Bow Distribution – Practice Subdividing

Hi there, I’m Dr. David Wallace, with myTalentForge.com’s Quick Tip of the week!

This week’s Quick Tip is to divide your bow into fractions. This is going to help you with bow control, tone production, and phrasing.

Here’s my whole bow… visually, I can see the midpoints about right [there].

So I’ve got the lower half, and the upper half. I can continue- I can divide it into thirds. So we’ve got the upper third, the middle third, and the lower third.

If I want to divide my halves into halves- I’ve got quarters- 1, 2, 3, 4… and I can keep going doing fractions of fractions and so on. So that I can actually start to visualize 16ths or 32nds of my bow.

Now, where this comes in handy is it’s a good way to develop control, as most of you know, even speed, even pressure, and a consistent sounding point is what makes for good controllable, malleable, expressive tone.

And so, one of the best ways I know to develop that, is I set a metronome at 60, so that each click is one second.

Then I will do a 2 second bow where I have half and half.

Then I’ll do an up bow, then I’ll do 3…1, 2, 3, and up. Then I’ll do 4.

I’ll keep dividing my bow until eventually I’m doing very soft, 32 second bows, with an even tone in pianissimo. And I’m able to do different dynamics with this.

So, if you want to practice this, go myTalentForge.com, and check out our Zen Bowing Exercise Series and I will practice dividing the bow into these fractions wit you!

And that is your myTalentForge.com quick tip of the week!