Jig Bowing

A foundation for bringing jigs to life

How you bow tunes is how you bring them to life. The bow is your voice, your timing, your musicality, the lilt, the power of your playing. The notes and note patterns are interesting but only if we can hear them with decent sound and in good timing — timing that makes sense, physical sense, that we can dance or tap toes to.

Today we’ll talk about bowing jigs. The timing we need from jigs is to hear two strong beats in each bar of music. (If you’re not sure what a “bar” is, see below in the section on What’s a Jig?)

A Bowing Pattern for Jigs

People usually find a bowing pattern or two that work for them, but all such patterns are based on the beat notes, and I’d like to suggest a basic pattern that will work for all jigs. Once you get it, you can try a number of variations as we’ll mention below, but you’ll always have a good pattern to come home to. Just be careful not to cave in to the left hand’s desperate need for attention, based on all those dots on paper. The left hand can be quite arrogant and will leave you high and dry and blame you if you miss a note or two. The problem, musically, is that the left hand couldn’t care less about timing — it knows that’s the right hand’s job! And music is nothing without timing.

Get out your fiddle and try this: Play a fast bow and then a slow one. Tip: don’t speed up on the fast bow or slow down on the slow one. Throw all caution to the wind and start the fast bow fast right out of the starting gate, and instantly switch to a slow blow coming back the other way. It’s that moment of the change from fast to slow that is the critical point.

Play a fast downbow and a slow upbow. Try it a few times. Another tip: never stop the bow (until you’re done). There’s no end to the bowstroke; just start a new one.

Now try the same movement the other way — play a fast upbow and a slow downbow. Remember, the fast upbow needs to start fast out of the starting gate. No speeding up once the bow gets started. Make noise. Go for it.

If your fast and slow bows used the same length of bow, you used a short amount of time for the fast bow, and a longer time for the slow bow. What if the amount of time for each bow was equal? Then you’d have a long fast bow, and a short slow bow. Try a 6-inch fast downbow and a 1-inch slow upbow, followed by a 1-inch downbow again, and make them equal in time:

Try it starting upbow too —

This is a jig bowing. Fast downbow from point A to point B, and two slow bows in the neighborhood of point B. Then a fast upbow from point B back to point A, and two slow bows in the neighborhood of point A. Rinse and repeat. DOWN-and-then UP-and-then DOWN-and-then UP.

The capitalized bows are the fast ones — the beat notes. If you’ve practiced that moment of switching from fast to slow, you won’t even have to think about the nonbeat bows. If you have not practiced switching from fast to slow, the tendency will be to return the downbow serve with an equal upbow, and there will be no difference between the two.

By going FAST slow slow FAST slow slow, DOWN and then UP and then DOWN etc., you’ve automatically emphasized the beat notes. You don’t have to hit them over the head to hear the beats. You can even bow smoothly, but the beats will be clear from the strong bow you give them. They are even more clear because you de-emphasized the nonbeat notes by giving them short slow bows as you got ready serve up the next big beat note.

Come back often to play 4 beats of jig bowing on an open string, and then apply it to 4 beats (two bars (one phrase)) of a tune such as Swallowtail Jig, shown below. Alternate between 4 bars on an open string and 4 bars of a tune. You want to build the bowing in physically, including that instant switch from fast to slow bow, so you can apply it when you get into playing the notes of a tune, without having to think too much. All you have to think about is the beat note bows. Let the nonbeat notes play themselves.

What’s a Jig?

This bowing pattern works because a jig, like a reel, has two strong beats per bar, but unlike a reel, the jig divides each beat into 3 parts, as we did with the DOWN up down UP down up pattern. In written music, these are 3 eighth notes. You can remember this because the word “jig” has 3 letters. By contrast, the word “reel” has 4 letters and divides its beats into 4 parts, written as 4 eighth notes.

Jig rhythm in English: GO to the DOOR and let’s SEE who is THERE.

Reel rhythm in English: DON’T go to the DOOR because we CAN’T tell them we’re HERE.

In written music, jigs are written in 6/8 time, meaning there are 6 eighth notes in a bar — but these notes are divided into 2 beats, each with 3 eighth notes (“triplets”).

Mathematicians and musicians will note that there are also many tunes with 6 eighth notes per bar that are not jigs, because they subdivide their 6 eighth notes into 3 beats, with 2 eighth notes per beat. These tunes are written in 3/4, including waltzes and minuets.

An exception: One type of jig less common than the 6/8 jig is the slip jig, which is in 9/8 time, meaning that while it still uses 3 eighth notes per beat, there are 3 beats in each bar instead of 2.

When It’s Not All Eighth Notes

Sometimes the 3 eighth notes in a beat get combined, but if you think DOWN-and-then UP-and-then DOWN etc., this won’t matter. Your goal is to aim for a downbow to start every measure, and an upbow to start the second beat of every measure. When you know to aim for that downbow to start the next measure, it will all work out, whether your left hand gets all the notes or not. Staying with the beat allows you to get the feel of the tune, and to keep up with others. Missing a note is a mistake; missing a beat is a disaster!

If you don’t have 3 eighth notes in a beat of a jig tune, you might see two of the eighths combined into a quarter, so you’ll have a quarter note + an eighth note. If you play them on the same bow, you can stick with your downbow on the first beat and upbow on the second. Same happens if all 3 eighths are combined into a dotted quarter note — it’s just one bow, but it gets you to the right bow direction for the next beat.

In the first beat above you have a triplet on the same note — a strong downbow to start, then 2 separate but de-emphasized nonbeat notes to follow, leading into a new rhythm for the second beat — quarter + eighth slurred onto the same upbow so you can be ready for the next bar downbow. This second measure starts with a single dotted quarter for the whole beat (one dotted quarter = 3 eighth notes), so you have no choice but play one downbow there. For the last beat you do have a choice — what’s marked is the typical strong fast upbow followed by de-emphasized short slow down and upbows, but because you’re not playing the same note, you could also slur all three onto one upbow and still come out ready for a downbow on the next bar. Sometimes doing this makes the next beat feel stronger by comparison, but the main thing is, whether it’s 3 separate bows or 1 single bow, it doesn’t change the pattern of downbow on the first beat and upbow on the second beat of each measure. That’s the simplicity of it. By aiming for this bowing pattern, you never have to distract yourself trying to memorize bowings; you can rely on the physical feel and intent of the right hand to carry you through.

Bowing Variations

When I say the “right” bow direction, I mean the bow direction I’m showing you now, the basic jig bowing that can bring any jig to life by using the fast and slow bows to emphasize the beat notes and de-emphasize the nonbeat notes. This lets us hear two beats in a bar — a danceable beat, as opposed to slamming us with 6 beats in a bar, one on each eighth note. People hearing that kind of playing have been known to quit the dance just to get away from being hit over the head with 6 beats per bar. They usually then go drown their sorrows in drink.

If you play a tune like Road to Lisdoonvarna, with lots of quarter + eighth note pairs, it can be nice to slur these pairs on one bow each so as to maintain the jig bowing of downbow for first beat, upbow for second beat. This can work on Road to Lisdoonvarna if you wish to play it smoothly, which can be a nice way to do it.

Note the alternative bowings below the colored boxes; these can work, while still keeping the bowing pattern consistent from bar to bar.

On a tune like Stool of Repentance, shown below, which starts with a pair of quarter-eighth patterns, you might consider separating these bows because the tune has a lot of energy, and if you play separate bows on one measure as shown below, you still look forward to a downbow on the next measure, which keeps you on track.

Some people get into a habit of always bowing jigs with a quarter + eighth separate bow pattern, so even when there are 3 eighths, they’ll slur the first two downbow, and play the third one upbow. In order not to run out of bow, they have to play the upbow fast and light to get back to where they want to start the next downbow. This can be an option, but I think of it as more of a variation. It could be a bit tiresome to hear a whole tune played that way. But it’s worth trying different variations, as long as you have a basic pattern to come back to, so you don’t have to think too much about having a good strong bow sound for the beat notes.

Thinking too much about varying the bowing can also get in the way. The pattern I’m suggesting gives you a clear DOWN - UP - DOWN - UP for the four beat notes of each phrase in a tune. It helps you physically organize your playing of the tune, it’s call-and-response between Phrase 1 and Phrase 2, usually followed again by Phrase 1 and an Ending phrase. Every time you play the same phrase, you want to bow it the same way, so it’s comfortable and you can sink into the phrase better. Having a consistent pattern for bowing makes this easy to look forward to, and believe it or not, it actually helps you remember the tune better.

Practice Video

Below is a video you can work with to practice jig bowing. It’s only for paid subscribers because it comes from Technique Video Group 3 on fiddle-online, and this is only fair, since people do pay to make use of that group of 10 technique videos. Enjoy, and use it often!