Hi, my name is Sha Tiam Vishantai and I'm the concert master of the Filmonia Orchestra. I sit at the front of the orchestra and my job is to help the conductor keep the ensemble together and to help communicate the character of the music. The violin is the highest instrument in the string family. In orchestras, the violins are split into two sections. The first violins who usually have the melody and the second violins who often support the first violence with harmony. The sound of the violin is created by making its four strings vibrate. The four strings tuned G, D, A, and E are stretched across the bridge and tuned with the help of PEX at the top and sometimes fine tuners on the tailpiece. The sound then resonates throughout the wooden body with the help of a small piece of wood inside called the sound post. Most of the time we use a bow to create sound by drawing it across the strings like this. The bow is made from wood and horseair. The horseair gets coated in rosin, which is a hard resin from trees. The rosin creates more friction between the bow and the strings, which means they vibrate more, making a louder sound. There are many techniques using the bow and we describe them using Italian and French words. Here are a few. Legato which means smooth. Stacato which means separated. Spicato which is bouncing or springy. Tremolo to tremleno literally with the wood which is a percussive effect. Sultasto on the fingerboard which is light and airy or sul pontichello on the bridge which is harsh and abrasive. We can also pluck the strings and this is called piticato which means to pluck or pinch in Italian. It can be very delicate or dramatic and percussive on the violin. We can also do um special sounds which are called harmonics or also in French fleet um which we put the finger basically not completely on the string just we we touching the string like this. These are called the natural harmonics. And then we also have um the artificial harmonics where we're using basically two fingers on one string um which we use the first mostly the first finger on let's say on the D string and then we put a a fourth the fourth finger on the same string and that creates two octaves higher than what we play to making the sound sweeter and um making the sound also more um more interesting we have uh something it's called vibatto you can if if you ask me how many vibraas we have I don't know because um I think there are like millions of kinds of vibraas we can vibrate very slow or really fast and then of course with every finger We can first vibrate only with the wrist or we vibrate with the whole arm. it is um quite difficult because the the thing leading an orchestra is not something you learn from like today to tomorrow. Um I think it's it's trying in every orchestra I think it's different how to lead the orchestra and um of course there's a lot of body language involved but also it's also the question um where you actually have to lead and where you actually just leave the orchestra play or the section play. Um, of course I use, if I show that, of course I can, I can use quite a lot of body language like moving my violin up and down or like something, you know, uh, doing doing the beat or something like that. But then I can also just, for example, just lean my my my head back and actually even just looking to them something like this that that they see, okay, now attention or something like this. And sometimes is even it's just enough to show something like a change with a finger something like this because then every every desk is seeing that and every desk is basically passing the message. So you can see there can be leading an orchestra can be like really big. You can almost like jump up and jump down which must might not help but sometimes. Um and you can also lead an orchestra or can also lead a section which which like only demonstrating how you change a finger or something like this. Of course, I have my own style to to lead an orchestra, but there are certain ways that I have to adapt it to the conductor. If if I play in different orchestras, I always have to see how how the orchestra works. In some orchestras, I only need to do small moves and that's already enough. or in some orchestras I really need to move very very a lot and even say something how to do it or how to how to react for example like pites or chords it's it's a little bit like like being a teacher I mean you can't teach a person every person in the same way you also have to adapt to the person how how they react if you've enjoyed learning about the instruments in the orchestra why not try our iPad app the orchestra featuring esapeca salinan and the Filimonia Orchestra. Fully interactive video playback lets you view the orchestra from all angles, and the revolutionary beat map shows you who is playing when. Follow along with synchronized scores. Hear the inside scoop in audio commentaries and get a 360° view of all the instruments. Available for download in the App Store on iTunes.