Hello, my name is Justin Canter I am a Cellist in New York City and I am here to talk about the Bowgrip. Now, the bowgrip is something that is very individual so you will find lots of Cellists holding their bow in lots of different ways but I am going to talk about the way that I like to do it and just so people can see what is going on.
The first thing when I am teaching the Bowgrip is I get my student to hold their hand out like so, like I am about to give him a high-five or something and place the bow right underneath this middle joint of the middle finger actually.
So the stick of the bow lies right before this joint right there and you can see my hands are spaced to it, the fingers are spaced in a relax distance apart form each other and I make sure that my student has their pinkie aligned basically with the middle of the frog. In this case is that the dot there which we call the Parisian eye then the thumb comes in.
Now, if you can imagine this dot being right up here that is where the thumb goes. Everyone sort of when they first pick up the bow like thumb should go right in here because this looks like a perfect little space for it. Actually, I put my thumb right against the side this way, like so and then it is also important not to have the thumb down this way so it is actually the inside part of my thumb touching. Otherwise, you can see how it twists the palm of my hand, this gives me a more relaxed palm and then I just have my student turn the bow around and if all looks well there should be a comfortable space in the fingers not together, not this and we have a good bowgrip.
What other detail that I do which is maybe a little different to some teachers is I have if you notice the thumb ends up being behind my third finger so when I am holding it in the air not playing the Cello, it actually makes the tip be a little heavier. If I go like this it is a little easier to support the weight of the tip but when we are playing the Cello, the tip is apart where we need to use the most weight or maybe not use the most weight but it is harder to get the weight because of the leverage problems we have into the string. So it is nice if we have the bow must automatically into the string at the tip.
Now, with my Bowgrip had the ability to change string.
(Demo)
And I have the ability to move the Cello side to side.
Transcription by:
Scribe4you Transcription Services