Category: Bow Control

Strugglin' with the bow

5/9/2017

I received an email the other day that I wanted to share:

Hi Nan,

Just wanted to say a big thank you for your website, and excellent articles. I am adult beginner on the cello, although have played the flute for 20 years. My grandad left me some money when he died and as I have always wanted to play the cello I thought I would get one.

It's such a wonderful instrument although for four or so months I feel very much like a fish out of water. My bowing technique is what I need to work on most at the moment (not the only thing, of course!). So I wanted to say thank you for your excellent blog posts on bowing. My teacher is good but sometimes I feel like the 'why' and 'how' bits are left out. So for example, I asked about how to bow (eg. what is the arm movement and where does it come from) and he just told me to relax my arm - of course, you need a relaxed arm, but I needed some more help. I am also trying to finally get a natural thumb position with my bow holding hand. Your zombie post makes absolute sense, but my hand still doesn't feel comfortable -hoping it can be achieved with small hands. I will keep on trying and am going to see if my teacher can help me fit one of the cello grips (like the cellophant).

I'm in my 20s and I am having great fun with my 74 year old friend who has just taken up the violin. Our duets are quite a laugh, although maybe not so for the poor neighbors! Thank you once again.

Many of us can relate to the bow issue this cellist described. The concept of a relaxed bow hand/arm is one thing, but putting it into practice...

...and making it feel easy...

...while making a decent sound...

...is a whole other struggle altogether!

Here are a few exercises to help normalize the feel of the bow and the motion of the right arm so you can eventually forget about it.

Mostly.

Ricochet and Tapping

These exercises, developed by my cello guru, Martha Gerschefski, are so sneakily helpful. They provide tons of time for you to focus on holding the bow without the pressure of making a good sound. This is a big deal, since our need to make a good sound can sometimes take precedence over an ideal bow interface--and we end up learning a hand/arm action that isn't ergonomic at all.

RICOCHET BOW

Holding the bow normally, place it on a middle string about 3/4 the way to the tip (in the upper part of the bow)
Grab the bow stick about 1/4 of the bow length from the tip with your LEFT hand (both hands are on the bow now)
Use the left hand as a stabilizer while you set your bow hand.
Let go with your left hand and twist your forearm outward (keeping wrist rigid) to lift the tip of the bow off the string
Let the bow fall back down and bounce on the string like a ball until it stops on its own (repeat, since it will not work well at first)
"Fix" your bow hand (as in Steps 1-3) as often as possible, since the bow will feel like sliding out of the hand

Keep in mind this will not sound good at all!

An excerpt from Martha's The Start

TAPPING BOW

This will be the same as RICOCHET, except you will control the bow with your bow hand in between bounces to make specific rhythm patterns with the hits (do not try to make this sound good!)

Both of these exercises, and combinations of the two, are going to give you lots of training time with an ergonomic bow hand, so it should soon become more comfortable.

Want more exercises like these?

Order Martha's Strong and Flexible Bow for the Cello!

Table Glides

We don't naturally do straight lines!

As far as the "how to bow" issue is concerned, the main problem I see the most often is crooked bowing. To clarify: If left unchecked, the bow will naturally make a motion in the arc of a smile across the strings. Blame it on our physiology! (For some reason, evolution hasn't provided more cello-playing adaptations. )

To complicate matters, students will move their arms in complex and stressful ways in order to fix the crooked bowing.

I have found that the best way to counteract all of this is with an exercise I call "table glides." Again, it focuses on training the relaxed motion of the arm without any sound-production distraction.

This is adapted from Martha's exercise, Piano Glides.

TABLE GLIDES

Sit or stand at the straight edge of a table or counter so it is at about waist height
Place your fingers on the top edge of the table right in front of your navel. Be sure they are lined up on the edge and that you are touching the table with the tips of your fingers. Your wrist should curve inward to keep your fingers on the edge in this position (see photo 1)
Curve your fingers enough so your curved and relaxed thumb can lightly run along the outside edge of the table top (see photo 2)
Pull your arm outward from your body with your elbow and then follow the edge of the table with your fingers. Keep them all lined up on the edge and stop when you can't move outward any further (this is the feeling you should have at the tip of the bow).
Then swing your arm back inward, keeping fingers along the edge again.
REPEAT many times a day until your body gets trained to make this feeling occur even when you are holding the bow

Photo 1: Wrist in when hand is in front of you

Photo 2: Thumb along outside edge

This shows you all the bends and angles that are needed to draw the bow in a straight line (something we don't naturally do!).

Repeating these exercises can train your body well without your having to get too cerebral about it.

When these exercises start feeling easy, you can move on to putting the bow to the string--just keep in mind that you will have to keep checking on the motion in order to keep training it effectively.

Do not get distracted by the sound! That will get better eventually...

I hope these exercises help you in your quest for a more ergonomic and relaxed bow interface!

Please leave any feedback or tips for your fellow cellists in the comments section below.

Happy Tapping!

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No pain, bow gain

2/1/2015

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My puns are getting worse and worse. Sorry, guys.

My purpose here, besides delivering to you that awful word play, is to compile a few articles and videos that I have found useful in my quest to explain more clearly how to make a massive sound on the cello without pressing or squeezing.

Stick tilt

In lessons, I am always talking about being efficient with our bow arm energy by using gravity to our advantage. This all starts with the stick tilt, in my experience. Here's an excerpt from Harry Wimmer's book, The Joy of 'Cello Playing, Master Lesson 5 that explains it so well:

I have heard many people say that tilting the stick prevents a cellist from using all the hair of the bow. I have never found that to be true! I can tilt the stick, use all the hair, and enjoy producing a massive tone without much effort.

Test it out and see if it works for you!

Energy flow

The Strad's story, How to produce a strong, uninhibited sound without pressure, by cellist Joel Krosnick, is extremely insightful, although I heartily disagree with the method of leaning into the first finger when in the upper part of the bow. It's a natural thing to do, but it seems to squeeze the sound and I feel it causes an uneven tone production.

He says, "From the upper two thirds out to the tip, I will probably lean on my first finger a bit more than the middle one." I much prefer the feeling of heaviness in ALL the fingers.

TRY THIS: To fight the feeling of leaning inward to create a bigger sound, think of your pinky as the finger that is taking on the job of tone production at the tip. It will take getting used to, but will help your sound production greatly.

Please DO read this article, as Krosnick's thoughts on energy flow are extremely useful!

Open sound

Martha sent me an article by Bonnie Hampton, How to Avoid Tension in the Bow Arm.

In the article, Bonnie discusses how she produces a big, round sound by refraining from hunching over the cello and being mindful of the tension that tends to creep into cellists' shoulders.

She talks about how she simply guides the bow, letting all her arm weight fall into the string, while her flexible fingers "cling to the frog like suckers."

Here's a little video I took at a masterclass that Melissa Kraut did for Franklin Pond just two weeks ago. Deja vu! She also touched on the idea of bow weight being held up by the string and reinforced the concept of flexible "octopus fingers."

Need more help?

Check out this blog post video at Cellobello.com that is also very useful in helping us grasp the idea of this type of sound production: http://cellobello.com/lessons/12

Have fun experimenting with how YOU can make a big, easy sound! Let me know how it goes in the comments below.

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Dress up your frog!

12/2/2014

2 Comments

Goodbye, BOW-vember...

Hello, BOW-cember!

Okay, so it doesn't quite work. But we can't just stop thinking about the bow now that the month is gone. Plus, I have lots more to say about bow stuff, so I refuse to let it end now. Let's keep this bow party going!

To continue the last blog post about an ergonomic bow hand, I wanted to share a quote from Alice McVeigh's article in The Strad in which she talks about cellists (especially adult students) wanting to grab the bow tightly so they don't drop it:

"I may feel like an idiot standing over some guy twice my size requesting that he kindly let his bow drop onto the carpet three or four times, but you can spot by the sheer anguish in his face how much the worry of dropping it is destroying any chance of his ever getting the flexibility and constantly changing fluidity required for a really good bow change. By allowing the bow to drop (it’s only a foot and a half on to a carpet and you’re not doing it tip downwards, for God’s sake) you are in fact removing a fear so primal that most people couldn’t begin to articulate it."

Besides dropping your bow on the floor to experience the worst-case scenario--and realize that it isn't really all that bad--there are other ways to alleviate the bow-dropping paranoia.

Such as...

Dressing up your frog

Different strokes for different folks, of course. Some of my students can't stand the bow cushion that I use, so I stock up on a variety of different ones for them to try out.

Dress up your frog?

I can't stand to play with a naked frog.

(Heh. My inner kindergarner is having a good time with that one.)

Because the varnished stick is rather skinny and can become slippery with perspiration at the drop of a hat, I always have some kind of padding at the junction of hand and bow.

I feel strongly that by adding this comfortable extra layer, I avoid feeling as though I have to clutch the bow to keep it in its place.

This is what I am using right now. I love the non-slip feel of these Foohy brand pencil grips, and though they are meant for pencils and not bows, their stretchy material is easy to pull over the stick and frog.

Here's how:

STEP 1: Detach your frog.
Loosen the screw until it comes out of the bow. Then, gently pull the frog away from the stick. Do not tangle the hair (twisting is fine, but the stick should not pass through the hair).

STEP 2: Keeping the tip of the bow against a soft carpet or pillow (and being mindful of the hair), pull on and then roll up the grip to a location on the stick above where the frog will be attached.

STEP 3: Reattach the frog and tighten the screw to secure. Then roll the grip back down to cover both the stick and the part of the frog where the thumb comes in contact with the bow.

OPTIONAL: If you think you would like a nice ledge for your thumb to rest upon, use a holepunch to create a nice hole about one-third of the way up the grip before you slide it on. Be sure you slide it on with that hole facing you so your thumb can rest there.

Before I found these pencil grips, I would cut a wide rubber band and wrap it around the same place on the bow, securing the end by tucking it in. It worked pretty well, but once in a while it would come undone during a performance. That was enough reason for me to experiment with other products.