How to Add Sparkle & Bite to Your Spiccato Bow Stroke

Improve your bowing technique while adding a dash of virtuosity By Laurel Thomsenposted May 2012
The genius of Francois Xavier Tourtes modern bow design really comes to light with this category of strokes in which the bow leaves the string between notes. These bouncing strokesspiccato, sautill, and ricochetgive sparkle and bite to music across a variety of tempos and add a bit of virtuosity to the look and feel of any performance. Because these bow strokes require clear, yet sensitive, communication between the right hand and the bow, they are considered advanced strokes. Once theyre mastered, though, they can feel like some of the easiest strokes because its really the bow, and not the arm, that does most of the work.

Spiccato is a good place to start. Like the basic on-string staccato, spiccato is notated with dots above or below the noteheads. Occasionally, especially with student repertoire, music editors and composers take the guesswork out of these passages by using such printed terms or phrases as bouncing or bounce the bow. After you learn the sound of this stroke, spend time listening to recordings and trying to identify it. Youll quickly grasp the criteria that may make it a better choice over another.

How to Master Spiccato in 8 Easy Steps

Spiccato is a partially controlled bouncing stroke suitable for slow to moderate passages. Derived from the Italian verb spiccare, meaning to separate, the bow bounces on and off the string for each stroke from a height ranging from an inch or so to nearly on the string, depending on the desired sound. The bow naturally rebounds, so once you establish momentum youll find that it takes very little to sustain a nice spiccato. Well explore spiccato in two ways: from chaos to order, and from our most percussive possibility to our most singing.

Basically your spiccato will look just like your detach. Youll use your forearm the same way you do when youre on the string, says Kathryn Plummer, professor of viola at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee.

To remove any fear of spiccato right at the beginning, she recommends the following exercise:

1) Make Like a PendulumHow to Add Sparkle & Bite to Your Spiccato Bow Stroke
Improve your bowing technique while adding a dash of virtuosity
2) Vary Your Swing

Now that youre fearless, lets explore the vertical and horizontal aspects of spiccato to add variety. Start by finding the balance point of your bowabout a third of the way up from the frog. Keep an eye on this spot or place a bit of finger tape on the stick as a reminder. This is generally where youll find the best combination of natural bouncing and bow control: higher up and control will suffer; closer to the frog and youll lose your bounce.

3) Control the Bounce

Hover the balance point region roughly an inch above any open string. Though youll feel your pinky working to counter the weight of the stick, let the rest of your right hand relax. Youll feel a slight weight on the thumb, but dont turn that into gripping. Now, relax the pinky and let the bow drop vertically onto the string with flat hair. Youll notice it bounce a few times before coming to rest. To keep the bounce going, maintain just a bit of weight in the pinky and notice the slight see-saw action between it and the thumb.

4) Variations in Sound

Now, begin to include a slight horizontal component by adding a bit of forearm swing. The sound will be crunchy and crisp at first. Add a little more forearm and youll increase resonance through lengthening the time the bow is on the string. Explore going from the entirely vertical, dropping motion to broad strokes and back again. Notice the quality of your sound at each stage.

5) Now Tilt the Bow

Once you have a solid spiccato, start with flat hair and a moderate tempo, and explore tilting the bow to just its outer hairs and back again. Youll find that flat hair gives a greater rebound and therefore a more percussive sound, while a tilted bow hugs the string more and creates a brushy sound.

6) Learning to Change Speeds

To master spiccato youll need to be able to change speeds, strings, and to go from on-string to off-string without missing a beat, literally! To practice changing speeds, set your metronome at 50. Start with one stroke per beat, hovering in the air between strokes and changing bow direction each time. Do two, three, four, six, and eight strokes per beat, individually at first and then in ascending and descending order.

7) String Changes

When practicing string changes, realize that because the bows starting and ending position is in the air, youll need keep your forearm and wrist slightly higher than with on-string strokes and anticipate this when changing strings.

8) Make It Seamless

Finally, learn to move seamlessly between detach and spiccato. Start with as many strokes as it takes to achieve a good tone for each and make it a goal to eventually be able to go back and forth doing two of each.

Cover your open strings with the left hand to minimize their vibration and start hitting the strings in any order with the middle portion of the bow hair. Use big swinging arm motions from the shoulder, like the pendulum of a clock. Dont worry about your sounding point and certainly not about how youre sounding! Then, based on that really wild freedom and raucous, cacophonous sound, start to swing just a little less wide, Plummer says. Start to gradually minimize your arm motions, honing in on a stroke that is more organized. Eventually, as the stroke gets shorter and faster, the forearm takes over and a clean, clear spiccato begins to take shape.

6 Ways to Improve Your Detach Bow Stroke

How to create smooth and sustained sounds
You need a variety of articulations to tell a story and to hold the listeners interest.

The Problem

You have trouble playing detach with an evenness of tone while maintaining a connection between the notes.

The Solution

Listen to any spoken language and notice how its organization and flow depend on a steady contrast between smooth vowel sounds and sharper consonant sounds. Similarly with music, you need a variety of articulations to tell a story and to hold the listeners interest. For string players, this is primarily the domain of the bowing arm. Does your music need to walk, tiptoe, soar, dance, or leap? Youll need a repertoire of bow strokes to do justice to the music.

For notes that are separate (not included in a slur) and have no special markings, a simple detach (French for detached) is generally the stroke of choice. The goal of detach is evenness of tone and connection between notes. To achieve this, the pressure and bow speed must remain the same throughout. Though its usually played in the middle or upper half, detach can be played anywhere in the bow.

1) Start on the Open Strings

The best way to practice detach initially is to simply play even, continuous quarter or eighth notes within a six- to eight-inch area of the bow. Start with your open strings. Your primary motion will come from different sections of your right arm depending on where you choose to play in the bow. If you are in the middle or upper half, your primary motion will be in the forearm, facilitated by the elbow joint. If you are near the frog, your primary motion will be in your upper arm, facilitated by the shoulder. Every primary motion needs passive motion in the wrist and fingers to maintain a straight stroke, so stay relaxed.

Further Resources
Purchase the complete Bowing Technique Guide.

2) Use Even Pressure and Speed

As you play, focus on creating sustained sounduse even pressure and speed, and continuous motion. There should be no breaks in sound between the down bows and up bows. You will hear the slight click of the changes, but this should not be accentuated.

If you do hear a bulge of sound right before a bow change, you are likely increasing speed. At a frog change, students are often told to use the fingers to make the turnaround smooth. However, when students mistakenly use active rather than passive finger motion, this technique becomes a fast flick that causes the bow to speed up. The result is an undesirable swell of sound. I think of

the frog change as moving minimally, gently, from the up-bow grip to the down-bow grip, says Stephen Clapp, violin professor and dean emeritus at the Juilliard School.

Pivoting on the pinky rather than flicking all four fingers is the way to smooth this out, Kathryn Plummer, professor of viola at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee, says. I want my fingers to be almost inactive in my bow changes. Like the bristles of a paintbrush, youre not trying to move the fingers, theyre simply flexing as you move your arm. Too much motion in the fingers complicates things.

3) Stay Relaxed

Keep your fingers relaxed and flexible and they will naturally bend a little to help provide a smooth turnaround. Sometimes the volume variation is near the tip change. If so, practice slowing down the bow into the change. Very often with a problem, the slogan is to exaggerate the opposite, Clapp says, though he goes on to mention that speed increases at the tip often occur when students lock out the elbow in the last inches of the bow.

Stay fluent and fluid in your body because your tone quality will gradually mirror your level of tension or relaxation. If going all the way to the tip is a stretch for you, simply dont go that far.

4) Listen Carefully

Focus on evenness of tone and volume throughout. This is the only way to tell if the mechanical adjustments youre making in your practice are actually working. Many students dont even notice such sound variations in their strokes and bow changes until someone points them out or they record themselvestheyre too focused on the next notes of the passage to finish listening to what theyre playing. When students have issues of uneven tone and volume, I generally start by recording them for a few minutes during a lesson. Listening back over the session objectively is usually all it takes to help them make the adjustment.

To polish your playing, learn to really listen to the full length of your strokestheir initiation, their body, their ending or change to the next stroke, and how they function within the phrase.

5) Avoid Using Too Much Pressure

Sometimes the beginning of a down-bow detach is crunchy or warbles. Its usually a pressure problem. At other times, the volume decreases as the bow moves toward the tip. This is usually because there is much less bow and arm weight available in this region. If this is happening, first make sure you are releasing natural arm weight into the bow. If that is not enough, gently lean into the bow stick with your index finger to apply additional pressure for the last few inches.

Dont overdo itit doesnt need much.

6) Keep the Motion Continuous

Right as you make the bow change, try a slight vertical lifting of the hand to help maintain continuous motion and give a healthy start to the up bow.

Once you have a solid detach sound on one string, practice moving back and forth between two. D-A-D-A-D-A.

Be conservative with the activities of your right arm, especially if you want to go faster someday. Rather than using the entire arm to make string changes for shorter strokes, focus on a rotary motion in the forearm.

As the length of the detach stroke becomes even shorter and its pace faster, its wise to move the primary motion down the arm into the wrist. Its smaller range of motion provides quick changes without the tension that would be hard to avoid with a forearm moving this fast.

Remember to keep the fingers passive to keep the bow on track.

Taken even faster, detach becomes a tremolo, a very short, sustained stroke played near the tip. Here, active motion may even enter the fingers, for the tiny fast strokes that add intensity to passages.

For such a minimal stroke, some find it easiest to lift the pinky.

6 Ways to Build Agility in Your Bowing Hand

Use these simple exercises as a part of your warm-up routine By Leah Hollingsworthposted November 2009
The fingers of the right hand initiate three kinds of bow motion: vertical, horizontal, and pivotal. Feeling and understanding the differences between these motions will help increase the agility of your playing and give you more control in your bowing.

How to Develop a Warm, Pure Vibrato

4 ways to improve your vibrato and develop a personal tone
Develop Warm Pure Vibrato

The Problem
How to maintain control of a violin or viola while eliciting a pure, warm, and personal vibrato tone.

The Solution
One of my earliest musical memories was the first time I heard vibrato coming from the violin of my elementary school music teacher. I had never heard anything quite that clearly, a testament to the effect that vibrato has on us. I had not started working on vibrato, but that subtle moment of discovery was exactly what I needed at the time. Since you only play as well as you hear something, I had the most beautiful vibrato ringing in my ear.

The most valuable lesson when you start vibrato is to stay focused on the subtle movement of the fingertip going and up and down as it highlights the pitch. The goal is to hear the pitch loud and clear with a hint of warmth generated by the vibrato. If the pitch isnt dominant and obvious, then the vibrato is too slow or the amplitude of the movement is uneven. The basic vibrato exercise of moving the arm up and down from first to third position, while sliding with one finger, should successfully develop an even amplitude around the pitch. If you experience uneven rhythm and distance, try eliminating any counting of beats. The pendulum that is inherent in a vibrato relies on a different rhythm from our usual metronomic counting system.

My first exercise was to hold the violin scroll against the wall to keep the violin from moving up, down, and sideways. Not surprisingly, my violin still jerked around, but I was able to live with it. Tolerance and patience are important factors in learning such a movement that begins its life rather shakily. Self-taught vibrato usually turns out the best. Its like learning how to walk: a teacher can give step-by-step directions, but he cant describe how each students mind gets the vibrato started and keeps the process balanced. Here are five tips on building the foundation for a pure, warm vibrato:

1. Start Strongly
A good beginning vibrato exercise is to learn to identify the moment that vibrato starts. Move the bow confidently with no vibrato and then, after a count of two beats, vibrate quickly and simply. The mind is better at controlling small movements if all the moving parts are synchronized.

2. Analyze Your Movements

Each player has a personal preference as to whether the vibrato should be an arm or hand-wrist vibrato. Sometimes, however, the actions can fight against each other. Keep the movements distinct and pure. While some powerful vibratos have developed while integrating both hand and arm, all thats really necessary is that all the joints, knuckles, and so on remain neutral and flexible.

3. Chart your Course

The geography of vibrato includes the physical direction of the fingerboard; the offset, oblique angle of the hand (think scaffolding); the four different planes of the string; and the direction of the bow (which has a way of influencing everything else). Imagine the complications that arise from all of these competing angles! Now, just respect the differences and keep all motions independent yet interdependent.

4. Overcome the Wobble

The wobbly vibrato is sometimes caused by a lack of firmness as the fingertip oscillates between two close pitches. An exercise for a more firm vibrato motion is to move the bow smoothly, generating a perfectly smooth vibrating string, with the fingertip firmly on the pitch. Then rock the finger to a pitch slightly below the original pitch, and then rock it back to the original. The firmness is achieved by thinking of the ratchet mechanism in a socket wrench. That will make the pitch difference firm enough to overcome the wobble, and the smooth bow will blend it all together. An interesting way of hearing this exercise is on page 54 of the The Backyard BirdsongGuide:Western North America (Chronicle Books, 2008) by Donald Kroodsma. The call of the hairy hummingbird sounds just like this exercise, both slowly and in the finished product. Listening to this recording of the birdsong places the vibrato in the students ear, the most important place for any vibrato to begin.