Violin bow technique: How to develop a free, natural bow arm
A good bow arm is a fall.
A free fall of the arm through the string.
This is the foundation of good violin bow technique: Surrendering to gravity.
You can fall through air — with the contact point by the fingerboard, where there’s less resistance. You can fall through water — with a contact point midway between the bridge and the fingerboard. You can also fall through mud or lava — with the bow playing next to the bridge.
Slow bow speed? You need to be close to the bridge.
Fast bow? By the fingerboard.
If you pluck a string and observe its vibration, you’ll notice it wiggles more closer to its middle — by the fingerboard — than by the bridge. The vibration has a wider amplitude by the fingerboard. That’s why the bow needs to move faster there. The animation below illustrates this. Notice how playing closer to the bridge (block on the left) makes one "stick-slip" cycle take less bow.
But if your arm falls simply next to the string, where it naturally is while playing, without any connection with the string, you’ll be waiting a very long time to hear a sound.
That’s why we have the “fall translator”: the bow-fingers-hand-wrist organism.
The best way to learn this is by practicing with short bow strokes near the frog. That’s where the “fall translator” is directly above the string, and the arm can fall directly into it.
But the further away we go from the frog, the more difficult it becomes to transfer the arm’s fall into the string. Not only is the right arm, on average, a good foot away from the strings, it’s also often below them.
When the arm gets below string level (for example, playing at the tip on the A or E strings), it’s important not to think of the arm as pulling down on the string, but as pushing — or rather dropping onto it. Even if the right arm is below string level, the sensation needs to be as if the string is still below the right hand.
Spend little pockets of time throughout the day gently and intentionally dropping your arms onto various surfaces — tables, chairs, couches. From a very small height, about ¼ of an inch: “3, 2, 1, drop.” Do it while looking at your arm, and do it while looking as far away as you can, and notice the difference.
We usually drop our arms when we give up, or when we rest, or sleep. Or when we’re extremely exhausted.
But when do we consciously drop our arms?
When do we drop our arms in the process of trying to do something?
Pretty much never.
It’s counterintuitive.
Your body thinks that “doing something” and “dropping your arms” cannot coexist. That it’s like inhaling and exhaling at the same time.
No wonder it’s so difficult to develop a masterful bow arm. It goes against everything our nervous system has learned by living on this Earth.
Creation starts with a fall.
Falling is the process of making.
A counterintuitive skill that needs to be practiced.
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