Violin Lessons - How to Use the Violin Bow

Hello and welcome back to violintutorpro a free lesson series. Today we’re going to learn how to play along with the bow. Once we learn that we’ll be able to actually play twinkle, twinkle little star and also play Mary had a little Lamb.

So, we’re going to start up I'm going to grab my bow here and remember everything that I've told you about the bow grip, thumb, pinky fingers just like that. Mean points for the bow—you want to make sure you play exactly perpendicular to the strings. You don’t want to be this way or this way. A lot of beginners are going to be pretty crooked because they're not used to playing obviously. So the best way to do this is to have what is called mirror practice. It is to watch yourself in the mirror to make sure that your bow is exactly straight across what is called the finger board. But that’s right around the prime location. You don’t want to be too close to the bridge or you don’t want to be down here also. You want to be just right in the middle there right before the finger board where you get the best tone.

So the notes we learned, we learned—okay, notice how I use a lot of bow. A lot of beginners they want to start off using just a little bit of bow. And even though it sounds like it be a bigger you know to play more carefully with less bow it’s going to sound really screechy. So lots o bow, from the front all the way to the tip. So among these next two songs you want to use much bow as you possibly can.

Next thing is making sure before you start you always set yourself. You don’t want to just put into it. Make sure your bow is set and totally still and then you can pull. Also, another thing is you want to make sure that your elbow stays pretty still. A lot of beginners they want to start off doing this using their arm to play. So try to keep that elbow in the same, pretty much the same spot until you go up to here then you should move in a little bit, but it should still stay pretty still.

And when you go to the A string from the E string you should pivot from this to here, next to the edge. So the bow is going to be the hardest thing to learn at first. It’s the breath of the violinist and it takes a while to develop. And don’t be frustrated if you're going to get some of that squeakiness at first. You’ve got to kind of develop that feel and you don’t want to press down too hard, you want to just let the strings guide the bow really—that’s why I want to have a comfortable bow trip.

So those are the main points that I would suggest when you are first starting out and doing those fundamentals they're going to help you learn very fast and not doing those things are going to make it so—there’ll be a lot of problems down the road. So make sure you do those. And really pay attention to them when you're trying to learn.

So the next video is where you’re going to learn how to play twinkle, twinkle little star and then we’ll learn how to play Mary had a Little Lamb. I hope you enjoyed this video and we’ll see you in the next.


Transcription by: Scribe4you Transcription Services