the other without. Promoters of the shoulder rest do so claiming that it sets the left hand free to move about the instrument not knowing that they are only repeating propaganda dispersed by the manufacturers of the shoulder rests. Somewhere in their development they get a notion that the whole left hand should be rigid and should be kept the same shape at all times. As a result when they make even the smallest shift the thumb out of necessity for following this rule must shift as well.

Imagine the possibilities if we discard this false notion.

There is an axiom in playing the violin that states: “Elimination of Superfluous Motions is the shortest path to Virtuosity.” Stated differently: “Economy of Motion is a Virtue.” or “Removal of Superfluities Results in Purity of Tone.” The idea here is that if we can eliminate all unnecessary motions from our playing then we are left only with the essential motions and as a result our speed and accuracy should increase.

Promoters of the rigid left hand theory and unnecessary shift theory think they are following the axiom as they are choosing to keep the shape of the hand. But is a shift more motion or less motion than no shift?

I began to question the rigid left hand theory after watching several famous violinists play, namely Itzhak Perlman. In particular I became aware that for Itzhak there were only two positions on the violin regarding the thumb, first position and third position. Now we are beginning to truly eliminate the superfluous motions.

Sometimes there may only be one position on the violin. If the hand is in third position the fingers may be extended back to first position without moving the thumb out of third position. The opposite could also occur. If the hand is in first position the fingers may be extended to third position and the thumb left in first position, if for only a few notes.

Now that we have discarded the false presumption we may even shift the thumb and fingers at different times. The end result of all of this is that we end up shifting much less often. Unnecessary shifts are now replaced with “pivots” of the left hand, and effectively we have shortened the distance of the fingerboard.

Under the rigid left hand theory we basically had four diatonic pitches under our fingers at any time and to reach new notes on the same string, we had to shift. As we shifted we were obligated to slide the entire thumb along with the fingers under the pretense of keeping the left hand rigid, which is a false interpretation of the above stated axiom, again a result of the false presumption that the violin is supported with the shoulder and chin grip resulting from using the shoulder rest. Now we are free to reach for notes all around the violin and shifting is only a result of reaching for new notes and not a prerequisite. Shifting is now a much less common occurrence and we can now transport from one note to another with less production.