The Amazing Bow

A fiddler's best friend

The violin bow is an amazing contraption. Pick one bow up after another, and they pretty much look the same, but they may feel lighter or heavier, even though the difference in weight could be just a tenth of an ounce (3 grams). More astonishingly, when you try playing with various bows, you’ll find that some actually, magically, sound a lot better than others.

I remember making a number of drawings of violins and bows many years ago. Bows are very difficult and frustrating to draw because they are so long, thin, and seem almost uniform in shape. The stick has a subtle arc to it, called the camber, which can be beautiful but tricky to draw, as it gently curves toward and away from the hairs. It’s a bit more interesting to draw the gracefully shaped tip, and the black curved block of ebony at the frog. (”Frog” is horse terminology — the bow hairs come from a horse’s tail, and the frog is named after the part of the horse’s hoof that’s in the middle of the horseshoe).

When you try playing with different bows, you find differences in responsiveness partly because of the type of wood and the quality of the carving, which affect the strength and springiness of the bow stick. A very weak stick could, with some pressure, easily contact the strings directly, and if the hairs are tightened too much, the stick might even arc the wrong way (away from the bow hairs). The camber of the bow, the way the stick curves toward the hairs, allows you to control the tension of the hairs against the strings as you play.

I always recommend tightening the bow until, if you keep your eye on the spot where the stick and the hairs are closest, you notice that the gap between stick and hairs is about the thickness of the stick, or a little wider. When not playing, it’s essential to loosen the bow tension. If the bow is too tight for too long a time, the hairs may stretch, just like human hair, and this will require you to tighten them even more each time you play, sometimes even stretching to the limit of the bow (there’s a little slot on the stick under the frog that controls how far the bow screw can go). The constant pressure on the stick from long-term use can even cause the camber to start losing its arc, making the bow less responsive to pressure and affecting your sound. I once had to have my bow re-cambered, which involves steaming and bending it back to the correct shape. Notice I said “once” — this is rare and may never have to be done to your bow at all.

Two factors that have a big impact on the playability and sound quality of a bow are not even visible. One is the evenness of the wood carving. If the bow stick is not perfectly carved, one spot might be unintentionally thicker than a nearby spot; this slight unevenness translates directly into the quality of sound produced under those spots when playing on the strings. A slight change in wood thickness could slightly affect the pressure and the continuity of your sound. The momentum and continuity of your bow stroke coaxes vibrations out of the strings, and the slightest change can disrupt that vibration, making the sound less resonant, or simply changing the sound quality in a way you didn’t intend. These changes can be so minute that you might simply feel the sound of one bow isn’t as nice or as easy to play as another bow, without your being able to diagnose why. And of course, you don’t have to. You just have to tune in your ears carefully to the sound of each bow, while also noticing how the bow feels in your hand as you play in all parts of the bow and at different speeds.

The other invisible factor, in addition to the evenness of the wood carving, is the balance of the bow, which is affected by the shape of the carving and the weight of both frog and tip. The frog is the heaviest part of the bow; the tip is the lightest. When the bow rests on the strings at the frog, a lot of weight comes from the combination of frog, hand and the whole rest of the bow. At the tip, though, there is no added weight other than the tip itself, which is so light that if you looked inside the tip (possible only while the bow is being rehaired), you would see a triangular hollow so thin that it is translucent in places. All sound produed at the tip, then, is dependent entirely on the pressure that your finger applies to the frog while you’re playing. (Try the “triangle” exercise, discussed in an earlier post, for a practical exploration of this.) Each bow has its own balance, based on the weight of the frog and the distribution of the thickness of the stick.

Because the frog is the heaviest part of the bow, it has a huge impact on how we organize our bowing. It is easiest to start a strong sound closer to the heavy frog than the weightless tip, which is why downbows are typically used for beat notes. On the other hand, upbows move your bow towards the frog, which makes it easy for upbows to grow a note louder — if that’s what you want! Ending a piece of music with a gentle, fading long note will be very difficult on an upbow, which naturally wants to make the note end louder than it started. Of course, all sounds are possible in any part of the bow and in either direction, as you work with the pressure of your right forefinger. (Another earlier post, called “Notches”, allows you to experiment with this in some interesting ways.)

I strongly encourage you to try out different bows, whether or not you’re in the market for a new bow, just for the sake of tuning your ears and bow hand into the possibilities offered by different bows. French-style bows tend to have springier, responsive sticks; German-style bows tend to be stiffer and more robust. Carbon-fiber bows tend to be lighter and yet produce the sound equivalent to a more expensive wooden bow. Fiberglass bows are heavier and clunkier (and lots cheaper) but worth trying just for the comparison. Be sure to try a range of bows, from too cheap to too expensive. Prices are often misleading, so keep those out of your mind as you try bows. Go to a shop that allows you to spend some time trying out a range of bows, or have some bows shipped to you (Shar Music, for example, makes this easy to do) so that you can play with them at home for a few days. This helps you try the bows repeatedly and in a comfortable place; it also helps get you away from the bow you’re used to for a little while, so you can get a more accurate feel for the differences. You might not want a new bow, but the comparisons can improve your awareness of sound. You might even gain a new appreciation for your own bow. Or you might realize that you are an amazing player being held back only by a bad bow!

Of course none of this matters without the rosin on the bow hairs. If you’ve ever tried playing on brand new bow hairs, you know that without rosin, they produce about as much sound as playing with a wooden stick! There are all sorts of opinions about rosin, about the structure of bow hairs, and so on. I must confess I’ve come across so many contradictory opinions (all of them very self-assured, of course!) that I am not convinced there are significant differences in types of rosin. They are almost a magic charm (and might work for you!) — some people swear by the green ones or the ones with gold dust (literally!), or the light or the dark.

They say the bow hairs no longer take rosin very well after a certain amount of playing. Being natural structures, I’m sure there is something to this, but I haven’t done the scientific research. I’d just recommend you rehair your bow periodically, certainly once every year or two, and more often if the hairs get dirty in the playing area (not by the frog where you don’t actually play) or if you grab the bow too often with your hand and create a slick spot (finger oils and rosin do not mix). Of course, if your bow is worth less than $70, you may as well buy a new bow, because that’s the cost of rehairing, but decent bows cost a few hundred, and you’ll enjoy playing on one.

The bow is our musical voice, providing every ounce of sound we make, lending power and pulse to our music, and transferring our emotions into all the music we play. Unfortunately, the bow is often taken for granted as people worry so much about notes. Sometimes bow directions are written into music but often they’re not, and there is so much that goes on with the bow that cannot be written down at all! Yet it is the most important part of playing the fiddle/violin.

Get to know your bow better, whenever you can! It will reward you handsomely.