Kreutzer Etude #1, Practice Guide (Dynamics aka Tonal Gradation)

This is a practice video for Kreutzer Etude #1, a slow dynamics etude.

I'll start by saying that for me personally, this is an extremely important etude. Sometimes when I am performing, I let my emotions get ahead of my technique - I feel a lot of passion in my mind while playing a passage, but when I listen back to my playing, it turns out that the internal passion didn't actually come out through the violin. Usually what happens is that I’ve been so expressive in my mind that I didnt use my right arm to its full potential. So, we need to train our minds and our bodies to direct that phrasing, emotion, and creativity through the right arm and into the use of the bow.

Etude #1 is played extremely slowly and generally quietly, and the focus is on bow speed and bow division as a means to achieve dynamic contrast. At the same time, we need our left hand shifts to be quiet and slow, and our string crossings to be gentle and beautiful. I didn't mention in the video, but we should be playing with all full bows and no vibrato ideally... this will encourage you to use bow speed to achieve all the phrasing.

@0:00 - Intro
@1:20 - About the etude: Why so late in the etude sequence? (Bow fundamentals, trills, shifting)
@3:53 - Main consideration: Dynamics during shifts/string crossings
@4:45 - Additional considerations (good tone, slow shifts, good rhythm, string crossings)
@5:56 - Dynamics: Why the etude is useful (Personal bad habits!)
@7:30 - Dynamics: Focus on bow speed (bow weight secondary)
@8:45 - Practice Step #1: Even Bow Division First
@9:58 - Practice Step #2: Adding in Dynamics
@11:00 - Physics Tangent! Velocity/Acceleration/Jerk
@12:06 - Another Example (measure 2)
@13:05 - Summary (Bow Division)
@13:25 - Additional Practice: Scales with tone gradation (see: Kross Appendix)
@15:35 - Addendum: Contact point varying with position
@16:25 - Play through

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Emil Kross:
Etude: https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?i... (p. 50)
Scales: https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?i... (p. 93)

Winn's "How to Study Kreutzer": http://hdl.handle.net/1802/12714

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Playlist of all 42 Kreutzer Etudes:    • Kreutzer Etudes: Violin Skills Practice Guide  

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Ben Bregman
https://www.santacruzstrings.com/