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with Richard Amoroso

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Violin Lessons: Basic Bowing - How to Start the Sound

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[MUSIC].

So this instructional video is about how
to initiate the sound on the violin.

What you need to know basically,
oftentimes when I teach,

I try to let the student get the idea,

first of all that we talked about before
of having the bow balanced in your hand.

But once we have it balanced in our
hand we need to feel the balance from

the tip to the bottom of the frog
to the bottom of my elbow.

And this creates sort of a flat plane.

So if I was going to rest my arm down,

it would be sitting on a table let's say
in an L shape from here to here to here.

And I would just rest it and
I would feel very sort of relaxed and

it would just sort of
balance there on a table.

However, when we play on the violin
the table is actually on a slant.

The plane of the bow actually
works on this diagonal.

So what I will tell my students or
what I will tell you that is,

is I want you to feel that we're going
to lower the bow down to the table.

Similar, I use the analogy of how a boat
would be lowered down into the water.

So we don't want the boat to splash.

We don't want the boat to be capsized or
do anything that would damage the boat.

So we wanna gently lower
it down into the water.

Similarly, we're gonna lower
the L-shaped boat that is,

from the tip to the bottom of
the frog to our bottom of our elbow.

And we're gonna now put
that on a diagonal.

And we're just gonna lower
it down to the string.

And from there we can feel that the hair
here is kind of like the bottom of

the boat and that there's some give there.

Cuz there's the tension of the bow
is basically there to sort

of feel how the levels of weight
that we're gonna lower down, and

how deep into the water we want to go,
so to speak.

So from here I'm just gonna lower all
three parts of the L shaped bow down

to the string.

And from there I'm gonna
just then move the bow.

[SOUND] On a proper point of contact.

[SOUND] And always maintaining
that angle with my elbow,

bottom of the frog and
the tip, constantly.

We don't want this to sink [SOUND]
cuz that will definitely interfere

with the weight and
the other variables that we talked about.

So again, we drop the bow,
lower it down slowly to the string.

You can lower it on A string and D string.

I like to use both stings because
is a lot more sort of balanced and

feeling of playing when we use two
strings, as opposed to just one string.

We can easily lower it down to
the two strings with our elbow,

the bottom of the frog, and
the tip, and then move.

[SOUND] Maintaining those
angles no matter if we're on

the lower strings, [SOUND] or
the higher strings.

[SOUND] That's just the simple idea

of how to kind of get
the bow to the string.

Once we get into playing music there's
gonna be a lot more sort of to learn

as far as,
each piece has a different feel and

has a different sort of approach into
what kind of stroke we want to make.

But this is just a basic idea of what it
feels like to get the bow grounded and

moving.

[SOUND] If you have any questions,
let me know and send me a video.

But I like to see this action
maintained constantly.

You can do it above,
without even having the violin.

Just in front of a mirror.

Jut to get an idea of that motion without
even trying to put it on the violin.

We can see how constant the angle stays.

After that, like I say,
you can put it on the violin.

[SOUND] And demonstrate the same motion.

[MUSIC]

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