I have been playing the violin for around 8 years now. Sadly I had lessons at school (giving me a total of around 5 mins a week because of the huge number of kids who felt like taking it up and were shoved into MY lesson) because of my lack of funds. I am not very good for somebody who has been playing for eight years (mostly because of laziness and the lack of lesson time). But I am becoming increasingly interested in trying to improve again.

One thing I would like to start working on is vibrato. I can manage it in 3rd position, but even using the techniques my ex-teacher taught me, I cant manage it in 1st. I try and isolate the movement to just my wrist and hand, but i cant do it without the whole violin shaking with it. I keep my palm and wrist away from the neck but still no luck! Also, my wrist seems to prefer moving diagonally than actually toward the bridge and scroll.

Any ideas or techniqes?
Thanks!

when I started learning vibrato, my teacher got me to practice it on my wrist first. So you hold your right wrist like you would the violin fingerboard and work on moving the skin with you fingertips. She`d get me to do that before we started playing just so I had the movement in my head. I`d focus on the finger first and then the wrist movement comes later when everything loosens up. Mainly just keep at it, it takes practice. I suppose it might be worth while checking you are holding the violin correctly. Ideally you want to be able to hold the violin in place with just your chin and shoulder so that you can swing you left arm beneath easily without dropping the violin. If you cant do this then you may be holding the violin in place with your hand in which case it is no surprise you cant do vibrato as your hand is stuck holding the violin! Hope this helps! And good luck