"With Nicky" - Equipment

This week, I’m talking all things equipment: strings, shoulder rests (yay!), chin rests, my bow, my beautiful pegs and the violin itself. We’ll also be looking inside my violin case…I’m not going to lie, it’s pretty messy!

Equipment is something that I have certainly obsessed over a lot in the past and as much as I advocate for methodical and thorough experimentation with bows, chin rests, shoulder rests, strings etc. in order to find the combination that works best for you, I have also come to realise that at some point, you just have to let it all go and focus as much as possible on your physical and mental well being in your practise.

Try to be intelligent, be logical, but don’t fixate on it.

The videos have been generously supported by ESTA UK, MiSST – The Andrew Lloyd Webber Programme, and Oasby Music Group and I am very grateful for their support.

Huge thanks to our media partners Classic FM, The Strad, The Violin Channel and WQXR who will be sharing the videos with their audiences each week when released.

Finally, these videos wouldn’t have been possible without an amazing team: Scott Jaeger, our film maker, Laura Gardiner, our Education Manager, Rebecca Driver, PR Manager and Hannah King, Online Media Manager. I want to say a huge thank you to all four of them for being with me on this journey.

Nicky

Film produced by www.jaegerfilm.com

Time Codes:
00:37 - Violin
02:20 - My Shoulder Rest
02:43 - Shoulder Rests
06:06 - Chin Rest Cover
07:39 - Bow
09:04 - Violin Case
12:02 - Strings
14:30 - Nicky’s Moral of the Story

Links from the video:
Libero Shoulder Rest – this can be purchased from many places, but as an example: https://www.thomann.de/gb/libero_delu...

Nicola Benedetti - Glazunov’s Violin Concerto in A Minor, Op. 82: 1 Moderato -    • Nicola Benedetti - Glazunov’s Violin ...  

Bow Hold Support - https://www.medisave.co.uk/3m-coban-s...

Guillaume Rosin – an example: https://luthiervidal.com/en/violins-a...

Nicola Benedetti plays Prokofiev Violin Sonata No. 1 -    • Nicola Benedetti and Alexei Grynyuk p...  

Jargar Strings: http://www.jargar-strings.com/

Evah Pirazzi Strings: https://www.pirastro.com/public_piras...