Shoulder Rest Tips

With so many shoulder rests on the market it's often difficult to know what to choose. We're not going to attempt to list all the makes of shoulder rests as this would be pretty pointless, instead we have a few (hopefully useful!)  tips for violin students who need a bit of help. Of course when it comes to preventing injury the violin set up needs to be looked at carefully - the shoulder rest. the chin rest and the choice of using both, one or none of these.

Finding a shoudler rest that fits is a complicated issue which needs to be checked by a teacher, and involves checking the chin rest as well to ensure the best fit.  We've kept our tips to three main points:

1. The violin should always have contact with the collar bone, so the shoulder rest should not lift the violin away but keep this contact.

2.  Avoid a shoulder rest that looks and feels like scaffolding - you don't want to shoulder rest to bridge the gap entirely, there should always be an element of freedom for the neck and head.

3. Shoulder rests have a terrrible habit of falling off or sliding, look for a brand that is more secure, preferably with 'feet' that can be adjusted so you can alter the height of the sides if necessary.