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Old 08-15-2007, 06:37 PM
Nick Hart Nick Hart is offline
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Join Date: 01-21-2007
Location: Cincinnati, OH
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I am a German player and play using this "New York" style of playing although I would call it more of a Russian school as all of my German bow teachers have been from Russia. The principle is that the sound comes from large muscle groups, and that your wrist plays no part in the sound. Your entire arm has to work as a unit in order for a core sound to be pulled at all times. Yes, your fingers and wrist play a part in the sound, and the fingers a more important part than the wrist, but the idea is that your fingers and wrist serve as shock absorbers and follow through, and are not conscious movements.

The movement should start from the floor and come through your body, and this creates a very slight sway from side to side in the direction your bow is moving. Then the actual bow movement starts from the muscles in your back and the entire arm moves, and the fingers remain active and pull the string as the bow moves. As this is happening the arm moves in sort of a pendulum motion in order to distribute weight. So as I go through a down bow, my arm lifts a little so that the weight transfers to the tip of the bow and as I pull an up bow, my arm moves lower so the weight transfers from the tip to the frog.

My bow hold is this New York/Russian style hold. I place the pad of my thumb on top of the stick of the bow, with the pointer and middle fingers sitting on the side and playing an active part in the pull of the bow. My ring and pinky fingers sit underneath the ferrole of the bow and balance the bow or act as a more active pull in off the string strokes. The bow sits at a slight angle on my hand, so that I can have flat hair on the strings and keep my wrist straight at all times.

The idea is to feel every bow change and to hear an even sound, but there must be a start to the note in order to correctly hear the pitch. Also, if there is no start to the note, and there is no core sound, there will be very little pitch definition, and this is usually much more obvious in off the string and shorter strokes.

As far as injury goes, most musicians have injuries from repetitive movements in the small muscle groups. We train our small muscle groups to do very specific things and this leads to injury. By moving our primary focus away from small muscle groups and towards large muscle groups, we can let the small muscle groups act more naturally and draw a rich and big bassy sound with less effort and injury.
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