It's a gift

Learn to love the lower half of your bow

KAUPO KIKKAS

When I am teaching, I find it fundamentally important to communicate to my students that there should be softness of touch with the bow hold; the bow shouldn’t be gripped. I think that I probably take this to extremes but in order to make a beautiful sound we need to learn how to use the nature of the bow and the violin without interfering too much.

If we play in the upper half of the bow, we have to use leverage to make the sound, but if we play in the lower half the bow will just sit on the string without any pressure being exerted, and make a sound without much effort. If we work out how much the bow gives us without doing anything, all we need to do is add.

Too often I see students nullify the nature of the bow by holding it in the air, putting it on the string and pulling without releasing it naturally into the string. A symptom of this is that they then tend to play near the fingerboard in the upper half of the bow and have little control of the position of the bow with regard to its contact point between the bridge and the fingerboard. They usually find playing in the lower half uncomfortable and because of this they shy away from it. This further compounds the situation.

THE ETHOS

I like to address this issue with my students by requiring them to live intensively in the lower half of the bow during their practice, to play by the bridge and to practise their pieces there, only going into the upper half when releasing and ‘having a go’. If we find some comfort at the frog and get used to playing in the lower half using the natural bow weight, the bow will sit next to the bridge for hours, with little effort, as long as the bow speed is right. More bow does not mean more sound; it often means a much less intense and projected sound.

It is a bit like traction with tyres. If a car is driving at 30 miles per hour, we want the wheels to be turning at the speed that the car is travelling (not at 60 or 100mph or the car will go sideways). So, if we use too fast a bow speed for the pressure that we are putting into the string, the bow will go on to the fingerboard. However, if the bow moves slowly it will sit by the bridge with no effort at all. In fact, a slow bow speed is equivalent to putting pressure on the string, and this enables us to get much more out of the string than is otherwise possible.

To get the best results at the heel, the bowing hand needs to be soft and fluid, allowing the weight of the bow itself to create the sound.

The motto of my violin class is ‘slower, lower’; for a fun take on this, view the following reel from my Instagram account: bitly.ws/33VVV(right). Here I play part of the Sibelius Violin Concerto on a tiny bow brought as a joke to one of our lessons by a student.

When playing, I remember I felt the sensation of being strangled, confirming that I very much think of my bow as being associated with my breath.

As you watch, notice that my hand on this ‘bow’ is super soft and that the bow is positioned by the bridge. However, my students were amused that I could do so much with so little. Judging by the way it went viral on Instagram, this resonated with many others too.

FIRST EXERCISES

• Rest your bow on the violin to find its balance point (roughly a third of the way along the bow). Hold the balance for a few moments.

• Now play some open strings in the lower half. Hold the bow super loosely, as though you were holding the stem of a wine glass, using tippy-tappy fingers. The violin will support the bow.

• Drop the bow on to the string to start, then draw it slowly, feeling the drag of the string with your fingertips. Don’t worry if the sound is bad or scratchy at first; it doesn’t matter how it sounds in the short term, as long as you are following the key principles of playing in an organic way. After all, how many times did you fall over before you learnt to walk? And then how long was it before you didn’t keep falling over? Manage your expectations and allow yourself some time to get used to the feel.

• Play near the bridge with an ultra-slow bow speed, slower than you think you can. The violin responds very well to being starved of ‘air’.

• You will need to play with these very slow bows regularly, to build faith that you won’t drop the bow or crack the sound as you play

REPERTOIRE

To perform the second movement of the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto (example 1), much of which is marked piano or mezzo piano, with a sound that will cut through with an orchestra and reach the last rows of a concert hall, it is vital to play with a slow bow near the bridge. People often associate playing near the bridge with producing a harsh, fortissimo sound. In reality it means quality (harking back to the car analogy above, it means ‘fully engaged clutch’). Practise this and other similar phrases further in the movement in the lower half of the bow, near the bridge. In performance you might allow yourself the release of moving a little further into the upper half but the main essence and core of the sound will be created in the lower half.

EXAMPLE 1 Excerpt from Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto in E minor op.64 second movement

IN YOUR PRACTICE

• Have an idea of what you want to do musically before you put the bow on the string. Remember that practising is where you compare what you want in your imagination with what comes out of the instrument and then try to close that gap. At first this might seem challenging but even if you decide against your original musical idea, at least you are putting parameters into your playing which you can then adjust at a later date.

• Singing, dancing and conducting are always healthy places to start. And remember that these can be done in the relative safety of your practice room, so don’t allow embarrassment to get in your way.

• In your warm-up play some slow scales in the lower half of the bow. Release the bow. Don’t try to force it; just drag it really slowly.

• Be patient and practise slowly (avoid smashing through pieces at full speed)

• When you practise pieces, make sure that you keep to the lower half of the bow. This means that you have to be careful to work out your bow divisions, saving bow in the smallest part of the phrase, and expanding speed a little to create shape. Work this to the stage where your default contact point is near the bridge. This will necessitate practising consistently in this way.

• Once you are used to this way of practising, you can ease this up in performance. However, you will find that you will come to prefer playing in the lower half owing to the control it affords you. Of course, we do use the whole bow at times, but basing yourself in the lower two-thirds of the bow rather than the upper two-thirds will be much more successful in performance.

TIPS FOR TEACHERS

• Check that your student is bowing straight to the bridge

• Avoid over-exaggeration of finger movements when changing bow. We don’t want the tail to wag the dog – fingers on the bow should move as a natural reaction to the movement of the arm, and not have a life of their own.

• Consider using a removable cable tie to prevent your student’s bow going into the upper half of the bow. When practising, it is very easy for students to be distracted by all the other things they are working on, and this will be a constant reminder.

• Start with an idea, then build it; help students to find the shape of a passage, then practise it in the lower half with that in mind (use more and less bow within these parameters). Only then allow them to release and go a little higher up the bow once the shape and control have built.

• Encourage students to think that playing just one centimetre from the bridge should be their normal playing zone (the fingerboard is just for special Debussy- or Ravel-like flautando colours), and to keep to the mantra of bowing in the lower part of the bow

• Keep in mind that the violin and the bow would like to work together without our interference; we are just the energy source

• As your students progress with these ideas, their fingers should become super reactive on the bow stick, feeling the string with their fingers, each finger reading what the string is doing through the bow

• Playing mostly in the upper half of the bow worked for Heifetz, but he was a genius!

INTERVIEW BY NAOMI YANDELL

FURTHER MATERIALS

As I boy I was fascinated by Itzhak Perlman’s bowing. His right hand is so soft and fluid but he has masterful control. See an example here: bitly.ws/33VZG

Janine Jansen makes a beautiful (and enormous) sound. Watch how she draws it out with a super-slow bow near the bridge. See an example here: bitly.ws/33VZT

NEXT MONTH Cellist and singer Matthew Sharp on interconnectedness between cello and voice