It’s All About the Bow! An overview of bow technique from the beginning to advanced stages

Ching-Yi Lin The bow is the voice of the instrument. In order to have a beautiful, expressive, and clear tone, students must have a balanced bow hold, understand principles of bow division, and move with freedom and ease. Healthy Set-Up

• Instrument sizing • Paul Rolland's teaching method, as found in The Teaching of Action in String

Playing (1974) • Body and instrument posture

o Sequence and routine

Preliminary Bow Set-Up and Bow Balance • Using a pencil • Sliding with the bow upside down • Pinky House Front View of the “Pinky House” • Suzuki beginner bow hold

Silent Bow Exercises Without the Violin (in order of difficulty):

• Pinocchio • Unicorn • Stirring Soup • Space Shuttle • Passing the Cup • Windshield Wipers • Water the bow • Elevator • The Rocket Poem • Crawling Spider

“New Tip” Additional Bow Set-Up

• Mark the middle of the bow • A “new tip” • Additional material: Circle block/toilet paper roll • Bow Tap: Too tight, too loose, and just right!

Putting the Bow and Violin Together: Pre-Twinkle

• Kreisler/Suzuki Highway • Exercise: silent string crossings • Finger taps • Introduce the 3 basic bow strokes:

martelé, détaché, and legato • AEA, Seesaw, and See a Little Monkey: tiri tiri ti ti • A Major Scale: Twinkle variation rhythms à

Suzuki Book One Pieces: • Reinforce the 3 basic bow strokes beginning with Twinkle Twinkle Little Star

(using only the upper half of the bow) • Bow division and bow speed

“Lightly Row,” from McCall’s Group Lessons for Suzuki Violin and Viola, 36

Using the Whole Bow (WB) • Begin using lower half (LH) of the bow with “O, Come Little Children” • Change of thumb position to “grown-up” bow hold • Review preliminary bow exercises with this bow hold • Add whole bow exercises: Forearm vs. upper arm

o Silent bow placement, bow wanderings, and whole bow circles “O. Come, Little Children,” from Suzuki Violin School, Volume One, mm. 3–4

• Use the whole bow for the remainder of A major and D major scales and pieces

Stopped Bows with G Major Scale

• 2 notes per bow, up to 8-notes (martelé) • Left hand finger placement: Finger Before Bow (FBB) • Slurred scale

Z - Bowing

• Travel to the frog “The Happy Farmer,” from Suzuki Violin School, Volume One, mm. 1–4

Three Factors of Tone Production • Bow speed • Weight • Sounding point

Galamian – Mix and match various combinations to achieve different tone qualities

Études for Teaching Bow Division and Various Bow Techniques • Review open strings martelé: 4, 2, 1 per bow • Wohlfahrt, Sixty Etudes for Violin Op. 45, Book 1, No. 1 (Intermediate) • Whistler, Preparing for Kreutzer, Vol. 1

Kreutzer: 42 Studies, No. 2, mm. 1–2, (advanced)

• Divide the bow into quarters o Galamian – three stages of the stroke: triangle, square, and point o Reinforcement of bow division and drawing a straight bow stroke o Pronation and supination

• Various bowings o Fluency and bow pressure

Schradieck: The School of Violin Techniques Book I

• Stopped and slurred bows • Metronome = 60 : Whole bow gets two beats • 2, 4, 8, 16, and 32 per bow

Other Factors of Bow Division:

• Musical expression • Dynamics: ways to make a crescendo and decrescendo

“May Song,” from Suzuki Violin School, Volume One, mm. 5–7

Kreisler, Sicilienne and Rigaudon, from Rigaudon, mm. 18–19

String Crossing Kreisler, Sicilienne and Rigaudon: practice with open strings as a bowing exercise

• Coordination of the bow and the left hand o Practice with stopped and slurred bows o Galamian – approach to the new string o Double stops: FBB

“Minuet 2,” from Suzuki Violin School, Volume One, mm. 1–4

Other études for Studying String Crossings: Kreutzer 42 Studies, No. 7, 13, 14, and 26

• Motions of the fingers o Vertical and horizontal motions o String crossing at the frog with Kreutzer No. 13 o Slurred string crossings with Kreutzer No. 14 and 26

Other Considerations

• Style • Character and color of the tone

Suggested Reading Rolland, Paul. The Teaching of Action in String Playing. Urbana: Illinois String Research

Associates, 1974. (DVD also available (2008) from www.paulrolland.net) Galamian, Ivan. Principles of Violin Playing & Teaching. Ann Arbor, Michigan: Shar

Production Company, 1985.

Zweig, Mimi. String Pedagogy. DVD. Bloomington, IN: Mimi Zweig StringPedagogy, 2007. Now available at www.stringpedagogy.com, 2015

 Ching-Yi Lin – chingyilin.com – 2016