What is a Balanced Bow Hold for Violinists and Why Is It Important
Struggling with your bow hold? Do you feel that it slips or that you have to change it for different techniques that you are implementing on your violin journey? In this post, discover what is a balanced bow hold and why is it so important.
Plus the bow hold that I teach and that I personally use is the bow hold that works for all technique. This is the foundational bow hold for everything in your violin journey, as long as you understand the balance of the bow hold you are set for life.
What is a balanced bow hold?
A balanced bow hold is when we are completely centered on the two middle fingers, so your middle finger and your ring finger. Your thumb sits nicely what I call half stick half frog and it’s really the fulcrum point of your bow hold.
What I mean by that, is that the bow will have the ability to work around your thumb. Your thumb is like the fulcrum of a teeter-totter and he should be completely relaxed at all times, never gripping.
As violinists, we need to be able to use our bow at the frog and at the tip in a pretty quick fashion. We go through these places in the bow just in one bow stroke and if our bow hold is not flexible, it’s really going to be hard to pull out a gorgeous tone, for one and for two, be able to play the violin relaxed and going from one technique, bowing technique to another if we’re not relaxed and flexible in our bow hold.
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Our fingers are our shock absorbers
The bow hold fingers should be relaxed and curved. The pinky should be curved especially at the frog. When we go to the tip, the pinky will straighten out but when we go to the frog it’ll be really nice and curved.
As we pull a down bow our arm goes out, the pinky straightens out and as our arm comes in, the pinky comes in. The balance of the bow hold changes as we use the bow. While at the frog, we’re going to feel the weight of the stick on the pinky. At the tip, we’re gonna feel the weight of the stick on the index finger, here okay. We have to be adjustable and our shock absorbers have to be flexible and not locked in, okay. So we don’t want our weight to always be on the index finger, no matter if we’re at the frog, or at the tip. That’s going to cause pain in your shoulder, tension and your tone is not going to sound that great. We also don’t want the weight to always be on the pinky.
I’ve actually never had a violinist come to me that had all the weight on the pinky. This is the place that we’ve always had to work out, is to feel comfortable at the frog.
Bow hold in action
In order to play triple stops at the frog, the pinky has to be nice and curved. The thumb is the fulcrum and the elbow level is positioned on the A and the E string because eventually, the bow will be on the A and the E string.
On the up bow the weight is on the index finger. The pinky is just hanging out and then when we return to the frog the pinky is now more curved.
Starting at the frog, the pinky is completely curved with a relaxed elbow and a relaxed shoulder. Now as we go to the tip, the index finger is now more active and the bow hold is more pronated into the index finger and into the stick. As we return to the frog, we feel the balance shift of wieght to the pinky start to happen in the middle of the bow. When we get to the frog, our pinky is nice and curved.
One size fits all bow hold
A balanced bow hold is foundational for everything that you do on the violin no matter if it’s up bow staccato or if it’s a triple stops at the frog. This is the same bow hold.
What changes is just where it is weighted and the roles of the fingers in each different technique but the bow hold does not change, ever.
So you may ask, “Well okay, Heather that’s great, but how do I practice it how do I implement that into my violin journey?”
How to Practice
I would suggest working at least five minutes a day with what you’ve learned from this post and just doing whole bow scales. Pick whatever scale you want. best option is to pick the easiest scale for you so you don’t have to think about your left hand and your right at the same time and you could even do repeated whole bows on single notes.
So you could do a G major scale with two whole bows per note and just really watch that when you’re at the frog you have a nice curved pinky and when you’re at the tip your bow hold is pronated into the stick with your index finger feeling the weight.
Have fun developing your balanced bow hold and feel relieved knowing that this is your bow hold for everything in your violin journey.
Need more help on how to set up your bow hold? I have another great post for you, “How to Hold a Violin Bow Step by Step.”
This is for newbies-professionals who are wanting to develop a more relaxed balanced bow hold for all techniques and tone on the violin.
See you there. Ciao.
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