Does anyone have any favorite exercises (for beginners) that have helped them improve their bowing technique? I got a violin a few months ago. At first I was so bad that the comments from my children had me afraid to practice. Someone suggested that I practice bowing from the frog to the tip. That has helped me straighten the bow out some, and it doesn't sound quite as torturous now. Exercises for string skipping would be particularly useful, but I would be interested in anything that will help improve my bowing.
Figuring out the proper pressure to use goes a long way towards improving tone. Try to use so much pressure that you get a brash, hard "scratchy" sound. Then back off gradually until you begin to get a nice, smooth tone. Not enough bow pressure is as bad as too much! You can combine this with your "frog to tip" exercise. As to angle, I think your frog-to-tip exercise sounds useful. Keep looking at where the hair contacts the string and concentrate on keeping the bow at 90 degrees to the strings. Also for a beginner, sometimes it's hard to play one string at at time. I'm thinking about trying a "bow right" to help teach my bowing arm the correct form.
Thanks Walt. I am curious what people think about "bow right". I have definitely had some progress on keeping the bow in the correct position on the strings. Of course, there is still plenty of room for improvement. Right now one of my main difficulties seems to be playing a single string cleanly when the melody switches quickly between different strings.
Do you have a teacher? He/she should be able to help you. Many years ago, when I taught fiddle, I worked out some bowing exercises thru fiddle tunes. For instance, the last phrase of Arkansas Traveler is great for working on shuffle bowing. Best, of course, to play these slow to you can get the bow direction right. I would, if possible, try to find a teacher to at least take a few lessons. Violin/fiddle is not a good instrument to learn entirely by yourself.
Hey, Laura, here's a video that might be useful. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Kd0D...ature=youtu.be
My go to warm up exercise start off at the bottom 1/3 of the bow with a simple down- up then long up bow to the other end then short down-up then long down to the start. I do this on open strings starting on the D then A then E then reverse to G. Nice and simple but it reinforces the feel of where everything is and has a good feel to it so I relax into the instrument quickly. I then will alternate drop one of the short down up bows at either end. Or reverse the pattern or begin playing scales and arpeggios under the bowing routine. If I make more than one change at a time I will very quickly make mistakes.
