The Flattened Violin Bridge
To flatten the violin bridge or not. This is a question that comes up amongst fiddlers, not violinists.
Next time you see a real virtuoso fiddler live or on TV or video, take a good look at the bridge of the violin. Does it look flattened? Probably not.
The flattened bridge for fiddling is a myth. For beginners, especially, you would be doing them no favor by flattening the bridge. It just makes playing on one of the middle strings more difficult.
In the early stage of learning, it’s tricky to keep the bow to one string. Do you want to make it more difficult by reducing the normal curve of the bridge? I don’t think so.
And physics tells us that any two adjacent strings are connected by a straight line, no matter how curved the bridge might be. Therefore, a flattened bridge cannot possible help you play on two strings at the same time. A straight line is a straight line. Period.
The flatter bridge will allow you to move from G to A or D to E with less arc of the arm. Okay, good. Now, what’s the point of that?
There is one small advantage to a flattened bridge. Moving from two string pairs to adjacent string pairs requires some right arm movement. And this is a common move in advanced fiddling. If the bridge is a little flatter than standard, you won’t have to move as much. It’s a small difference at best.
Whew! Glad to have that out of my system.
Tags:fiddler,flattened bridge,technique,violinist
[...] last comment to echo an earlier post. Since flattening the bridge flattens the arc, is it not obvious that this makes the arc of difference smaller? And that makes [...]