Improve Your Bowing in Just 15 Minutes a Day
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Not happy with your bowing skill sets? Are you ready to improve your bowing technique in just 15 minutes a day?
In this post, discover how to improve your bowing in just 15 minutes a day. I’m going to give you a 15 minute bowing practice routine that you can do on a daily basis to improve not only your bowing technique but your overall tone.
These exercises that I’m going to give you are very effective; however, if you do not have a good foundation set up for your bow hold or for your bow arm, they’re not going to be as effective.
What I would recommend is to check out my post, “How to Have a Balanced Bow Hold” to make sure that this is in proper operation before doing these exercises. Another post, I would recommend is “Bow Wrist Movement.”
Those posts will be very helpful before you attempt this 15-minute bowing technique routine listed below.
Plan to devote at least 3 minutes to each exercise listed below for a 15-minute bow routine. If you would like to increase to a 30-minute routine, increase each exercise to 6 minutes.
1. Straight Whole Bows on Each String
Before you yawn and think oh that’s so easy, Aaron Rosand suggested to practice five to ten minutes open strings every day.
1 minute whole bows on each open string starting at the frog and pulling all the way to the tip and pushing back to the frog without feeling any discomfort or tension in your bow arm.
Listen for:
- Smooth bow changes without a crack in sound
- Constant tone that does not decrescendo or crescendo
Variations:
- Down bow crescendo, up bow decrescendo
- Up bow crescendo, down bow decrescendo
2. Same As Above Without the Index Finger
So the second exercise is to do the exact same thing but we’re going to release our index finger. The reason we want to release the index finger is to make sure that he’s not being overzealous or pushing into the bow or being over-controlling.
We’re still going to listen for smooth bow changes and watch for a nice beautiful long straight whole bow.
Without using the index finger, you will discover the role of the middle finger.
3. Finger Motion at the Frog
The easiest place to start this exercise is at the middle of the bow
- Move the bow with fingers only. Check yourself in the mirror or in a video camera.
The tone may not be to your liking at first but that’s okay. What we want to do is just get those fingers going.
I’ve had violinists that I’ve worked on with this technique say they felt like they had cement in their fingers. this exercise will help you not to feel like you have cement in your fingers.
Your pinky is a good indicator if you are doing this finger motion correctly. Start with a nice curved pinky which evolves to a straight pinky on the down bow and back to a curved pinky on the up bow.
2. When you feel comfortable in the middle of the bow with fingers only, it is time to move on down to the extreme frog.
While at the frog, check your right shoulder that it’s relaxed and it stays relaxed while also feeling that your elbow is sinking. Feel your bow arm being held up mainly by the instrument.
Keep in mind while at the frog, the bow will be tilted just slightly away from you. For the most part, whenever we’re at the frog we have tilted hair.
3. Play three bow strokes (down up down) with finger motion only listening for a beautiful sound that is not cracking and smooth bow changes.
4. After you’ve accomplished that, then you could challenge yourself by playing three up bow circles at the extreme frog with no crash landings.
4. Same As Above Without the Index Finger
Exercise four, we’re taking exercise three and we’re going to remove the index finger.
Yes, that is true. Repeat all of exercise three without the index finger.
- Start in the middle of the bow, take the index finger off and move the bow with fingers only.
- Take it to the frog, index finger off and fingers only.
- Up bow circles without the index finger.
The reason we take the index finger off, allows you to explore bow hold balance and how the other fingers are activated within the bow hold, how they work, and what their roles are without the index finger.
This is an excellent exercise for all of those violinists that play with a heavy over dominant index finger. We need to get him out of the way so you can develop your bow hold properly.
5. Travelling Frog to Tip & Fingers Only At Tip
This exercise will make it very clear what your bow arm needs to do as you travel from bow to tip. This exercise allows you to learn how to get to the tip comfortably.
If you are having a difficult time getting to the extreme tip, investigate your violin hold. Make sure that you are truly holding the violin underneath your jaw and shoulder and high up on your shoulder like this. If the violin is violin hold isn’t proper, it may be negatively influencing your ability to get to the tip of the bow.
Investigate that your right shoulder is truly relaxed. If the right shoulder is tight, it’s going to be hard to get to the tip. Investigate your right wrist operating and your fingers because that actually also helps with how you play the tip. Discover more how the wrist operates at the tip in my “Bow Wrist Movement” post.
Once you are the tip comfortably, practice bow changes at the extreme tip, fingers only.
Now you know how to improve your boing in just 15 minutes a day with this daily bowing exercise routine.
Please let me know in the comments below that you have completed your first round of a 15-minute bowling routine.
If you enjoyed this post and you would really desire to have more training from me in a step-by-step program to improve your violin tone, definitely check out my 12 week signature program, Gorgeous Tone Academy where you’ll find exercises, tutorials on a daily basis to get you where you want to be.
It’s a completely self-guided online program that you could start at any time. I’d be happy to see you there.
This is so timely. I’ve wracked my brains trying to get my students to the extreme frog and tip. I shall henceforth check for tension in their shoulder and I agree the curved pinky is key. Have you heard of things4strings.com. They have a silicone gadget to help children develop the curved pinky and that the index finger is wrapped around correctly. Check it out.
Hi Vasi, Yes I have heard of things4strings. I personally don’t use any add ons for my younger students but I did have a 5 year old student whose mother tried the little doodad for her son. It was somewhat helpful but it does encourage some other bad habits as well. They no longer use it…