Let’s start with the bow hold. First of all it’s very important to understand that there is no perfect bow hold. Everybody has a unique hand and so is the bow hold.
But there are some basic rules applicable for everyone that I want to show here.
But there are some basic rules applicable for everyone that I want to show here.
We begin with the preparation. We hold our hand like this:
As you can see the hand is very easy, the thumb meets the second finger above the fingertip, thus forming a ring.
My thumb is bent a little bit since is pretty average, but that depends on the length of your fingers. If your thumb is shorter you would have to hold it straight to be able to form a ring.
My thumb is bent a little bit since is pretty average, but that depends on the length of your fingers. If your thumb is shorter you would have to hold it straight to be able to form a ring.
Now we put our bow into this frame without changing it significantly. It should look like this:
You can see that the thumb is still bent a little. The second finger and the thumb are our most important fingers because they hold the bow. It doesn’t matter whether they have contact to each other as long as they can hold the bow.
Now we put the third finger besides the second one, somewhere in the middle of the frog, also depending on the finger length. My third finger is average as well, so that’s just an example.
We put the fourth finger on the bow. Two things are very important: We contact the bow with the fingertip and the fourth finger must be bent. I’ll explain why in some later post when we look at the bow hold during up- and downbow.
Now we drop our first finger onto the bow. The contact point should be somewhere in the middle of the second phalanx and we end up like this:
Now we put the third finger besides the second one, somewhere in the middle of the frog, also depending on the finger length. My third finger is average as well, so that’s just an example.
We put the fourth finger on the bow. Two things are very important: We contact the bow with the fingertip and the fourth finger must be bent. I’ll explain why in some later post when we look at the bow hold during up- and downbow.
Now we drop our first finger onto the bow. The contact point should be somewhere in the middle of the second phalanx and we end up like this:
Check your first finger – you shouldn’t change the position when you have the correct contact point. If you press the bow with the fingertip the bow hold becomes unstable, if you press with the third phalanx it’s too difficult to adjust the optimum bow pressure.
Here you see another photo of the bow hold:
Here you see another photo of the bow hold:
The thumb is still bent and it forms a ring together with the second finger.
The inevitable question is: How far do we have to push our first finger to the tip of the bow?
Basically that depends on how the hand feels. The hand has to be flexible and easy, but you still must be able to produce enough bow pressure.
Here you see two photos to show how it shouldn’t look like:
The inevitable question is: How far do we have to push our first finger to the tip of the bow?
Basically that depends on how the hand feels. The hand has to be flexible and easy, but you still must be able to produce enough bow pressure.
Here you see two photos to show how it shouldn’t look like:
The first finger is pushed much too far to the tip of the bow, thus creating a very tense hand.
Some more sophisticated bowing techniques like spiccato or ricochet would be almost impossible to perform like this.
Some more sophisticated bowing techniques like spiccato or ricochet would be almost impossible to perform like this.
That’s the other way round. The bow hold is unstable because the leading first finger is standing right besides the second finger. It will be very difficult to perform straight bow strokes.
In the next part we’ll have a look at how the bow hold changes when we make up- and down bows.
Technorati Tags: Bow Hold, Bowing
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