Bold Explorations Learning the intricate geography of the bow by Tom Heimberg

The bow looks simple to the eye, but to the hand it is a rich territory filled with many textures, directions, and responses. By entering this landscape in a spirit of playful adventure you can launch journeys of exploration and discovery that will deepen your knowledge and improve your skills.

Through the years I have gathered practice devices that help this exploration. These practices allow us to observe and feel the bow work we are focused on. They can be adapted to any level of player—from early student to professional—with good results.

Tapping and Trembling

To appreciate the range of balance and bounce along the full length of the bow, start by tapping the bow on a string. Place the point of your bow on the lowest-pitched string of your instrument, then lift the bow a little bit above the string and start tapping. Notice how much spring you feel as the bow "wants" to rebound.

Continue tapping as you slowly move the contact point on the bow toward the frog. Note the change in the bounce, and your need for increasingly more right-hand help as you go up bow toward the heavier end of the stick. Try for as much control as possible as you maintain an even, regular tapping. Keep the right hand free of unnecessary tension and the bow close to the string.

The late Charles Siani—principal bass of the San Francisco Opera orchestra for many years, and a very effective teacher—used to tell his students that once they had tapped in this way, they would know everything they needed to know about the bow.

It was an exaggeration, but it got them thinking.

Another exploration that uses the spring of the upper half of the bow is what I call the "Tremble." Instead of tapping, drop the bow onto the string from a height of two to four inches, creating a ricochet bounce. It may take a few tries to find the right height and the right location on the bow. Once you do, start a very slow down bow that encourages a small ricochet to continue. The right hand must hold the bow delicately, and the arm must move slowly so that traction between string and bow causes the bounce to continue.

This is great practice for developing a light bow hold and a steady arm–and it helps you learn control of an effect that nerves might cause when you don't want it.

Son Filé and the Bow Stretcher

The expression son filé is French for "spun-out sound." Originally borrowed from vocal technique, the expression means a sustained, singing sound—the heart of expressive string playing. "Everyone worries about spiccatto," violinist Felix Khuner once said, "but the sustained legato tone is what's important. That's where the money's at! Once you have it you can cut it as short or as long as you want."

To approach son filé, I teach a practice that I call the "Bow Stretcher." It doesn't really stretch the bow—or deform it in any way—but it does stretch the thinking of the player. It teaches a precise mental skill for monitoring and controlling a bow stroke as it is happening.

Play a series of even, paired strokes, making each successive down/up pair a little bit longer in time—and slower in motion—than the preceding one. To do this, set a metronome at 60 (one second per click is a good beginning setting) and place the bow at its midpoint on the lowest open string of your instrument. Play several pairs of down/up bow strokes at the rate of one click per stroke. At the start use only as much bow length as you feel you need; you'll be using the entire length soon enough.

Begin adding clicks, one click at a time. Use the same length of bow for each down/up pair, but make each pair one click longer than the preceding one. Example 1 shows the first eight pairs in musical notation.

In order to keep the bow moving steadily and evenly, you need to think ahead by counting clicks and mentally distributing them along the bow length. For example, think: "At eight clicks per stroke I'll have four in the lower half and four in the upper half. At nine, four in each half, with number five right at the midpoint. Ten will be five upper half plus five lower half . . ." and so on.

The Bow Stretcher is versatile: You can practice it as a sustained scratch (good for control, hard on the ears). You can play it on each of the four open strings, on the three double-string combinations, and in wave patterns across two or more strings (a living lesson in gained and lost bow).

Also, the concept can be reversed to facilitate faster bow strokes: Start with the eight-click pairs and then deduct one click at a time while continuing to use the full length of the bow.

The Bow Stretcher can be tiring, so use it sparingly–two or three times a week, with a gradual building to the longest strokes, is a good start. Even with a modest beginning, the return to more "normal" bow speeds can immediately feel and sound freer.

Drifting and Rolling

The point of contact between the bow and the string has a strong effect on tone production. So does the tilt of the bow and the spread of the hairs. Is the bow near the bridge, over the fingerboard, or somewhere in between? Does the tilt of the bow hold the hairs in full, flat contact with the string, or is it angled steeply so that one side of the hairs makes more contact than the other? These questions can be answered and experienced by the practices I call Intentional Drifting and Rolling the Bow.

Intentional Drifting: The distance from the bridge to the fingerboard can be measured in widths of bow hair: There are five or six widths on the violin and viola, more on the lower instruments. Teacher and writer Samuel Applebaum called these divisions "lanes." Like good freeway drivers, players need to learn smooth lane changes: Smoothly change lanes from sul ponticello to sul tasto as you draw long bows. We can also jump lanes–which freeway drivers should not try–so practice quick, distant changes as well, moving from the hoarse sounds near the bridge to the transparency near the fingerboard and back again.

Rolling the Bow: Hear and feel the tonal effects of the angle of the bow hairs on the string by rolling the bow during long strokes–tilt the stick toward your nose, then away, then back again (see Example 2). Do this repeatedly, noting the changes of sensation in your right hand, and the changes of sound from your instrument.

The Bite

The instant at which tone begins on any stringed instrument is an important and delicate moment. But the instant just before that moment is even more important. During the instant just before playing, the player needs to imagine what the tone sounds like—and what it must feel like.

Through years of practice and experience you develop a repertoire of movements that are predictive of the sounds they produce. Eventually, you will learn to feel the difference—ahead of time—between slither and scratch (and everything in between).

The Bite helps make this clear. To start the Bite, stop all the strings by placing one left-hand finger on each one. This should not be a strenuous positioning: a simple stack of minor sixths will do—fingers 1 2 3 4 on strings IV III II I on violin and viola.

This dampens the natural ringing of the open strings so we can hear more clearly. With your strings dampened, place the midpoint of the bow on one of the lower-pitched strings. Use the arm position that Ivan Galamian called "the natural square," with right angles at the elbow, between the bow and the forearm, and where the bow crosses the strings. Later, you'll try the Bite using all parts of the bow between the point and the frog—but when starting out you should concentrate your efforts on the middle of the bow.

Next, without making a sound, feel the contact between the bow and the strings. Feel the elasticity of the hairs when you press the wood down and then release it, feel the traction grip of the hairs on the string when you apply the bow firmly, feel how it is possible to move the string without releasing it.

Once you feel this traction, important learning occurs: When the bow is firmly on the string, you can move it with a small, quick motion of the fingers, down bow or up bow. The goal is to release the string with a small pop of sound—as if the bow is plucking the string.

There are ways to fake this sound, but not the movement. For this exercise the small, quick release should not come from the arm (the elbow) or the hand (the wrist). It should come from a quick, small movement of the fingers—"It's like scratching a little itch," one of my students once said. Sometimes the bow will skid, sometimes it will scratch. Immediate success is not the goal: You are exploring possibilities. The broader your repertoire of experience, the better you will predict a sound before you make it.

Practice the Bite just a few minutes a day, every day. When it feels under control you can use it to practice scales, passages of separate notes, as spiccato preparation, and for staccato. The sensitivities you learn from this practice will enable you to start a full tone as soon as the bow moves. This skill is important to many kinds of strokes. Martele, colle, spiccato, and legato all benefit from it.

Full Spectrum

The examples I have suggested are part of a lifetime program of explorations—in music study, instrument study, and body awareness. The full spectrum of string sound, from flautando to pesante, lives somewhere between whoosh and crunch. Doing these practices–sometimes closer to whoosh, sometimes closer to crunch—will help you discover the regions of tone available through your bow.