How to Retake the Violin Bow with Good Tone
Do you suffer with scratchy retakes? Struggle with double down or double up bowings? In this post, discover how to retake the violin bow with good tone. I will show you how to execute double down bows or double ups bows with good tone.
Within double down bows and double-up bows we have to lift our bow, retake or circle the bow. These are all three words meaning the same thing. the circular motion that occurs between the two bow strokes.
Use a visual aid
In general when we have a retake, we know this because of what looks like a comma or breath mark above the music exactly where the retake occurs.
This is how you know that you need to do a lift, a circle or a retake. For the sake of this post, we will call them lifts.
A great way to practice learning how to retake effectively is to take a sticker and put it just below the middle of the bow on the stick.
At first only practice open strings. Start your down bow stroke exactly where you have placed the sticker. Then lift your bow so that you come back to that exact same place where you have the sticker then play another down bow.
This sticker helps you to know where to start the bow.
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How many times have you been dissatisfied with your tone on the violin? You want to sound better but you don’t know where to start. You are serious about transforming your violin tone and know deep down all you are missing is proper training.
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Practice open strings and stay close to the string
While practicing your retakes on open strings, it is important that you stay close to the string and that the bow doesn’t fly away. If the bow flies away and then comes back to the string, it gets a little bit out of control.
Until you have mastered this technique you want to stay very, very close to the string and use small bows. Eventually, you will play a chord and you have to do a bit bigger motion but now when you first learn the retake technique, we are going to keep it as small as possible.
Set and Pull
The most important secret to avoid crash landings with the bow is to set the bow on the string first before pulling the bow. You’ll always set the bow and then go.
Practice in slow-motion. Set and then go. If you don’t set the bow and you pull without setting that’s when we get what I call the crash landing.
The same technique applies when you play up bow circles. Start at the same spot you have paced the sticker and bow an up bow.
Return to the same sticker and go up again.
The secret to very, very clean lifts is to set the bow on the string and then go. No matter if your retake is down or up, you always set and then go.
Let me know in the comments below how you get along with your retake technique!
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