How do your fingers and bow arm actually move?

body mapping for success

Last week, I mentioned a couple of examples in fiddling that fit in with my article about New Year’s Resolutions that remove obstacles to success, as opposed the ones that we force ourselves to obey. Below we’ll talk about two examples of removing those obstacles, and they have to do with “body mapping.” The most important thing you could do for your playing is to make sure that your mental picture of what’s going on with your fingers and arm actually matches reality. You can find a brief video devoted to this topic in Technique Video Group 1 (video #9) on my site fiddle-online.com. This video supports what we’ll cover today — two body mapping ideas for fiddlers, one for natural left hand fingering and one for an efficient (i.e. easier and more effective) way to move your bow arm.

1. Fingering

Many learners imagine that their left hand is parallel to the strings of the violin, when in fact the hand is at an angle. If it was parallel, it would be impossible to stretch the fingers sideways to play higher and lower notes. But at an angle, all we have to do to get a higher note is to straighten the finger a little along the string, or bend it to play a lower note. (A great game to help your arm and fingers teach themselves a good position is something I call the Drumming exercise — if you don’t know this one, we’ll get to it down the road!)

2. How the bow arm actually moves

Contrary to a fairly popular belief, the downbow is a push, not a pull. These are both natural movements, but pushing a downbow is the motion that actually gives you more control and better sound. It’s very much like drawing a line. Imagine placing your chin on a table with a large piece of paper (or literally try it!), and draw a straight line toward your right. You naturally push the pencil away from you, leading with your hand. It's the same motion you might use if you were whittling wood with a knife, the safe way — away from you.

When you push the pencil or the knife -- or the bow -- away from you, your arm opens at the elbow. The elbow itself moves forward, eventually straightening into a line along your arm. When you reverse the movement and bring your arm back up to where it was so you can draw another line or carve another strip of wood, you lead with your wrist, and pull the rest of your arm along. As you pull, your elbow bends and moves toward the back or side. Meanwhile you are naturally moving the pencil, the knife, the bow, in a straight line. This is the most natural motion for bowing.

The opposite motion is also natural but not helpful to playing the fiddle. It involves trying to pull the bow downbow, and feels normal only if we think of grabbing the bow as we might grab a stick (which in a way, it is!). In this motion, we lock our elbow and pull the elbow backward, engaging the chest muscles for strength, as we would do in a tug of war, or if we were sawing a piece of wood. Bowing this way is not uncommon for beginners but it makes us sound like we are sawing, with a rough sound, because we are moving as if we're sawing wood! Because the elbow is stiffer, the bow can't move in a straight line (imagine drawing that line on paper with a stiff elbow), and we can only use a small portion of the bow without running into the bridge or fingerboard. We can make do with this kind of bowing if we only play short bows, as in jigs or reels, but sounds terrible for any longer use of bows, as in waltzes or other slow tunes. When the bow is not straight, it migrates toward or away from the bridge as we play, and changes the whole recipe of speed and pressure that gives a consistent sound. And if the bow is crooked when changing direction, it won't sound smooth because the bow is forced to partially slide sideways as it starts moving the other way.

So the natural and most productive motion of the downbow is to think of it as a push, moving away from you, and led by the wrist. The natural way of playing an upbow is to think of it as a pull, led again by the wrist, which bends toward your nose and draws the upper arm behind it only as needed, saving a lot of muscular energy (the pecs are never needed for playing fiddle!).

Try practicing the downbow pushing movement by placing something (a music stand, a wall or door, or an expensive vase!) just behind your elbow as you play a downbow. If you’re using the pushing movement, your elbow will move away from the object and you won’t even touch it. If you are pulling the bow down, your elbow will knock into the object, and if it’s an expensive vase, you probably will make sure you don’t!

The more you think "push downbow" and "pull upbow" and "lead with the wrist", the more you’ll discover that you can draw a smoother bow, with a better sound, and have more control. It allows you to control the bow using just your forefinger instead of your whole arm. You play better and get less tired.

I must say I feel sorry for French fiddlers and violinists. The French word for playing a downbow is “tirer” or “pull”, and the word for playing an upbow is “pousser” or “push”. This is exactly the opposite of the most useful way to map out what the body actually needs to do when using the bow!

By reframing how you think of the movement of your fingers to play in tune, and your bow arm as the wrist pushes the downbow and pulls the upbow, you’ll remove some very common obstacles to improving your intonation, sound and bow control. Your New Year’s resolution to play better will be a breeze!