Hello there students! Just wondering whether you can remember when and how (if you do!) you started using vibrato? I seem to remember it just came naturally to me (prob picked up from teacher/listening to concerts) and so would like some opinions/ideas etc on how to go about introducing this to my own pupils (who are about Gr 4/5)

Thank you!

Ermmm started using it around grade 5 ish......have been taught both arm and wrist vibrato in very different ways.

One was a more get on with it yourself thing (arm) and the other was a lot more gradual and basics were done before moving onto the more complex movements in higher positions. However, i did wrist vibrato properly for Grade 7 so it seemed easier to me as i was supposedly "more mature" as a student. Still prefered the slower quided route though

i think my teacher introduced vibrato to me when i was around grade 3-4.
before he taught me how to do it, i was already tyring to do it by myself - did managed to do it sometimes, not consistently.

one lesson he just said he's going to teach me vibrato...

how.....
i think he used two examples to explain how he did it.....

basically vibrato is just like a continuous flow of air, doing loud/soft/loud/soft ...sequnce....
so his first example was ... laughing: ha..ha..ha..ha..ha
slowly...in one breathe...

the 2nd example (also the method that he told me to practise for), is to do a loooooooooooong note.
imagine, in 4/4time, 2 or 3 seimbreves tied together...
and when u play... play the note louder when it is on the crotchet beat:

4|1 a 2 a 3 a 4 a |1 a 2 a 3 a 4 a ||
4|WOoooOoooooOoooooOoooooOoooooOoooooOooooOooooo

[capital O means louder!]

he told me to play with the metronum, start from low tempo...with a regular beat
when i 'get the hang of it', play with a faster and faster tempo....
then the final step, was to do it in a natural way, like this:
OooooooOooooooOoooooOooooOoooOoooOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOo

this method kinda worked quite well for me actually!

Hello, I was not allowed to do it until grade five and then my teacher taught it to me over a period of a year.

She started off making me roll my 2nd finger (because it was my strongest) back and forth on teh fingerboard. At the very beginning she did this for me and I just had to stand there and 'feel' it. Then I would start doing it and she would correct and we did this, more and more over hte year. When I was confident I was told I could put it into my semi-brethes and minims, then crochets then quavors ect. ect. I started after my grade four and did some in my grade five exam (which I got distinction for so I guessed it worked!) Two years later I am now doing my grade 7 and I use it completly fluently.

Hoped that helped. May I ask what method you are using? As there is the wrist vibrato and finger vibrato.

Hey Cathui that whole OoooOooooOoooo thing kinda makes sense!!! I have tried the Trevor Wye with pupil recently - but she is started getting a tad upset because she thought she should be able to get it straight away! I have stressed to her and other pupils that not everyone learns how to play with vibrato naturally and so not to worry!!!!

Its quite a tricky thing trying to tell someone else what you yourself are doing internally - its not as though you can show someone your diaphragm/layrnx?!!!

i started using vibarto probably about grade 4-ish. it play the trombone so there is 3 ways to do it.
1. waggling the slide (lol thats the technical name )
2. using ur lips
3. breath control (not used very often)

in my opinion vibarto only sounds good in moderation! so please dont try it alll the time!

Well, I forgot when did I started using vibrato, but I remember I asked one of the violinist in the orchestra to teach me how to do vibrato.. then I tried it at home, and it sounds good!

QUOTE (flutey toot @ Apr 14 2005, 01:00 PM)

Hello there students! Just wondering whether you can remember when and how (if you do!) you started using vibrato? I seem to remember it just came naturally to me (prob picked up from teacher/listening to concerts) and so would like some opinions/ideas etc on how to go about introducing this to my own pupils (who are about Gr 4/5)

This is a copy of a response I posted to a similar thread ages ago - it's probably there somewhere in the depths of the system...

I can tell you how I teach it, and how I had to practise it. Ideally before you start working on a controlled vibrato you will be able to produce a clear steady note, but I have also found this technique useful in helping people to get rid of what my flute professor used to refer to as a "hysterical vibrato", the sort of very fast tremor that some players develop and can't control.

Start by imagining that by playing a series of strong staccato repeated notes on your flute, without using your tongue to start the notes, you are going to blow out a row of candles that are in front of you but some distance away. Choose a note that speaks easily. Take a good breath and blow them out one at a time, with a clear gap between the notes but without taking a breath in the gaps. You could visualise the notes as quavers (eighths) with quaver rests between them. This should be slow, perhaps as slow as one note per second.

When you can do that, still think of blowing out the candles, and keep the notes just as strong and slow, but instead of stopping the sound completely keep just a very little bit of breath continuing the note through what were the rests. This should sound pretty strange, and is not all that easy to do. At this stage it doesn't sound like music, and it isn't, it's a breath control exercise.

When you can do that, gradually speed it up (over a period of days or weeks, not minutes!), keeping the pulses really strong and obvious, until you are doing about four pulses a second. I had to practise scales over the whole range of the flute adding four pulses of vibrato in a completely robotic way on the first of every group of four notes, cutting it completely for the other three, then adding it to alternate notes, etc. If you have a metronome, use it.

What you are aiming at is to be able to add this deep vibrating colour to your flute sound at any speed you choose, and immediately to cut it out completely if you want to create a very cool, restrained sound. A sudden pp without vibrato can be enormously effective. I remember working on one of the Bach trio sonatas, accompanying my flute teacher and a violinist. The slow movement starts with the two solo instruments sustaining a long note together, and they co-ordinated starting it veryquietly and "cold" then allowing the sound to grow and introducing vibrato which gradually got faster until they reached the moving notes. It was very, very effective.

I've never tried teaching vibrato by correspondence course, so I hope it helps.

I started learning it around Grade 4 or Grade 5- can't really remember how i was taught it though - is just a natural thing i guess. Took me a while to get the hang of it though.