- nancyzhouviolin
- Feb 4, 2021
- 1 min read
A go-to segment of a warm-up routine: picking an etude with consecutive semi-quavers and practicing at checkpoints of bow: frog, middle, and tip. I find this personally helpful to recalibrate my sense of balancing the bow (hence, bow “control”) no matter where I am. Using Kreutzer’s Etude no. 3 as a vessel.
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At the frog, I find that the third, pinky, and thumb are most important, as they counterbalance the natural heaviness of the lower part of the bow. For the most part, the bow’s natural weight does the job, and one learns to slightly suspend/lift the wrist such that the weight of the hand does not provide excessive force. The bow stick is quite rigid at the frog, and one’s focus is on what is occurring between the more flexible bow hair and the string. At the middle, there is a shift in responsibility to the second / third fingers and the thumb. Additionally, the bow stick starts getting more flexible/elastic, therefore one’s focus shifts to the contact between the fingers and the bow stick. Finally, at the tip, one relies on the leverage the first and second fingers provide and play into the bow stick - simply squishing the bow against the string ends up being less efficient and effective...!
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I find that these exercises, although simple, help one re-center and recalibrate the sense of balancing rather than holding the bow!
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And yep, got a haircut in a safe setting 😷😀
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- nancyzhouviolin
- Jan 26, 2021
- 1 min read
A bit spent after a fun but compact group class and a couple of sessions with students, but I had this beginning facetious turn furious section in the first movement of Ysaÿe’s Solo Sonata no. 2 rampaging in my mind throughout the entire day. Truly an “Obsession”.
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Most of the times, the character of a particular passage has to be fully enacted by the body - body language. For instance, fragility is enacted by the smaller joints, and aggression perhaps by the body as a whole. The tough part of it all is to never equate musical tension with physical tension... the joints still remain free. Resistance and power comes from how a player uses the space around her while respecting the natural suspension system of the arm (also essentially a system of springs) and her body’s alliance with gravity... Marveling at how much kinesiology and anatomy teaches us players.
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- nancyzhouviolin
- Jan 19, 2021
- 1 min read
Exploring various soundpoints with relatively fast bow strokes - using Rode’s Caprice no. 6 as a vessel!
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The bow hand I feel needs to undergo consistence maintenance, especially as it is easy for the bow hand to succumb and play along the line of least resistance (sliding towards the fingerboard as the string is sloped downwards in the direction towards the top nut). Hence, here is a bit of maintenance work.
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Besides monitoring the bow’s course of direction, I’m trying to kinesthetically attune myself to the specific needs of each string and each soundpoint: each string has a favorite soundpoint for a characteristic sound with good quality, and each soundpoint has an ideal ratio between bow weight and bow speed (and therefore bow length). Generally, putting in efforts to play with full hair has large benefits as well. Like intonation, tone production is explorative work (for the most part).
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This particular caprice helps with intonation as well. With each particular scale, giving relatively more focus on the tonic, mediant, subdominant, dominant, and subtonic (leading tone) helps center one’s attention on the inherent beauty of a simple scale.
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